A random collection of over 1910 books and audiobooks authored by or about my transgender, intersex sisters, and gender-nonconforming persons all over the world. I read some of them, and I was inspired by some of them. I met some of the authors and heroines, some of them are my best friends, and I had the pleasure and honor of interviewing some of them. If you know of any transgender biography that I have not covered yet, please let me know.
Original title: "Il était une fois ... Guilda" (Once upon a time... Guilda). This is the second biography of Jean Guilda, following her 1979 book "Guilda: elle et moi" (Guilda: her and me).
There are artists who change costumes, and then there are those who change culture. Jean Guida de Mortellaro, forever etched into public memory as Guilda, did both with jaw-dropping flair. In Il était une fois... Guilda ("Once Upon a Time... Guilda"), published in 2009, the legendary drag artist unveils a life that reads less like a memoir and more like a myth. But myth, in Guilda’s hands, becomes a deeply human story of survival, glamour, defiance, and creative reinvention.
This book, Guilda’s second autobiography following Guilda: elle et moi (1979), is not merely an update or a sequel. It’s an unflinching, unapologetic reflection on an extraordinary life lived between the footlights and the shadows, the fabulous and the terrifying, the mascara wand and the memories of war. Written with the confessional elegance of someone who knew performance could be armor and mirror both, Il était une fois... Guilda offers readers something rare: a behind-the-scenes invitation to meet the man behind the illusion, and the illusion that shaped the man.
2009,
French,
Jean Guilda,
Original title: "Guilda: elle et moi" (Guilda: her and me) by Jean Guilda.
There are autobiographies that recount. Then there are those that seduce, provoke, and undress not only the author but also the reader’s assumptions about gender, fame, and selfhood. Guilda: Elle et moi, Her and Me, published in 1979, is not merely the life story of Jean Guida de Mortellaro, the dazzling performer better known as Guilda. It is a theatrical memoir staged on the page, a tango between masculine and feminine, public and private, illusion and intimacy.
Written in the voice of both Jean and his stage persona, Elle et moi stands as one of the most compelling autobiographical experiments in the drag canon. Guilda does not begin the book with childhood nostalgia or linear chronology. He opens with an invocation: to glamour, to freedom, to the goddess within. Immediately, we are ushered into his duality, not as a contradiction to be resolved, but as a sacred duet. The memoir’s conceit is brilliant in its theatricality: two voices, two identities, two lovers under one skin. “Elle” is not merely a costume or a role. She is an entity with her own opinions, longings, and grudges. Together, elle et moi narrate the evolution of Guilda as if co-authoring a mythic, sensual epic that refuses to obey binary storytelling.
1979,
French,
Jean Guilda,
