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.
Full title: "The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective" by Joy Ladin.
In The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective, Joy Ladin opens a profound and deeply intimate conversation between her life as a transgender woman and the sacred texts of the Jewish tradition. The result is not only a book of theology or literary criticism, but a spiritual memoir braided through scripture, a tapestry woven from alienation, yearning, and the radical empathy of seeing God as a fellow stranger.
Published in 2018 by Brandeis University Press, The Soul of the Stranger is the first book-length scholarly work that dares to ask how transgender experience might expand, not threaten, the understanding of God and sacred text. Ladin's approach is both radical and traditional: radical in its refusal to separate identity from interpretation, and traditional in its reverent commitment to close reading, commentary, and dialogue with the Torah.
2018,
English,
Joy Ladin,
Full title: "Sex Changes: A Memoir of Marriage, Gender, and Moving On" by Christine Benvenuto.
In Sex Changes: A Memoir of Marriage, Gender, and Moving On, Christine Benvenuto confronts the question that most people never imagine asking: What happens when the other woman is your husband? This searing, darkly humorous, and emotionally raw memoir invites us into the inner sanctum of a marriage disrupted not by infidelity, but by transformation,when Benvenuto’s husband of over two decades comes out as a transgender woman.
One night, as they lay in bed in their New England home, the father of her three children says, “I’m thinking constantly about my gender.” From that moment, the landscape of Christine’s life shifts irreversibly. What follows is not just the dissolution of a marriage, but the dismantling of identity, family roles, social expectations, and deeply rooted assumptions about love, gender, and the self.
Unlike many transgender memoirs that chart the joy and struggle of transitioning, Sex Changes is told from the other side of the mirror. Benvenuto writes as the cisgender spouse, blindsided, heartbroken, and profoundly confused. She offers no sanitized narrative of easy acceptance, nor does she demonize her former partner. Instead, she chronicles a process of grief and reassembly.
2012,
Christine Benvenuto,
English,
Joy Ladin,
Full title: "Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey between Genders" by Joy Ladin.
When Joy Ladin returned to Yeshiva University as the first openly transgender professor at an Orthodox Jewish institution, she didn’t just make headlines, she opened a profound dialogue on gender, faith, and authenticity. Her memoir, Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders, charts her intimate, intellectual, and spiritual journey toward living as the woman she always knew herself to be. The book is not just about gender transition; it is about living honestly in the face of fear, navigating personal truth within religious tradition, and facing the cost of transformation with courage and hope.
Born in Rochester, New York, Joy Ladin, then known as Jay, was raised in a non-observant Jewish family. Her parents, Lola and Irving Ladin, supported cultural Jewish identity, and her mother especially encouraged synagogue and Hebrew school attendance. Though her upbringing wasn’t strictly religious, these early spiritual experiences left an imprint. From childhood, Ladin intuited that her assigned male identity was false. She called herself a pacifist at eight to avoid the masculine behaviors expected of her, already resisting the social roles that felt alien to her being.
2012,
English,
Joy Ladin,
