A random collection of over 2078 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: "Just Julia: The Story of an Extraordinary Woman" by Julia Grant. Her first biography "George and Julia" was published in 1980.
Just Julia: The Story of an Extraordinary Woman is a raw, unflinching memoir that expands far beyond the earlier book George and Julia and offers one of the most complex autobiographical accounts of a transgender life published in Britain. Written by Julia Grant, it tells a story that is not shaped as a neat narrative of triumph, but as a brutally honest record of survival, failure, resilience, and uneasy self knowledge. The book is both deeply personal and historically significant, documenting not only Julia’s life but also the hostile and often negligent systems that shaped the experiences of transsexual women in late twentieth century Britain.
Julia Grant was born George Roberts in Fleetwood, Lancashire, in 1954, into a childhood marked by neglect, violence, and instability. The book begins by confronting this early trauma without sentimentality. Grant describes growing up as the eldest of eight children in a household dominated by alcoholism, cruelty, and fear. Her mother struggled with addiction and repeated suicide attempts, while her father was violent and abusive, including acts of sexual violence directed at Julia when she was still a child. Responsibility arrived early, as Julia often cared for her younger siblings while receiving little care herself. Periods spent in children’s homes and the absence of any stable sense of safety shaped her emotional development in lasting ways. As a teenager she drifted into prostitution, an experience she later understood as a desperate search for affection rather than money, using her earnings on sweets rather than survival. This painful beginning sets the emotional tone for the rest of the book, where identity, worth, and belonging are constant struggles rather than abstract ideas.
1994,
English,
Julia Grant,
UK,
George and Julia is a landmark memoir that occupies a unique place in British social history, not only as a deeply personal life story but also as a practical and cultural document that reshaped how transgender lives were understood in the late twentieth century. Published in 1980 by New English Library as a tie in to the BBC television series A Change of Sex, the book introduced a mass readership to the reality of gender transition at a time when the subject was barely discussed outside medical journals and sensationalist headlines. Written by Julia Grant, it combines autobiography, documentary reflection, and pragmatic guidance, becoming, for many readers, an essential manual for navigating transition beyond the rigid and often hostile NHS system.
The book tells the story of Julia Grant, born George Roberts in Fleetwood, Lancashire, in 1954, and begins by situating her struggle with gender identity within a childhood shaped by neglect, violence, and emotional deprivation. As the eldest of eight children in a working class fishing family, Julia grew up carrying responsibilities far beyond her years. Her mother, Jessica, was an alcoholic who attempted suicide several times, while her father, Philip, was a violent drunkard who, according to later accounts, sexually abused Julia when she was still a child. These early experiences form the emotional foundation of George and Julia, not as an excuse for later choices but as the context in which confusion, shame, and longing for affection first took root. Periods spent in a children’s home in Preston further reinforced her sense of displacement, and by her teenage years she had begun prostituting herself to men, an act she later described as a misguided search for love rather than money.
1980,
English,
Julia Grant,
UK,
