A random collection of over 1994 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: "Roam: A Search for Happiness" by Juno Roche.
Juno Roche’s memoir Roam: A Search for Happiness is a book that stays with you long after you close its final page. It is at once a personal survival story, a sharp social observation, and a reflection on what it means to keep searching for belonging when life seems determined to push you to the margins. For readers who loved memoirs such as Educated by Tara Westover, Deborah Levy’s deeply introspective works, or Motherwell by Deborah Orr, Roam delivers an equally unforgettable blend of heartbreak, humor, and resilience.
Born into a working-class London family in the sixties, Juno grew up in an environment where contradictions defined daily life: for their father, violence and love coexisted, while their mother used addiction as her method of survival. School offered a fleeting sense of refuge, but life soon turned upside down. Shortly after beginning university, Juno was diagnosed with HIV, a diagnosis that in the eighties was essentially a death sentence.
Yet Juno is still here. They outlived the dire expectations, earned a degree, and pursued art. But survival came at a cost. Some scars ran deeper than others, and attempts to escape the past, both childhood trauma and the looming specter of AIDS, led Juno into years of heavy drug addiction, often funded through sex work. Addiction, like a shadow, followed them across countries and relationships, leaving them with moments of tragedy and absurdity in equal measure.
2023,
English,
Juno Roche,
Full title: "Trans Power: Own Your Gender" by Juno Roche.
Juno Roche’s Trans Power: Own Your Gender is a rallying cry, a field guide, and a conversation all at once. Rather than treating transness as a bridge from one bank of the gender binary to the other, Roche insists that trans is a place in its own right, a living and liberatory orientation that refuses to be reduced to compliance with anyone else’s rules. The book is written with candor and humour, and that tone is not decoration, it is method. Roche’s way of thinking is led by feeling, and the feeling is expansive, generous, and often very funny, which is why the ideas land with such force.
Trans Power is built from intimate dialogues with people who have shifted culture by the force of their art, activism, and presence. Kate Bornstein appears less as a citation than as kin, a companion in the project of loosening the categories that hurt. Travis Alabanza’s insights tie embodiment to performance and to race, asking what it means to be desired or refused in a world that polices every edge. Josephine Jones’s voice brings home the realities Black trans women navigate, and insists on joy as well as survival. Glamrou threads queerness through diasporic and religious experience, while E-J Scott anchors the conversation in memory and archives, a reminder that trans futures depend on how we keep our past. The effect is not a single thesis but a chorus. You hear the seams of disagreement, the different emphases, the different loves, and that difference is the point. If trans is power, it is because trans holds multitudes without demanding a tidy ending.
2019,
E-J Scott,
English,
Glamrou,
Josephine Jones,
Juno Roche,
Kate Bornstein,
Travis Alabanza,
Full title: "A Working Class Family Ages Badly" by Juno Roche.
Juno Roche’s A Working Class Family Ages Badly is more than a memoir. It is a visceral collection of interconnected essays that blur the line between personal confession and cultural critique. Through stories of family dysfunction, addiction, illness, survival, and transformation, Roche lays bare what it means to live on the margins and still insist on claiming joy, laughter, and humanity.
Born in Peckham in the 1960s into a working-class family with a taste for petty crime, Roche grew up in an environment where survival instincts mattered more than dreams. Among their siblings, they were the only one to attend university, an escape route that could have opened new doors. Yet fate intervened: while beginning a course in Brighton, Roche was diagnosed with HIV, then a virtual death sentence. What followed was a descent into drug addiction, with sex work often funding the next hit. Roche describes this period with unflinching honesty, never glamorizing, never seeking pity, but always locating the human need to survive beneath the chaos.
And yet, this is not simply a book about hardship.
2022,
English,
Juno Roche,
Full title: "Queer Sex: A Trans and Non-Binary Guide to Intimacy, Pleasure and Relationships" by Juno Roche.
When Juno Roche published Queer Sex: A Trans and Non-Binary Guide to Intimacy, Pleasure and Relationships, the book arrived like a long overdue conversation in a culture that too often silences or misrepresents trans and non-binary voices. Roche, a transgender activist, writer, and public speaker, has never been afraid of candor, and here she creates a book that is equal parts manifesto, testimony, and love letter to the possibilities of intimacy.
At its core, Queer Sex is not a “how-to” manual in the traditional sense. Instead, it is a rich and often funny collection of first-hand accounts, dialogues, and reflections. Through interviews with diverse figures from across the trans and non-binary community, Roche takes readers into the heart of discussions about sex, dating, gender, desire, and the beauty of trans bodies. The book celebrates difference while dismantling the shame and silence that so often surrounds queer and trans sexuality.
2018,
English,
Interview,
Juno Roche,
Full title: "Transitions" by Danielle Hopkins with the foreword by Juno Roche. I interviewed Juno in 2017.
When a book manages to be both deeply personal and universally resonant, it deserves to be called visionary. Transitions, edited by Danielle Hopkins with a foreword by Juno Roche, is one such book. A one-of-a-kind anthology, it gathers together the writing of eight emerging trans and non-binary voices from the UK, all of whom were selected through the inaugural JKP Writing Prize. With “the trans everyday” as its theme, the collection is more than a showcase of literary talent, it is a love letter to the trans community, a defiant celebration of joy, and a call to reimagine what trans storytelling can be.
At its heart, Transitions asks: what does it mean to be trans today, and every day? The answer, of course, is not one story, but many. From the sharp sting of anxiety before stepping out the door, to the exhilaration of wild swimming, to the peculiar time-warp of reliving adolescence in adulthood, the stories gathered here map the terrain of trans life in all its variety. Together, they affirm that while hardship and marginalization remain ever-present, so too do solidarity, humor, love, and liberation.
The anthology opens with a clear statement of intent. As Sabah Choudrey, one of the competition judges, notes in the introduction, trans stories are too often reduced to trauma. “We, as trans, non-binary and genderfluid people, know that our stories are often portrayed as negative, painful or heart-breaking. That might be what we carry every day but it isn’t our lives every day. We are more than that.”
The stories that follow embody this ethos. They acknowledge the undercurrent of struggle, but refuse to stop there. Instead, they turn their gaze toward joy, resilience, and the quieter yet equally radical acts of living authentically.
2021,
Danielle Hopkins,
English,
Juno Roche,
