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: "Mujeres trans*, violencia y cárcel" (Trans* Women, Violence and Prison) by Chloé Constant.
"From a critical feminist perspective, in this work the author presents methodological reflections on socio-anthropological work in prison and analyzes the experiences of trans* women who were imprisoned in a men's prison in Mexico City. Through a transdisciplinary dialogue, which recovers the perspective of experiences from body and gender studies, she explores the multiple forms of violence that trans * women have experienced before, during and after prison.
Likewise, she shows how the prison constitutes an institution permeated by power and organized according to specific laws, which reproduces and deepens gender inequalities and transphobic violence, attempting to impose a unique way of living gender. This book contributes to studies on the prison system and gender violence in Mexico, showing us how trans* women face social structures that constrain and violate them, and how they explore spaces for resistance."
2022,
Chloé Constant,
Mexico,
Spanish,
Original title: "Vivir en el cuerpo equivocado" (Living in the wrong body) by Juan Pablo Proal.
Living in the Wrong Body is a compendium of chronicles and reports about people who have been excluded from the "world of normals". Out of ignorance and lack of sensitivity, transsexuals, intersexed, transgenders, and transvestites are commonly killed, tortured, and discriminated against in Mexico. They do not have access to formal work, social security, and a dignified life.
This book summarizes the stories of those who, with the world against them, managed to earn a place in life. The work is full of revelations and written in the best of journalistic languages: agility, rhythm, and clarity.
2013,
Juan Pablo Proal,
Mexico,
Spanish,
Full title: "Bordered Lives: Transgender Portraits from Mexico" by Kike Arnal.
"A richly evocative collection of photographs by internationally renowned photographer Kike Arnal, Bordered Lives seeks to push back against the transphobic caricatures that have perpetuated discrimination against the transgender community in Mexico.
Despite some important advances in recognizing and protecting the rights of its transgender community, including legislating against hate crimes targeting transgender people, discrimination still persists, and the majority of the violent attacks against the LGBT community are against transgender women."
2015,
English,
Kike Arnal,
Mexico,
Original title: "Cómo ser trans y morir asesinada en el intento" (How to be trans and die murdered in the attempt) by Frida Cartas.
For Frida Cartas, transsexuality, or being a trans woman, does not mean a "transition", or a "change" from A to B, a "person who stopped being X to become Y"... Nor any of these stories that are generally society (through discourses of inclusion) who adjudicate them via sociocultural patterns and standards, and that are repeated even by the same people, trans women and men.
For Frida Cartas, being a trans woman is an expropriation of her own body, previously stolen precisely by these patterns and standards. For Frida Cartas to be a trans woman is to have done justice to herself, within a world in which it seems that no woman has justice. If, as Marx pointed out, we must take the means of production, Frida took the first and most hers: her body and all the sexuality that inhabits it, then she not only began to build and produce, but also to do politics. A work that has earned her the derision and the simplistic and light criticism of those who do not support collectivity and self-management.
2022,
Frida Cartas,
Intersex,
Mexico,
Spanish,
Original title: "Crucé la frontera en tacones: Crónicas de una TRANSgresora" (I Crossed the Border in Heels: Chronicles of a TRANSgressor) by Alexandra R. DeRuiz.
"I Crossed the Border in Heels" is the personal testimony of Alexandra R. DeRuiz in which she recounts her escape from Mexico across the border with the United States, where she had to create a life from scratch.
There she had to assimilate multiple identities, learning that racism, transphobia, exploitation, stereotypes, and violence are daily acts and a reality for undocumented trans people living between both countries.
2023,
Alexandra R. DeRuiz,
Mexico,
Spanish,
Original title: "Cuerpos en resistencia: experiencias trans en ciudad de México y Bogotá" (Bodies in resistance: trans experiences in Mexico City and Bogotá) by Manuel Roberto Escobar Cajamarca.
The body is mainly a scenario of power, which becomes a multiplicity of tensions and resistances subscribed to specific contexts. In particular, this work deals with the bodies of people who move through gender, and the political dimension of these experiences in Latin America, in two of its main cities: Mexico City and Bogotá.
The importance of these subjectivities that strive for what a body can be in our contexts, has to do with the fact that the body goes beyond individual and social expression and constitutes a node of identity, with which the construction of the body allows us to specify our own sameness, difference, as well as perceive it in the other.
2016,
Colombia,
Manuel Roberto Escobar Cajamarca,
Mexico,
Spanish,
Original title: "Oaxaca Trans: Historias de vida" (Oaxaca Trans. Life stories) by Daniel Nizcub Vásquez Cerero and Nallely Guadalupe Tello Méndez.
The book includes the stories of Unice Dayami Méndez Ruiz, Ana Karen López Quintana, Jonathan Lavariega, José Leonardo Flores Ballinas, Jossiel Aran Bernardino Esteban, and Sarah Möbius.
Ana Karen, one of the participants, says that her story is also one of love, in which her male brothers and fathers see a sister or daughter they always wanted to have. For Ana Karen López Quintana, living her transsexuality has meant that, since childhood, pain, discrimination, violence, and crying have been her day to day. "It is a process that many people have gone through," says, evoking those yesterdays from a distance. Now she tries to see them as that which instead of killing her has made her strong. Never, she says, did she lower her guard in her struggle to want to be Ana Karen and not that person who is violated and discriminated against. That's what her story is about, one of the six that make up the book.
2020,
Daniel Nizcub Vásquez Cerero,
Mexico,
Nallely Guadalupe Tello Méndez,
Spanish,
"La persistencia de la memoria: Una biografía personal de Salvador Dalí" is the Spanish language edition of "Persistence of Memory: A Personal Biography of Salvador Dali", an American re-edition of "Le Dalí d'Amanda" (Amanda's Dalí).
Amanda Lear (born 1939) is a French singer, television celebrity, actress, and model, known for her professional career as a fashion model in the mid-1960s and being a muse of Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí. The book tells about her relationship with Salvador Dalí and presents detailed insights into the 15 years of their relationship.
According to Wikipedia, Amanda's transgender background was confirmed by Salvador Dalí himself, and other well-known artists that used to know Lear earlier in her life. For example, April Ashley, a transgender icon and model, claimed that in the 1950s and early 1960s, Lear, whose birth name she stated was "Alain Tap", had worked with her in the Parisian transgender revues Madame Arthur and Le Carrousel. In her book April Ashley's Odyssey, Ashley recalls Lear performing drag acts under the stage name "Peki d'Oslo".
1994,
Amanda Lear,
April Ashley,
Georges Burou,
Mexico,
Romy Haag,
Spanish,
Original title: "NO era quien me dijeron SER" (I was NOT who they told me to BE) by Alejandra Inclán.
The gestation of a human life lasts nine months, but the gestation of who you really are can be a lifelong path. We grow up and are dictated by how we should be. They mold us and lead to a valid personification for others. And we believe it. Many embrace that and accept it because it fits their feelings. For Valeria, it wasn't like that.
In her adult life, she finished understanding that she was not who she was told to be. That she had to find a way to manifest herself to family, friends, and work. Obtaining that concordance that nature denied her. On that path, she believed in the possibility of love, of a couple. But I wasn't ready. They weren't ready. A barrier appeared when her secret was revealed and she felt that she lived a frustrated sexuality, for not knowing how to face that disparity that sooner or later she had to confess.
2016,
Alejandra Inclán,
Mexico,
Spanish,
Original title: "Así como soy" (Just as I am) by Jacob Tobia.
A moving, revealing, and humorous book about what it's like to grow up without knowing if you're a) a girl, b) a boy, c) something in between, or d) all of the above.
During his childhood, Jacob Tobia was not the wrong gender, life simply offered too much. Barbies? Yes. Get dirty in the mud? Please. Princess dresses? Of course! Jacob wanted everything and had no problem with anything. But because he was a female boy, he was labeled a "sissy" and then things got complicated.
It took years for Jacob to discover that being a "sissy" is not something to be ashamed of. It is a source of pride. This is a deeply personal story of pain and healing, a powerful reflection on gender and self-acceptance, and a fun guide to being different in the modern world.
2022,
Jacob Tobia,
Mexico,
Spanish,
Original title: "Por toda la eternidad. Autobiografía de la primera mujer transexual en Yucatán" (For the whole eternity. Autobiography of the first transsexual woman in Yucatan)
Chances are, you don't know who Barbara Fox is. Nor does Ãmbar Gay, or Ãmbar Berenice Gaynor Manzur, or Andrea Elizabeth, or Leonardo Gaynor Manzur. But in all cases, it is the same person. She was born Leonardo, adopted the first two names as stage names, and finally "after surgical interventions and legal procedures" ended up being Andrea Elizabeth.
Barbara Fox is not only a recognized name in the artistic environment of Yucatan and within the LGBT community but also for being the first transgender woman officially registered in the State.
2012,
Bárbara Fox,
Mexico,
Spanish,
Original title: "De waarheid zal me bevrijden" (The truth will set me free)
The poignant story of Alejandra, a trans woman who fled Mexico
In a small village in Mexico, young Alejandra lives a hopeless existence. Driven by poverty and looking for affection, she sells her body at the age of thirteen.
In the meantime, she learns that she is different, that it is not safe for her here. She goes to the US, but without papers, life is not easy there either.
In 2015 Alejandra arrives at Schiphol and gets a one-way ticket. Despite great adversity - the viscous procedures, rejections, and depression - she maintains her ultimate quest for freedom.
She longs to live, to love, and to be who she really is.
The truth will set me free is the gripping story of Alejandra, a trans woman looking for a safe home. At times a sad story, but zest for life and perseverance prevail from start to finish.
2022,
Alejandra Ortiz,
Dutch,
Mexico,
Original title: "En el cuerpo correcto: El primer testimonio de una mujer trans en México" (In the right body: The first testimony of a trans woman in Mexico)
A story of courage and strength of spirit that portrays the life of Morganna Love, a Mexican opera singer who fought against the prejudices of society and the rejection of her own family in order to fulfill her dream: to be the full woman she is today. day.
From her religious childhood as Saul to the trip she made to Bangkok to carry out her gender reassignment, Morganna reveals to us how difficult the path can be for a person who inhabits a divided body and learns to face it despite the adversities, the prejudices, and discrimination typical of a painfully sexist, hypocritical and conservative country.
2017,
Mexico,
Morganna Love,
Spanish,
Original title: "YO NO SOY ÉL: El proceso de la experiencia Trans" (I AM NOT HIM: The process of the Trans experience)
The book is an autobiographical story in which the author, Aurora Martínez, exposes the challenges of the transgender experience in Mexico. From the moment she wakes up to her reality, being a little 3-year-old girl, to the point where she accepts her dissident reality of gender.
As a false interview, we are exposed to the narrative of common life, with its good and bad situations, which in addition to the situations that any of us could experience, naturally and explicitly emphasizes the factor of being a trans person.
This is a book for anyone looking for answers, who has doubts about their identity and who wants to understand clearly the complexity of trans interactions in a world that was structured to discriminate against them.
2022,
Aurora Martínez,
Mexico,
Spanish,
