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: "Italian Trans Geographies" by Danila Cannamela, Marzia Mauriello, and Summer Minerva.
"To my knowledge, this collection is absolutely unique-and, for that reason, absolutely vital. Over and over again, I was impressed with how smart it is. Besides being accessible to audiences both inside and outside of the academy, the movement across gender studies, anthropology, history, and political activism is also useful. I learned a lot by reading this anthology, and it really challenged me to think about the relationship between my own Sicilian American identity, gender, and sexuality, and the possibilities they might present for future projects and encounters, both scholarly and personal." - John Champagne, author of Queer Ventennio: Italian Fascism, Homoerotic Art, and the Nonmodern in the Modern
2023,
Danila Cannamela,
English,
Helena Velena,
Italy,
Marzia Mauriello,
Porpora Marcasciano,
Romina Cecconi,
Summer Minerva,
"AntoloGaia: Queering the Seventies, A Radical Trans Memoir (Other Voices of Italy)" is the English language edition of "AntoloGaia. Vivere sognando e non sognare di vivere: i miei anni Settanta" by Porpora Marcasciano.
"In this stirring memoir by a member of the first generation of LGBTQ+ activists in Italy, Porpora Marcasciano tells her story and shares the struggles and accomplishments of her fellow activists who achieved so much in the 1970s yet suffered devastating losses during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. AntoloGaia offers an insider’s look at the beginnings of the gay liberation movement in Italy and reveals how it was intimately intertwined with other forms of left-wing activism.
2023,
English,
Italy,
Porpora Marcasciano,
Original title: "L'aurora delle trans cattive. Storie, sguardi e vissuti della mia generazione transgender" (The dawn of bad trans women. Stories, looks and experiences of my transgender generation) by Porpora Marcasciano.
Spanning a period of about forty years and its profound socio-political changes, Porpora traces her trans genealogy by adding essential pieces to the historical reconstruction of a culture often relegated to the margins. And she does so as the protagonist of the collective path, still devoid of shared reading, of those who have consciously placed themselves in the border space between genres. With "visual" writing able to render in images what she has seen and experienced, Porpora accompanies us in a world populated by legendary trans women who have given life, form, scene, and screenplay to an experience in many ways closer to the spectacular or performative dimension than to that of real life, from which they were absolutely excluded.
2018,
Italian,
Porpora Marcasciano,
Original title: "AntoloGaia. Vivere sognando e non sognare di vivere: i miei anni Settanta" (AntoloGaia. Living dreaming and not dreaming of living: my seventies) by Porpora Marcasciano.
In 2016, Porpora Marcasciano published the second edition of the book with a slightly different name: "AntoloGaia. Sesso, genere e cultura degli anni '70" (AntoloGaia. Sex, gender and culture of the 70s).
Porpora Marcasciano starts with herself and, through her biography, tells us about the seventies from a special point of observation. Hers is a deviant and scandalous experience, a "continuous crush", made up of manifestations, passions, fears, dreams, and sexuality, in which she crosses many small and large characters, builds the first LGBT communities, the first "pride" and the nascent gay movement, which enters into a relationship with the revolutionary movement of those years pushing it to become aware of itself and its body. A reality in which trans, gays, lesbians, and women revolutionize not only their lives but consequently the whole world.
2015,
Italian,
Porpora Marcasciano,
Original title: "Favolose narranti: Storie di transessuali" (Fabulous storytellers: Stories of transsexuals) by Porpora Marcasciano.
'This book reconstructs through the story and the testimonies, the transsexual experience in our country, its change over time, but above all, the emergence of the transsexual phenomenon in its current complexity.
The stories of the heroines who offer us a clear image of the transsexual reality in Italy, bringing out the human, social, psychological, and political implications, are flanked by the interventions of some privileged witnesses who address the main problematic issues of the trans experience: the relationship with the gay world, with feminism and lesbianism, with services and social and work integration, with entertainment, with science and medicine. A book that dismantles prejudices, simplifications, political exploitation.'
2008,
Italian,
Porpora Marcasciano,
Original title: "Tra le rose e le viole: la storia e le storie di transessuali e travestiti " (Among roses and violets: the story and stories of transsexuals and transvestites) by Porpora Marcasciano.The book was published in 2002, and the new edition was reprinted in 2020.
Porpora Marcasciano is a historical figure of Italian transfeminism and an authentic free voice of the LGBTI community. She is a honorary President of MIT, an italian transgender rights organization, after having been its president from 2010 to 2017. Her activist commitment has always gone hand in hand with her cultural contribution to the transgender cause, the tangible proof being her books: "Tra le rose e le viole. La storia e le storie di transsexuals e travestites" (2002), "AntoloGaia. Sesso, genere e cultura degli anni '70" (2007), "Favolose Narranti. Storie di transessuali" (2008), "AntoloGaia. Vivere sognando e non sognare di vivere: i miei anni Settanta", and "L’aurora delle trans cattive. Storie, sguardi e vissuti della mia generazione transgender" (2018), and "Transformare l'organizzazione dei luoghi di detenzione. Persone transgender e gender nonconforming tra diritti e identità" (2018).
2002,
2020,
Italian,
Porpora Marcasciano,
