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: "Mark's Pathetic Life " by Scottie Melissa Jensen.
In Mark’s Pathetic Life, author Scottie Melissa Jensen delivers a raw and unflinching fictional memoir that, while told through invented narrative, resonates with the unmistakable ring of lived truth. The book peels back the layers of a deeply personal and painful journey, one rooted in gender confusion, societal expectations, loss, and the long, uneven path toward self-understanding. Though framed as fiction, it reads like the emotional record of a life marked by missed opportunities, emotional suppression, and a quiet yearning to become.
The title itself, Mark’s Pathetic Life, is deceptively simple, even self-deprecating, but the story within is anything but. Through Mark, Jensen captures the inner turmoil of someone living a life that never felt like their own. For those familiar with the author's story, particularly through her revealing 2017 interview on The Heroines blog (read here), it becomes clear that the novel reflects not just fictional events, but fragments of Jensen’s own early years before her transition. The book details Mark’s internal descent into depression, confusion, and isolation, a slow unraveling of a person out of sync with the world and with himself. What might initially be mistaken as the story of a man failing at life becomes, over time, the story of a woman buried under years of shame and denial. Jensen does not write Mark with pity, but with an almost clinical precision. His choices are flawed, his relationships strained, his desires stifled, and that’s precisely the point.
2017,
Australia,
English,
Interview,
Melissa Jensen,
Scottie Melissa Jensen,
Full title: "Mel's Fantasy Life" by Scottie Melissa Jensen.
In Mel’s Fantasy Life, author Scottie Melissa Jensen offers a powerful blend of fiction and reality, crafting a novel that does more than tell a story, it preserves history. At its heart, this novel is a tribute to one woman's courage to live authentically in a time and place that saw her existence as criminal, immoral, and mentally ill.
Though fictional in format, Mel’s Fantasy Life serves as a quietly radical act: giving voice to a real-life transgender woman who transitioned in late 1950s Australia. Jensen, herself a transgender woman and writer, explained in a 2017 interview on The Heroines blog (link here) that the book incorporates the life story of a close friend who faced unspeakable hardships during her transition more than half a century ago. The author confesses to omitting many of the disturbing details from her friend's account, not out of denial, but out of respect and a desire to protect readers from the full brutality of what trans people endured in the era. “Quite frankly, I was sickened by a lot of what happened,” Jensen said.
2016,
Australia,
English,
Interview,
Scottie Melissa Jensen,
