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.
"Lånat Kön" (Borrowed Gender) is the Swedish language version of "Mauvais genre" (Wrong Gender) by Chloé Cruchaudet.
In the early 20th century, amidst the chaos of World War I, Paul and Louise shared a deep love for one another. Their bond was unshakable until the horrors of war forced them apart. As the war escalated, Paul found himself trapped in the nightmarish reality of the trenches. Unable to bear the relentless violence, he made a desperate decision to flee — becoming a deserter, a man hunted by his country.
With the help of his wife Louise, Paul managed to escape the frontlines, seeking refuge in Paris. However, his safety came at a steep price: he was condemned to a life of hiding, forever confined to the four walls of a hotel room, living in constant fear of being caught and executed as a deserter. But Paul, driven by the desire to escape his claustrophobic existence, concocted an audacious plan: he would reinvent himself entirely.
To put an end to his constant fear and isolation, Paul decided to change his identity. He would no longer be Paul, the fugitive soldier, but rather Suzanne, Louise’s best friend. In a twist of fate, Paul embraced the feminine persona, dressing in women’s clothing and stepping into a new life. What began as a means of survival quickly evolved into something far more profound. As Suzanne, Paul discovered a new sense of freedom and began to flourish in a way he never thought possible.
2019,
Chloé Cruchaudet,
Swedish,
Original title: "Nästan i mål!: en komisk transition" (Almost There!: A Comic Transition) by Olivia Skoglund.
The comic is a unique depiction of an ongoing gender transition told with lightness, dark humor and cartoonish drawings. "Why do you want to be a girl? It sucks to be a girl!!!"
Olivia argues with herself about biology, norms, ideals of beauty and gender identity. She lies on the sofa of a psychologist and talks about her upbringing, about her everyday life as a trans woman and compulsively tells comical anecdotes about her life.
2020,
Olivia Skoglund,
Swedish,
Original title: "Att Leva Som: En Bok Om Att Leva Som Transperson Och Som Partner Till En Transperson" (Living as: a book about living as a transgender person and as a partner to a transgender person) by Helena Lindström.
"The book contains powerful stories of transgender people about their own lives as and in relation to a transgender person. It also addresses the scientific aspect of being transgender and provides some practical advice and tips for transgender people. At the end of the book, there is also a list of addresses to various organizations.
What drives some people to live as the opposite sex? There are few Swedish books about the phenomenon of transvestism, transgenderism, transgender, crossdressing or whatever you want to call it. At the cinema, cabaret, and on stage, we occasionally meet mainly gentlemen in more or less imaginative women's creations. The film's imitators of women and the female characters of the After Dark gang have both amused and worried. Common to them all, however, is the parody, the joke, and the slightly ridiculous thing about gentlemen in women's clothing."
1999,
Helena Lindström,
Swedish,
"README.txt" is the Swedish language edition of "README.txt: A Memoir" by Chelsea Manning.
"While working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq for the United States Army in 2010, Chelsea Manning disclosed more than seven hundred thousand classified military and diplomatic records that she had smuggled out of the country on the memory card of her digital camera.
In 2011, she was charged with twenty-two counts related to the unauthorized possession and distribution of classified military records, and in 2013, she was sentenced to thirty-five years in military prison. The day after her conviction, Manning declared her gender identity as a woman and began to transition, seeking hormones through the federal court system. In 2017, President Barack Obama commuted her sentence and she was released from prison."
2023,
Chelsea Manning,
Swedish,
"Nattdjur" (Nocturnal animal) is the Swedish language edition of "Las malas" (The Bad Girls) published in Argentina in 2019 by Camila Sosa Villada.
From the Argentine author Camila Sosa Villada, a book of love and affection: when we finish the last page, we want the whole world to read it too! When she arrived in the city of Córdoba to study at the university, Argentine author Camila Sosa Villada decided to go to Parque Sarmiento during the night. She was scared to death, thinking that the brutal verdict she had heard from her father could come to fruition at any moment: "One day they will knock on this door to warn me that they found you dead, thrown into a ditch." For him, this was the only possible destination for a boy who dressed as a woman.
2021,
Argentina,
Camila Sosa Villada,
Swedish,
Original title: "Kroppslinjer: Kön, transsexualism och kropp i berättelser om könskorrigering" (Body Lines: Gender, Transsexualism, and the Body in Narratives of Gender Reassignment) by Signe Bremer.
In 1972, Sweden was the first in the world to legislate on state-funded care for people in need of gender reassignment, which in an international perspective was considered radical. However, it is not until July 2013 that the requirement that a person must be an unmarried and sterile Swedish citizen to change legal gender is deleted from the law, which means the end of the forced sterilizations that were carried out on transgender people between the years 1972 and 2013.
In "Body Lines", ethnologist and gender researcher Signe Bremer describes and analyses some of the concrete consequences that the old gender recognition law had in the lives of individuals. Cultural conditions that also concern contemporary experiences of gender reassignment are problematized and questions about bodily integrity are scrutinized. By closely reading stories about undergoing gender reassignment surgery before the 2013 legislative change, Bremer examines how the category of transsexualism is embodied, made, renegotiated and lived in a gender reassignment time course.
2011,
Signe Bremer,
Swedish,
"Hej grymma värld: 101 alternativ till självmord" is the Swedish language edition of "Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks & Other Outlaws: 101 Alternatives to Teen Suicide" by Kate Bornstein.
"Celebrated transsexual trailblazer Kate Bornstein has, with more humor and spunk than any other, ushered us into a world of limitless possibility through a daring re-envisionment of the gender system as we know it.
Here, Bornstein bravely and wittily shares personal and unorthodox methods of survival in an often cruel world. A one-of-a-kind guide to staying alive outside the box, Hello, Cruel World is a much-needed unconventional approach to life for those who want to stay on the edge, but alive.
Hello, Cruel World features a catalog of 101 alternatives to suicide that range from the playful (moisturize!), to the irreverent (shatter some family values), to the highly controversial. Designed to encourage readers to give themselves permission to unleash their hearts' harmless desires, the book has only one directive: "Don't be mean." It is this guiding principle that brings its reader on a self-validating journey, which forges wholly new paths toward a resounding decision to choose life.
Tenderly intimate and unapologetically edgy, Kate Bornstein is the radical role model, the affectionate best friend, and the guiding mentor all in one.
2011,
Interview,
Kate Bornstein,
Swedish,
USA,
Original title: "Claes och Sara: Det är bara jag - jag är transvestit" (Claes and Sara: It's just me - I'm a transvestite) by Katia Wagner.
Sara Lund is a leading figure among transvestites in Scandinavia.
Until a month ago, no one except the closest family knew that she is Claes Schmidt on a daily basis: "I have been terrified of being exposed all my adult life. It's over now. I'm a transvestite and I'm not ashamed. It is incredibly nice to be responsible for that.”
The book is a report that was originally published on September 14, 2003 in Sydsvenskan.
KATIA WAGNER is an investigative journalist and author who specializes in narrative journalism with a social perspective. Among other things, she has been awarded the Golden Spade and the Wendela prize for best social reporting.
2017,
Crossdressing,
Katia Wagner,
Sara Lund,
Swedish,
Original title: "Janna: ett liv i två världar" (Janna: A life in two worlds) by Eva Lie.
The book is the story of a gender transition. In vivid images, photographer Eva Lie depicts her friend's arduous path from being Jan to becoming Janna. Identity, the struggle to be yourself and the longing for love are topics highlighted in the book.
The first photos in the book were taken in the mid-1990s when Eva and Jan lived next door in Stockholm. A strong friendship grew that made it possible for Eva Lie to follow her friend several years later in the long and complicated process of correcting her gender.
Uncensored and naked, we get to take part in a story that is ultimately about the struggle to be yourself. The pictures in the book were taken between 1998 and 2017. The book also contains texts by Eva Lie, which are mostly based on conversations with Janna and her own diary entries.
Original title: "I mitt namn: En bok om att vara trans" (In my name: A book about being trans) by Moa-Lina Olbers Croall.
The book is based on interviews with trans people – everything from young people in middle school and high school to role models such as actress and winner of the Award for Best Female Lead Role in 2015 - Saga Becker, stage poet Yolanda Bohm and head of school and former principal Lina Axelsson Kihlblom, who came out as trans in Skavlan in the autumn of 2015.
The book also contains facts about trans and tips for anyone who is transgender. It's a book for young people pondering their gender identity, but it's also aimed at those around a transgender person, such as school staff, friends, and family.
Moa-Lina Croall (born 1982) is a Swedish author and musician. Moa-Lina has written several books for children and young people and teaches at Biskops Arnö's songwriting training.
2016,
Lina Axelsson Kihlblom,
Moa-Lina Olbers Croall,
Saga Becker,
Swedish,
Yolanda Bohm,
Original title: "Att våga blomma ut: Att få leva ifred i sin egen identitet är långt ifrån en självklart" (Dare to blossom: Being allowed to live in peace in one's own identity is far from given) by Milla Johansson.
Milla lived with a male identity for 40 years. But something was wrong. At first, it was mostly a longing that she didn't understand. In her younger teens, she began to understand what it was all about and from about the age of 20-25 and up to 40 life became more and more unbearable as she forced herself to live in a male identity while wanting to live as the woman she knew herself as. The male identity that she felt society expected of her.
In the end, the whole world collapsed and she ended up in addiction and a deep quagmire of obsessions, compulsions, and anxiety. Years passed and she toiled every day to get back on her feet. It wasn't until she was admitted to the psychiatric emergency room after attempting to commit suicide that she began to turn around. Today, Milla is a much more prosperous woman who is out lecturing about her journey to help others. She does this alongside her full-time job in electromagnetism at a large company, where she is Milla to all her colleagues. Read about Milla's journey and let yourself be touched.
2019,
Milla Johansson,
Swedish,
"Jag är Jazz" is the Swedish language edition of "My name is Jazz" by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings (2015). A nice book for children with the story of Jazz Jennings.
"From the time she was two years old, Jazz knew that she had a girl's brain in a boy's body. She loved pink and dressing up as a mermaid and didn't feel like herself in boy's clothing.
This confused her family, until they took her to a doctor who said that Jazz was transgender and that she was born that way. Jazz's story is based on her real-life experience and she tells it in a simple, clear way that will be appreciated by picture book readers, their parents, and teachers."
2015,
Jazz Jennings,
Jessica Herthel,
Swedish,
"Mörkrummet" (The Dark Room) is the Swedish language edition of Susan Faludi and Patricia Piolon's bestseller "In the Darkroom".
Let me quote the 2016 article from The New York Times: ""In the Darkroom" is Faludi's rich, arresting and ultimately generous investigation of her father, who died in 2015. It is partly an inquiry into the meaning of gender, a subject Faludi, the famous feminist, sees very differently from Stefánie, who hewed to traditional notions of masculinity and femininity both as an overbearing patriarch and as a coquettish old woman."
"But in trying to understand her inscrutable father — Jewish Holocaust survivor and Leni Riefenstahl fanatic, man and woman, a sly fantasist whose tallest tales turn out to be true — Faludi transcends feminist debate. The book, which traces the decimation of her father's prosperous, assimilated Jewish clan during World War II, his improbable survival and then reinvention in Denmark, Brazil, and America, and his gender metamorphosis at 76, becomes a complex act of forgiveness."
2017,
Stefánie Faludi,
Susan Faludi,
Swedish,
Original title: "Jag kom inte ut: Jag blev mig själv" (I didn't come out: I became myself) by Ann-Christine Ruuth.
""I want to write a cohesive story that's not just about 'what did your kids say?' or how it went to be told at work. It will, of course, be an autobiography, but I want to bring in other perspectives and broaden the content.
How is it possible, after a life as a man for over 50 years, to start living as a woman without being questioned or even laughed at? What this then meant in a clerical, ecclesiastical context where such persons were not even in the imaginary world also has its place in the story."
2022,
Ann-Christine Roxberg,
Ann-Christine Ruuth,
Ester Roxberg,
Swedish,
"Sötvatten" is the Swedish language edition of "Freshwater" by Akwaeke Emezi.
I liked Gina Maya's review a lot, so let me quote her: "Transgender narrative this may be, but it's far removed from Western, U.S.-based definitions in spite of its primary location in the U.S. The story follows the young life of Ada, a Nigerian child who travels to America to study, but her whole life involves psychical interaction with the indigenous spirits who vie for control of her. Is Ada Ogbanje too?
By the end, she appears to embrace this self-conception as an offspring of the Universal Creator Ala, visualized as cosmic python – the source of the spring from which all freshwater comes from its mouth. Yet Ada for almost the novel's entirety is also the human, engaged in an uneasy relationship with otherworldly spirits who inhabit her mind, visualized in turn as a room of marble, perhaps not unlike the Kaaba of Mecca. The most powerful, possessive, and controlling of the spirits is Asughara, occasionally presented as Ada's pernicious alpha. At times, Asughara blocks out Ada from consciousness, either to protect or punish Ada."
2000,
Akwaeke Emezi,
Nigeria,
Swedish,
Original title: "Min pappa Ann-Christine" (My dad Ann-Christine)
In 2010, a 58-year-old priest and father of three Åke Roxberg came out as Ann-Christine and since then has lived as a woman. This is his daughter Esther's story of what happens when you suddenly have a father named Ann-Christine. No one was prepared for the hobby-making priest and father of three, Åke Roxberg, to change his life, least of all the family.
Ester Roxberg writes about losing a parent, who still remains in a different guise. She tries to understand and accept, hides her wrath, puts puzzles with her recollections. She remembers her childhood as the priest's youngest and wild daughter and her upbringing in Zimbabwe and Småland during a time when the secret was still hidden.
2014,
Ann-Christine Roxberg,
Ann-Christine Ruuth,
Ester Roxberg,
Swedish,
Full title: "Jag har ångrat mig" (I've changed my mind).
Today, in Sweden, you can become a woman or a man legally without having to undergo sterilization and gender reassignment. But that wasn't the case when Vanessa López was a 17-year-old boy. Therefore, she then chose to begin the treatment that would correct the body to the soul. For the choice to undergo physical gender reassignment, she has paid a heavy price.
In the book, Vanessa talks about the methods she had to resort to become the woman she is today. How, as a minor teenager, she ended up on the street where a single misstep could lead to risky situations, and how the health care system treated a teenager who was stuck in the wrong body, something that neither she nor society could accept.
2014,
Swedish,
Vanessa Lopez,
Original title: "Kommer du tycka om mig nu?" (Will you like me now?)
According to Wikipedia, Lina Axelsson Kihlblom is a Swedish politician for the Social Democratic party, the minister for schooling in Magdalena Andersson's cabinet, and the first transgender cabinet minister in Swedish history. She transitioned in 1995. During her transition, she studied and graduated with a Candidate of Law, and learned foreign languages.
She worked in Brussels with European Union law, and in the Swedish school system. After discussing her leadership of Ronna School in Södertälje on a Swedish Educational Broadcasting Company programme, she became known as the "Super-principal". She was also a member of the 2015 governmental School Commission.
2015,
Lina Axelsson Kihlblom,
Swedish,
"Mitt liv" (My Life) is the Swedish language edition of The Secrets of My Life by Caitlyn Jenner.
Caitlyn Marie Jenner is an American media personality, politician, and transgender activist. She came out as transgender in 2015, as she was previously famous as a male athlete, and a decathlon specialist in the 1970s under the identity of William Bruce Jenner, winning the gold medal at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal and improving the world record in the discipline three times consecutively from 1975 to 1976.
Jenner underwent gender reassignment surgeries performed by surgeons Gary Alter and Harrison Lee in May 2015. On June 1, 2015, she publicized her transition by appearing on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine, photographed by Annie Leibovitz, indicating on this occasion that she now wishes to be called Caitlyn. Interviewed by Diane Sawyer, she announced that she had resorted to "the final surgical operation" (vaginoplasty) in January 2017.
2017,
Caitlyn Jenner,
Swedish,
This is the Swedish language edition of "Tula: My Story" by Caroline Cossey. The full title: "Mitt liv: den gripande berättelsen av en kvinna som föddes som man" (My Life: The Gripping Story of a Woman Born a Man).
She is one of the most iconic figures in the history of the transgender movement. She is also one of my biggest inspirations.
Caroline Cossey is a British model who often worked under the name Tula, which she also used for two memoirs. She appeared in the 1981 James Bond film For Your Eyes Only. Following her appearance in the film, she was outed as transgender by the British tabloid News of the World. In 1991, she became the first trans woman to pose for Playboy.
Since then she has become one of the biggest advocates of the transgender cause. In 2017 I had the honour of interviewing her for my blog and one of my questions was related to how she was treated by society.
1992,
Caroline Cossey,
Swedish,
Tula,
