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: "Trans*" by ÉPICÈNE.
The book deconstructs stereotypes related to transgender people by presenting 46 portraits of trans* people from all over Switzerland.
The portraits consist of a photograph taken by Noura Gauper and an interview conducted in one of the three main national languages by a professional journalist. They concern 23 women and 23 men, 20 in French-speaking Switzerland, 20 in German-speaking Switzerland and 6 in Ticino.
In concrete terms, our goal is to fight against discrimination and exclusion of transgender people at the social level. Currently, the suicide rate among trans* people is 10 times higher than that of the cisgender population and unemployment is 6 times higher. This work, which lasted more than two years, shows that trans* people, if they can be themselves, are perfectly integrated people, no different from the rest of the population.
2020,
ÉPICÈNE,
French,
Switzerland,
Original title: "Quand Un Suisse Change De Sexe" (When a Swiss man changes sex) by Laure Viel.
""So you think you're a woman?" Dr. Beaugrand's question had destabilized Laurent V. A lump in his throat prevented him from uttering the slightest hint of an answer. Dressed in velvet trousers and a navy sweater, Laurent was acutely aware that he did not look like the one he had always been convinced he was.
Yet he would never forget that day, the first in a journey that would make him, he hoped, a singular being, the only Parisian journalist who had been a soldier in the Swiss army. A journey that would also take him to faraway lands. Laure Viel's story is about transsexuality without taboos or pathos. There is no glitter in this journey either, but a quest for oneself, where introspection does not forbid self-mockery.
2020,
French,
Laure Viel,
Switzerland,
Original title: "Die weisse Feder. Hat die Seele ein Geschlecht?" (The white feather. Does the soul have a gender?) by Nadia Brönimann.
Even as a child, Christian knew that he was different from the others – a stranger in his own body. But he kept running away from himself, he was a stick boy on the Côte d'Azur, a revue dancer in Berlin and a drag queen in the Basel gay scene. Until he is finished and realizes that he has to face the lie of his life: he is not a man, he is a woman in the body of a man, he is Nadia.
A lengthy odyssey begins...
Nadia Brönimann, born in 1969 in Memmingen (Allgäu), grew up as Christian Brönimann in Appenzell. In the summer of 1998, she underwent gender reassignment surgery. With lectures in schools and television appearances, she makes the phenomenon of transsexuality public and promotes understanding for those affected. Nadia Brönimann lives in Zurich. She is the author of two biography books: "Die weisse Feder. Hat die Seele ein Geschlecht?" (The white feather. Does the soul have a gender?) and "Seelentanz: Ich folge meinem Weg" (Soul dance: I follow my path), published in 2001 and 2006 respectively.
2001,
German,
Nadia Brönimann,
Switzerland,
Original title: "Ich habe viel geliebt: Das rastlose Leben einer transsexuellen Tänzerin" (I've Loved Much: The Restless Life of a Transsexual Dancer) by Verena Mühlberger and Jaquelin G.
According to Anne, the autobiography was written very competently and sensitively by the publicist Verena Mühlberger on the basis of lengthy conversations with Jaquelin.
Jaquelin was born as a boy in Venezuela. She has worked most of her life in nightclubs, first in her home country, then later in Spain, Italy, and finally in Switzerland. Due to her background and circumstances, she had no choice but to live as a barmaid and prostitute in order to be a woman.
1999,
German,
Jaquelin G,
Switzerland,
Venezuela,
Verena Mühlberger,
Original title: "Seelentanz: Ich folge meinem Weg" (Soul dance: I follow my path) by Nadia Brönimann & Alfred Wüger.
'Does the soul have a gender?' asks Nadia Brönimann in the subtitle of her debut work 'Die weisse Feder'. Now she presents a second book entitled 'Soul Dance – I Follow My Way' – and answers the question from the first book: 'No, the soul is sexless.' She, the 'converted', knows from her own bitter experience what she is talking about. But perhaps her soul has two sides: a glamorous, glittering, happy, life-affirming one – and a dark, fearful, abysmally sad and lonely one.
Nadia Brönimann became probably the most famous transsexual in Switzerland through her first book, in which the author and journalist Daniel J. Schüz describes her life in detail up to the dozen painful and sometimes failed sex change operations. Countless media appearances and a harrowing TV documentary moved the country.
2006,
Alfred Wüger,
German,
Nadia Brönimann,
Switzerland,
Original title: "Blogtagebuch 2010: Das zweite Lebensjahr einer transsexuellen Frau" (Blog Diary 2010: The Second Year of a Transsexual Woman's Life)
"Diana - a transsexual woman - has been officially living as a woman since the beginning of 2009. In a blog under the name "T-Girl Diana" she describes the process of her gender reassignment in a diary.
The blog became a testimony on the subject of transsexuality, which takes the reader into a world that normally remains hidden. It shows the path of a transsexual woman who, despite all adversities and dangers, goes her own way and does not let anything stop her from her self-development.
Diana goes about explaining her thoughts and feelings in an unusually open way and does not leave out even the most intimate topics. The book tells the reader one thing above all: "Nothing is impossible, to those who dare to do the impossible" But this insight into the life of a transsexual woman should also understand people who have not chosen to be who they are. They're just trying to somehow come to terms with their transsexuality."
2011,
German,
Switzerland,
T-Girl Diana,
Original title: "Oh Mann, Frau Meier: Alles andere als eine transnormale Geschichte" (Oh Man, Ms. Meier: Anything but a transnormal story)
Claudia Sabine Meier, was born in Bern as "Andreas Heribert", a proud male descendant and heir of the parents "Anni and Heribert". For more than 40 years, wanting to prove the man, to meet the expectations of the family and the environment, the author knew from early childhood that the male role model assigned to her did not suit her.
This led to a decades-long double life as "Claudia", the woman she always felt she was. She did military service and did everything that went with it to be considered "male", married, fathered a daughter and dutifully took over her parents' business. With healthy self-irony, humor and depth, she writes about her eventful life and her constant struggle for an easier path for "trans" people.
2018,
Claudia Sabine Meier,
German,
Switzerland,
