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Selenis Leyva and Marizol Leyva - Mi hermana

"Mi hermana: Cómo la transición de una hermana nos cambió a ambas" is the Spanish language edition of "My Sister: How One Sibling's Transition Changed Us Both", co-written by two sisters: Selenis and Marizol Leyva.

Selenis Leyva is an award-winning American actress known for her roles as Gloria Mendoza in the Netflix hit series "Orange Is the New Black" and as Gabi Cañero in the Disney Plus original Diary of a Female President. In the book, Selenis describes how Marizol's transition changed their relationship.

Marizol Leyva is a transgender model, cook, and activist from the Bronx. She has been featured in a cooking segment for Telemundo's Adictivo TV and in many publications. Together with Selenis, she was awarded the Anti-Violence Project's 2016 Courage Award and the Stonewall Community Foundation's 2016 Vision Award for inspiring visibility, advocacy, and outspoken support for the transgender community.

Full title: "Transsexuality in the Male: The Spectrum of Gender Dysphoria" by Edwin K. Koranyi.

"‘Gender dysphoria’ is a term suggested by the author to describe the spectrum of patients drawn from transsexualists, transvestites and effeminate homosexuals who are disenchanted with their male, anatomical sex: it has little clinical authenticity to justify its use and is of dubious value.

The book reviews the biological, genetic and environmental factors that have been identified in the aetiology of male transsexualism and discusses the clinical management and treatment of the condition. There is little in the way of original data to appeal to the specialist and this book would only be of value to those with a casual interest in transsexualism."

"Mother Camp: Un estudio de los transformistas femeninos en los Estados Unidos" is the Spanish language edition of "Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America" (1972) by Esther Newton.

"For two years Ester Newton did field research in the world of drag queens - homosexual men who make a living impersonating women. Newton spent time in the noisy bars, the chaotic dressing rooms, and the cheap apartments and hotels that make up the lives of drag queens, interviewing informants whose trust she had earned and compiling a lively, first-hand ethnographic account of the culture of female impersonators.

Mother Camp explores the distinctions that drag queens make among themselves as performers, the various kinds of night clubs and acts they depend on for a living, and the social organization of their work. A major part of the book deals with the symbolic geography of male and female styles, as enacted in the homosexual concept of "drag" (sex role transformation) and "camp," an important humor system cultivated by the drag queens themselves."

Full title: "Twenties and Happy: A complete guide to happiness in a little pocketbook" by Pavie Valsa.

"Twenties and Happy is a beautiful pocketbook designed to uplift and empower you so you can love and accept yourself just as you are. Every page carries a powerful message that will reconnect you back to your joy and unconditional love for self.

Author Pavie Valsa knows rejection and loneliness all too well. Having come out twice in one lifetime, once as gay and a second time as a trans woman, Pavie’s desire to show you how to love yourself at a soul level shines through every page as she lovingly guides you through simple steps to unlock the happiness and power that has lived inside all along."

Original title: "Haruna ai no raburabusōru" - はるな愛のラブラブソウル (Ai Haruna's Love Soul) by Ai Haruna (はるな愛).

This is the sixth book of Ai Haruna, mainly related to her Seoul travel. Born Kenji Onishi in 1972, she is a Japanese TV celebrity and actress, singer, businesswoman, beauty pageant queen, and transgender activist. Her childhood was a happy time but her family was poor. She has a younger brother.

At school, she was known for her musical talent, performing at different school and cultural events. When she was in junior high school, she was bullied because of her feminine manners, so she could hardly study and her grades were poor.

Full title: "Life from Both Sides Now: Living and Loving a Transgender Life Together" by Jan & Diane Delap.

"Life from Both Sides Now is the story of a couple who navigated some of the most difficult of life's issues for almost fifty-five years of marriage and maintained a loving relationship. Subtitled Living and Loving a Transgender Life Together, their story tells how together they tackled the effects of abusive childhoods and discovered how to integrate gender identity conflicts into their loving relationship.

Along the way, they raised a son, worked in various industries, and, in their church and other organizations, became advocates for diversity and acceptance of oppressed communities. They overcame tragedy and opposition and thrived. They also learned the lessons of what it means to transition between genders in today's world. They lost friends, close family members, jobs, and church relationships, but they discovered more supportive friends, accepting employers, and welcoming churches. Through it all, they remained "Velcroed at the hip together," supporting each other."

Full title: "La chanson du bac" (The baccalaureate song) by Marie-Pierre Pruvot. This is the fourth part of the 5-book series about Marie-Pierre Pruvot's life.

Bambi continues her epic and goes through the upheavals that France is experiencing. May 68 was for her not only a political shock. Awareness pushes her to set other goals for the fulfillment of her life. While the Sorbonne is upside down, Bambi feels the oppressive urge to resume her abandoned studies. She undertakes a brief tour and, without forgetting her role at the Carrousel, she devotes her free time to studying.

Back in Paris, sentimental setbacks, health problems, disappointing experiences, everything seemed to stand in the way of her efforts. How will she achieve her ends? Marie-Pierre Pruvot offers a photograph of France at the end of a reign: the threat of devaluation of the franc, the announcement of a referendum, and sounds of General de Gaulle's fall. Powerless witness to the tumult of life, her character remains compartmentalized in the frivolity of the shows.

Full title: "Translocas: The Politics of Puerto Rican Drag and Trans Performance" by Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes.

"Translocas focuses on drag and transgender performance and activism in Puerto Rico and its diaspora. Arguing for its political potential, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes explores the social and cultural disruptions caused by Latin American and Latinx “locas” (effeminate men, drag queens, transgender performers, and unruly women) and the various forms of violence to which queer individuals in Puerto Rico and the U.S. are subjected.

This interdisciplinary, auto-ethnographic, queer-of-color performance studies book explores the lives and work of contemporary performers and activists including Sylvia Rivera, Nina Flowers, Freddie Mercado, Javier Cardona, Jorge Merced, Erika Lopez, Holly Woodlawn, Monica Beverly Hillz, Lady Catiria, and Barbra Herr; television programs such as RuPaul’s Drag Race; films such as Paris Is Burning, The Salt Mines, and Mala Mala; and literary works by authors such as Mayra Santos-Febres and Manuel Ramos Otero.

Original title: "Eschimesi in Amazzonia: Dialoghi intorno alla depatologizzazione della transessualità" (Eskimos in the Amazon. Dialogues around the depathologization of transsexuality) by C. Pallarin and R. Padovano.

Like Eskimos in the Amazon, transgender and transsexual people live in a context that did not provide for them, in constant contrast with the social rules and cultural conventions of the habitat. At every latitude and at all times there have been people with a non-conforming gender, defined by various names, the "Hijras" in India, the "Sworn Virgins" in the Balkans, the "Two Spirits" of the Native Americans, the Neapolitan "Femminielli"... The realities of trans existences, freed from the stigma of pathology, can bring into play an overall redefinition of who we are, as women, men, trans, lesbians, gays, and intersexes.

Full title: "GuRu" by RuPaul.

"As someone who has deconstructed life's hilarious facade, RuPaul has broken 'the fourth wall' to expand on the concept of mind, body, and spirit. This unique perspective has allowed RuPaul to break the shackles of self-imposed limitations, but reader beware, this is a daily practice that requires diligence and touchstones to keep you walking in the sunshine of the spirit.

Once you're willing to look beyond the identity that was given to you, a hidden world of possibilities will open its doors. That is RuPaul's secret for success, not only in show business, but in all aspects of life, especially in navigating the emotional landmines that inhibit most sweet, sensitive souls. If you think this book is just about 'doing drag', you are sorely mistaken because for RuPaul, drag is merely a device to deactivate the identity-based ego and allow space for the unlimited."

"Kunō: aru seitenkansha no kokuhaku = Conundrum" (Agony: Confession of a Transsexual = Conundrum) is the Japanese language edition of "Conundrum" by Jan Morris.

I found this nice intro on Goodreads: "The great travel writer Jan Morris was born James Morris. James Morris distinguished himself in the British military, became a successful and physically daring reporter, climbed mountains, crossed deserts, and established a reputation as a historian of the British empire. He was happily married, with several children. To all appearances, he was not only a man, but a man’s man."

And here is an excerpt from a fantastic review from Transascity: "Conundrum is an autobiography, a tale about the life and transsexual journey of Jan Morris, noted British journalist and author. Born Humphrey Morris, Jan led an idyllic if somewhat lonely childhood, feeling since age 3 or 4 that she was born into the wrong body."

Full title: "Male Femaling: A grounded theory approach to cross-dressing and sex-changing" by Richard Ekins.

"The glamour of transvestite fashion is the epitome of 90s style, but the significance of cross-dressing and sex-changing goes much deeper than the annals of fashion. Ekins vividly details the innermost desires and the varied practices of males who wear the clothes of women for the pleasure it gives them (cross-dressers), or who wish to change sex and are actively going about it (sex-changers). This unique and fascinating book transforms an area of study previously dominated by clinical models to look instead at cross-dressing and sex-changing as a highly variable social process. Giving precedence to the processual and emergent nature of much cross-dressing and sex-changing phenomena, the book traces the phased femaling career path of the 'male femaler' from 'beginning femaling' through to 'consolidating femaling'."

"Bakkueonaganeun yong-gi: gwan-yongsahoeleul hyanghan teulaenseujendeo jeongchiin-ui geochim-eobsneun yeojeong" - 바꾸어나가는 용기: 관용사회를 향한 트랜스젠더 정치인의 거침없는 여정 (Courage to Change: A Transgender Politician's Unstoppable Journey to a Tolerant Society) is the Korean language edition of Aya Kamikawa's "Kaete yuku yūki - `seidōitsuseishōgai' no watashi kara" - 変えてゆく勇気－「性同一性障害」の私から (The Courage to Change: From Me with Gender Identity Disorder).

According to Wikipedia, Aya Kamikawa, born in 1968, is a Japanese politician and transgender activist, and member of the Setagaya Ward Assembly in Tokyo (5th term). She is the most successful transgender politician in Japan.

Full title: "Hormones and Me: The complete answer book for the TV or TS who contemplates taking female hormones" by Sally Anne Douglas. The book is the first Do-It-Yourself guide on feminization hormones.

In "Doctors Who?: Radical lessons from the history of DIY transition" Jules Gill-Peterson writes: "In a 1971 column for the newsletter New Trends, Sally Ann Douglas, a trans woman embedded in an especially well-connected social network, remarked that “everywhere I go these days, I bump into gals who seem to be getting hormones from somewhere” - somewhere other than a doctor’s office, that is. Calling it a trend, she wrote that “most of them seem to be pursuing a ‘do-it-yourself’ program of experimentation with various formulations” of estrogen on the market. Trans women often wrote into such newsletters looking for advice on this subject, but Douglas, like many of her peers, dismissed DIY approaches as reflecting a lack of courage - being too “shy” to go to a doctor - rather than problems of finances and gatekeeping."

Original title: "Kobieta w męskim ciele" (A woman in a man's body) by Wanda Falkowska.

The author presents the story of Elżbieta Lubarczyk (born Eligiusz in the mid-1940s in Lower Silesia in Polanf), one of the first transgender women to have changed their gender in Poland. She did it in the late 70s of the twentieth century.

Her story can be easily associated with Lili Elbe. "Eligius" and "Einar" are artists and painters. They have relationships with women. The former with two, with whom he marries and has two children - in this case, it distinguishes him from Einar. In addition, Eligiusz's wives are not painters. Both abandon painting when they are seriously considering turning into women.

Full title: "To Thine Own Self be True: The Sea is a Jealous Mistress" by Denise Heather TilIing.

According to this review: "Denise Tilling writes of her transition from boyhood in wartime England to womanhood in the 1990s New Zealand. It is a story of courage and determination: initially the determination to avoid cross-gendered feelings at almost any cost, and, finally, the determination to live openly as a woman. A casual reader, who by-passed this book because of its uninviting cover and title, would certainly be missing out. Going beyond the cover and title, the reader encounters a story told with sensitivity, warmth and humour. In an age of ever-increasing public interest in transsexuality, this is perhaps the first transsexual autobiography to be published in New Zealand."

"Denise, born David, entertains the reader with David's endless efforts to avoid confronting his gender conflict from heavy drinking, through desperate attempts at marriage, and repeated escapes to sea. Despite being captivated by Denise's warmth and humour, one is frequently reminded of the deeper emotions at play. In re-calling her story, the author skilfully interweaves the jovial, playful aspects of her personality with intensely painful recollections: memories of fear, doubt and the deep loneliness which accompanies self-denial. As Denise's hormone treatment started to take visible effect, she knew that her life as a British Ship's Officer - one of the blokes, always in for a few drinks and a laugh - was about to shatter. Ultimately, her decision to undergo gender transition and settle in New Zealand was spurred on by a tragedy. During one of David's earlier shipping voyages, he had become friends with a Danish radio officer who, like David himself, secretly cross-dressed. David discovered their similarity too late..."

Available via bookdepository.com

and proquest.com

Original title: "Vouloir être: transsexuelle, femme et mère" (Wanting to be: transsexual, woman and mother) by Marie-Josée Enard, afterword by Catherine Rihoit.

This incredible story raises many questions. The truth is that the child is hermaphrodite: the sex of angels. But angels, we love them in heaven, that is to say dead, they have absolutely no place here below. Marie-Josée dreams with such force that it becomes real. And yet she has to wake up. And when she wakes up, she's in the middle of a nightmare.

As in the past, when the other children refused to play with her and called her a “chick”, they point the finger at her, they don't give her a job. They reproach her for having prostituted herself, and they push her to return to prostitution. Because if there is one thing that disturbs more than monsters, it is a monster who says he is like you and me.

Full title: "Trans Britain: Our Journey from the Shadows" by Christine Burns.

"Over the last five years, transgender people have seemed to burst into the public eye: Time declared 2014 a 'trans tipping point', while American Vogue named 2015 'the year of trans visibility'. From our television screens to the ballot box, transgender people have suddenly become part of the zeitgeist. This apparently overnight emergence, though, is just the latest stage in a long and varied history.

The renown of Paris Lees and Hari Nef has its roots in the efforts of those who struggled for equality before them, but were met with indifference - and often outright hostility - from mainstream society. Trans Britain chronicles this journey in the words of those who were there to witness a marginalised community grow into the visible phenomenon we recognise today: activists, film-makers, broadcasters, parents, an actress, a rock musician and a priest, among many others. Here is everything you always wanted to know about the background of the trans community, but never knew how to ask."

Original title: "Grenzgänge: Sozialismus, aus der Froschperspektive betrachtet auch. Aus dem Leben eines real existierenden Taugenichts" (Crossing borders: Socialism, seen from the frog's perspective. From the life of a real existing good-for-nothing) by Judith Hodosi.

The title and subtitle describe the content of the book quite accurately. Embedded in a grotesquely disturbing post-reunification frame, the first-person narrator reports her life in the German Democratic Republic, seen from below. She clashes against her father, against her own gender, but most strongly against the narrow ideological boundaries of the GDR reality. And so she made early acquaintance with the omnipresent Stasi and faced juvenile detention officers and police. She succeeds in rising as a rock musician and changing gender, but always remains on the fringes of society, close to the crash. Even after the flight to the West and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, life remains turbulent.

Full title: "Bodyshock: Truth About Changing Sex" by Liz Hodgkinson.

"Transsexualism is not a new phenomenon: male-to-female sex changes are mentioned in the literature of Ancient Greece and Rome. But only in the last forty years or so has medical science been able to achieve what those who feel they have been 'born into the wrong body regard as the only thing that will give them peace of mind, a full surgical sex change. In this investigation into the who, how and why of sex changes, Liz Hodgkinson tells the stories of some fascinating cases, some famous, others entirely unpublicized.

Gl George (later Christine) Jorgensen made headlines in the early fifties with his, the first fully documented operation to remove male sex organs and replace them with some approximation of female ones. Other household names include April Ashley, Jan Morris, Renée Richards and Adèle Anderson of Fascinating Aida' (the headlining cases have all been male-to-female changes: female-to-male subjects have normally shunned publicity, but some intriguing cases are here brought to light)."

Original title: "Arinomama no watashi" ありのままの私 (Who I am) by Ayumu Yasutomi 安冨歩..

Known for her many books, including "The Nuclear Power Plant Crisis and the University of Tokyo Talk," "Who Killed the Little Prince: The Trap of Moral Harassment," and "The Art of Living," Ayumu Yasutomi has become a hot topic for appearing on TV as a professor at the University of Tokyo dressed as a woman.

Professor Yasutomi started wearing women's clothes after successfully dieting and losing weight. And she realized that wearing women's clothes gives her an extraordinary sense of security. This is a book that describes the history of the process of dressing as a woman, and what she felt and thought about the process. What she learned from that experience was the discovery that "pretending to be not yourself" is the "root of all violence"!

Full title: "Second Skins" by Jay Prosser.

"Do we need bodies for sex? Is gender in the head or in the body? In Second Skins Jay Prosser reveals the powerful drive that leads men and women literally to shed their skins and--in flesh and head--to cross the boundary of sex. Telling their story is not merely an act that comes after the fact, it's a force of its own that makes it impossible to forget that stories of identity inhabit autobiographical bodies.

In this stunning first extensive study of transsexual autobiography, Jay Prosser examines the exchanges between body and narrative that constitute the phenomenon of transsexuality. Showing how transsexuality's somatic transitions are spurred and enabled by the formal transitions of narrative, Prosser uncovers a narrative tradition for transsexual bodies."

"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".

Full title: "Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People" by Viviane Namaste.

"Invisible Lives is the first scholarly study of transgendered people - cross-dressers, drag queens and transsexuals - and their everyday lives. Through combined theoretical and empirical study, Viviane K. Namaste argues that transgendered people are not so much produced by medicine or psychiatry as they are erased, or made invisible, in a variety of institutional and cultural settings.

Namaste begins her work by analyzing two theoretical perspectives on transgendered people - queer theory and the social sciences - displaying how neither of these has adequately addressed the issues most relevant to sex change: everything from employment to health care to identity papers."

Original title: "Charlotte Charlaque. Transfrau, Laienschauspielerin. Königin der Brooklyn Heights Promenade" (Charlotte Charlaque: Trans woman, amateur actress. Queen of Brooklyn Heights Promenade) by Raimund Wolfert.

The life of the German-American Charlotte Charlaque (1892–1963) crosses the Atlantic several times – from Schönberg to Berlin, San Francisco and Prague to New York. As a Jew, Charlaque left Nazi Germany in 1934. Eight years later, she made the life-saving "leap" to the USA. In New York, she became a dazzling celebrity as the uncrowned queen of the Brooklyn Heights waterfront. She now liked to call herself Charlotte von Curtius. But what not even her closest friends knew was that her new surname was an allusion to her old birth name. Because when Charlotte Charlaque was born, her parents assumed she was a boy and gave her the name Curt ... And she was not the only one.

Full title: "At Home On The Stroll: My Twenty Years As A Prostitute in Canada" by Alexandra Highcrest.

"“I’m conservative and I’m old fashioned,” says Alexandra Highcrest, male-to-female transsexual and former prostitute, in a recent interview with Quill & Quire. It’s true, and this conservatism is both the strength and the weakness of the Toronto activist and journalist’s autobiography."

"But Highcrest’s rigid insistence on a purely practical approach to the issue – “Prostitution is a job, not a lifestyle” – is ultimately her book’s downfall. She’s hostile and dismissive towards all attempts to analyze the psychology of prostitution, or to link public hostility and ignorance about the industry to larger issues of sexism and sexual repression."

Original title: "Pedagogias das Travestilidades" (Pedagogies of The Travestilities) by Maria Clara Araújo dos Passos.

In Pedagogies of The Travestilities, the educator and activist Maria Clara Araújo dos Passos records the struggle of the Movement of Transvestites and Transsexual Women in Brazil, to ensure that the State perceives this community as dignified and guarantees social and political rights.

In order to do so, the author documents the knowledge that has been produced, since 1979 until the present day, by this collective, from its beginning, in the streets, until its arrival in the privileged space of the academy.

Full title: "Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America" by Esther Newton.

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Selenis Leyva and Marizol Leyva - Mi hermana

Edwin K. Koranyi - Transsexuality in the Male: The Spectrum of...

Esther Newton - Mother Camp: Un estudio de los transformistas...

Pavie Valsa - Twenties and Happy: A complete guide to happiness...

Ai Haruna - Haruna ai no raburabusōru

Jan & Diane Delap - Life from Both Sides Now: Living and...

Marie-Pierre Pruvot - La chanson du bac

Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes - Translocas: The Politics of...

C. Pallarin & R. Padovano - Eschimesi in Amazzonia

RuPaul - GuRu

Jan Morris - Kunō: aru seitenkansha no kokuhaku

Richard Ekins - Male Femaling

Aya Kamikawa - Bakkueonaganeun yong-gi

Sally Anne Douglas - Hormones and Me: The complete answer...

Wanda Falkowska - Kobieta w męskim ciele

Denise TilIing - To Thine Own Self be True: The Sea is a Jealous...

Marie-Josée Enard - Vouloir être: transsexuelle, femme et mère

Christine Burns - Trans Britain: Our Journey from the Shadows

Judith Hodosi - Grenzgänge: Sozialismus, aus der...

Liz Hodgkinson - Bodyshock: Truth About Changing Sex

Ayumu Yasutomi - Arinomama no watashi

Jay Prosser - Second Skins

Amanda Lear - La persistencia de la memoria

Viviane Namaste - Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and...

Raimund Wolfert - Charlotte Charlaque: Transfrau...

Alexandra Highcrest - At Home On The Stroll: My Twenty Years...

Maria Clara Araújo dos Passos - Pedagogias das Travestilidades

Esther Newton - Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America

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