There's a Book for That: Transgender Awareness Week
Each year between November 13 – 19, people and organizations around the country participate in Transgender Awareness Week. It’s a dedicated time for educating, sharing stories, and advancing advocacy around issues of prejudice, discrimination, and violence that affect the transgender community. The week precedes Transgender Day of Remembrance on November 20th. In support, check out the following excellent fiction and nonfiction for adults and younger readers:
TRANSITIONS: A MOTHER’S JOURNEY by Élodie Durand, Evan McGorray
When Anne learns that her 19-year-old is a transgender man, she struggles to understand her son’s new identity. A new landmark in nonfiction comics, Transitions is a sympathetic, informative, and moving story of a family’s journey to acceptance. With grace and sensitivity, award-winning graphic novelist Élodie Durand (Parenthesis) captures the unique journey of well-meaning loved ones who struggle to reconcile new gender identities with their old assumptions. Deeply researched and drawn from true experience, Transitions is a must-read companion for allies and families navigating trans issues and a compassionate roadmap to acceptance.
A SHOT IN THE DARK: A NOVEL by Victoria Lee
A passionate and powerful romance featuring a transgender man and an ex-Orthodox woman who find each other through their devotion to art, and fall in love despite all odds, from bestselling author Victoria Lee
FALLING BACK IN LOVE WITH BEING HUMAN: LETTERS TO LOST SOULS by Kai Cheng Thom
Kai Cheng Thom grew up a Chinese Canadian transgender girl in a hostile world. As an activist, psychotherapist, conflict mediator, and spiritual healer, she’s always pursued the same deeply personal mission: to embrace the revolutionary belief that every human being, no matter how hateful or horrible, is intrinsically sacred. Falling Back in Love with Being Human is a transformative collection of intimate and lyrical love letters that offer a path toward compassion, forgiveness, and self-acceptance.
WE SEE EACH OTHER: A BLACK, TRANS JOURNEY THROUGH TV AND FILM by Tre’vell Anderson
A groundbreaking look at the history of transgender representation in TV and film, We See Each Other is a personal history of trans visibility since the beginning of moving images. The films and television shows that Tre’vell covers include: Midnight in The Garden of Good and Evil, Psycho, Holiday Heart, Boys Don’t Cry, America’s Next Top Model, Some Like It Hot, Survivor, Tangerine, Pose, RuPaul’s Drag Race and much more. Though there have been trans memoirs and histories, there has never been a book quite like this, nor is anyone more suited to write it than Tre’vell.
SUMMER FUN by Jeanne Thornton
Winner of the 2022 Lammy Award for Transgender Fiction
From acclaimed author Jeanne Thornton, an epic, singular look at fandom, creativity, longing, and trans identity. Gala, a young trans woman, works at a hostel in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. She is obsessed with the Get Happies, the quintessential 1960s Californian band, helmed by its resident genius, B—-. Gala needs to know: Why did the band stop making music? Why did they never release their rumored album, Summer Fun? Summer Fun is a brilliant and magical work of trans literature that marks Thornton as one of our most exciting and original novelists.
FOR YOUNGER READERS
MAN O’ WAR by Cory McCarthy
An achingly honest and frequently hilarious coming-of-age young adult novel about an Arab American trans swimmer fighting to keep their head above water in a landlocked Midwestern town.
DOOR BY DOOR: HOW SARAH MCBRIDE BECAME AMERICA’S FIRST OPENLY TRANSGENDER SENATOR by Meeg Pincus; Illustrated by Meridth McKean Gimbel
A nonfiction picture book about Delaware State Senator Sarah McBride, who dreamed of making a difference as a kid and grew up to become the highest-ranking openly transgender political official in America.
HELL FOLLOWED WITH US by Andrew Joseph White
A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year
Sixteen-year-old trans boy Benji is on the run from the cult that raised him—the fundamentalist sect that unleashed Armageddon and decimated the world’s population. Desperately, he searches for a place where the cult can’t get their hands on him, or more importantly, on the bioweapon they infected him with.
“A long, sustained scream to the various strains of anti-transgender legislation multiplying around the world like, well, a virus.” —The New York Times
For more on these and related titles visit: Transgender Awareness Week
For more about information check out: https://glaad.org/tag/trans-awareness-week
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