Books shelved under “Transgender”

You know, I don’t really think I ever asked myself this question after the one sleepless Sunday night I spent wrestling with it. I jest, of course. Kind of. I think for me my understanding of my transness was sneaky. It kind of grew in my subconscious for years until it burst forth, fully formed, and once I accepted it, everything else happened all at once. Nevertheless, Am I Trans Enough: How to Overcome Your…

This was the October selection for the Rad Roopa Book Club, a small, virtual gathering of educators founded by the very rad Roopa from Twitter! I suggested this book last year and was delighted to get to read it for book club. Fairest is a fair memoir. Meredith Talusan challenges us to dislike her, to judge her, to question her choices, and I really liked that.

Talusan was born in the Phillipines. Assigned male at…

Stakes that are neither too high nor too low. Facing discrimination and prejudice as a refugee who belongs to an ethnic minority in their new city. Dealing with the complicated history of one’s culture, one’s past. Pushing back against for-profit healthcare. These are all powerful elements in The Bruising of Qilwa by Naseem Jamnia. Thanks to NetGalley and Tachyon Publications for the eARC!

Although novella-length, this book brims with plot. Firuz, a Sassanian refugee, joins…

The multiverse is a weird and wonderful concept. It’s actually several concepts stacked on top of one another wearing a trenchcoat. In One Verse Multi, Sander Santiago plays with some of those concepts to create a universe-hopping mystery involving polyamorous love interests, evil corporate aspirations, and dramatic confrontations. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started this book, and I don’t think I could have predicted what I got. I wish I had…

Sometimes a book sneaks up on you, so viciously quiet you don’t realize how much it has affected you until you reach the final pages. Light from Uncommon Stars starts strange before turning decidedly peculiar, yet somewhere along the way, it transubstantiates into something … pure. I don’t know how Ryka Aoki does it, but somehow, this book satisfied me more than any book in recent memory.

Shizuka Satomi is a renowned violin teacher, though…

In my review of The Transgender Issue, I said I was more interested in manifestos than memoirs when it comes to trans people. This remains the case. However, as Redefining Realness demonstrates, memoirs can still be powerful and useful. I read this as part of the same book club that got me reading White Tears/Brown Scars. I was initially apprehensive to be one of the few if only transfeminine people in a group…

This is a book I have been waiting for. I don’t just mean in the sense that I pre-ordered it (though I did); I mean that I am very much interested in books about trans liberation as opposed to personal memoirs. I know Shon Faye’s The Transgender Issue is far from the first book on this subject. However, it is current and cogent. In her prologue, Faye makes the case clearly:

The demand for true

…

Ordinarily, a book with this kind of ending angers me, but I think I was already angry with The Subtweet—in a good way. Ironically it took a Scot recommending me, a Canadian, this book by fellow Canadian author Vivek Shraya. So it goes. I was asking for recommendations for novels by trans authors that aren’t about “trans stuff.” As much as I love reading about trans experiences from trans authors, I believe it is…

This book was recommended to me by a comment on my Goodreads Review of For Today I Am A Boy. As I said in that review, we need more trans people telling trans stories. Confessions of the Fox is exactly that: author Jordy Rosenberg is a trans man, the frame story protagonist is a trans man, and the protagonist of the inner story is a trans man. More incredibly, however, this book does something …

Although Pet crossed my book radar a few times, I probably wouldn’t have picked it up if it hadn’t been recommended to me by my friend Emeline. The descriptions of the book, despite its promise of a trans main character, didn’t leave me with the impression that it would be my jam. Indeed, for the first third or so, that was my initial conclusion: that I could understand Pet’s appeal for other readers, but…

One of my goals last year was, and for this year remains, to read more works by transgender authors, particularly about trans issues. I have been following Julia Serano on Twitter for a while now, so during my latest shopping expedition I decided to pick up Whipping Girl, which has also been on my radar for a while. Serano is not only a trans woman but also a molecular biologist, providing her with insights…

I’ll give this book credit for getting me out of my reading slump that I fell into at the beginning of the year. I read Felix Ever After in a day! Kacen Callender made me feel very invested in Felix’s story. Though I wouldn’t call this a “light” YA read by any stretch of the imagination, there is a lot in here that is humourous to balance out the more serious parts. In particular, Callender…

This was one of those books where I was afraid it would not live up to the hype, because people I follow on Twitter have not been able to stop talking about it. Fortunately, Cemetery Boys lived up to the hype—perhaps even exceeded it in some ways—and I went from being apprehensive about possibly not liking such a popular book to being really happy I took this chance. It’s great as a trans story, great…

Every once in a while, I stop and just think about how everyone else around me is totally engrossed in their own life. I don’t mean in an egotistical sense. I mean … just as I am wrapped up in living my life, with my own beliefs and struggles, my moments to myself and my moments given to others … everyone else goes through all this too! Except they aren’t me, or I’m not them,…

This is an own-voices review for being a transgender woman, but I am white and do not share the protagonist’s ethnicity. For Today I Am A Boy left me unsettled in ways I didn’t expect, and not entirely in the good kind of unsettled you want from some literature. I’m going to be harsh here because it’s how I feel, having read the book, but I would like to disclaim up front that even though…

Let me tell you how I thought this review would go. As I began reading The House of Styx (which I received free via NetGalley and publisher Solaris), I thought that I would enjoy this book, for sure. Derek Künsken had, after all, reignited the faint embers of my love for posthumanism with The Quantum Magician and then fanned those flames with a dose of time travel in The Quantum Garden. However, I also…

You’d think the pandemic would mean I have more time to read rather than less, right? But for some reason my reading speed has decreased rather than increased. I’m making more of a comeback, but it still took me a long time to read and review Non-Binary Lives: An Anthology of Intersecting Identities. That shouldn’t reflect on the quality of this book. Similarly, I’m going to explain later that I’m kind of over these…

Since I wrote this review, Knox has come out as nonbinary! I have updated their pronouns accordingly throughout, but please be aware that the review itself largely discusses Knox’s perspective as they share it when this book was written, i.e., as an ally rather than as a trans person themselves.

If I had read this book last year shortly after it came out, I would be writing this review from the position of a cisgender…

What's better than a magical mystery? A magical mystery featuring baked goods, you say? Sign me up! Baker Thief is a conventions-busting, inclusive, fun alternate world urban fantasy novel with mysteries and thrills and no small amount of underdogs taking on the corrupt underbelly of corporations.

It is, in short, a good read.

Adèle is a detective recently relocated and transferred to a new unit. Shortly after moving in, a masked, purple-haired thief named Claire…

So I guess this is my coming out review? I actually have a blog post for that, but of course, some of my transition experiences thus far will be interspersed throughout this review.

Hello, world. I’m Kara now. (That’s pronounced Car-uh.) I’m a trans woman. My pronouns are she/her.

To My Trans Sisters seemed like a perfect book to read and then review on the day I came out online. It’s a collection…