Transgender and transsexual fiction
Encyclopedia
This is a list of fictional books featuring transgender
persons in either a peripheral or central role.
published in 1992 is a prizewinning novel about Mary Ward, who at the age of six decides she should be a boy. The novel concerns her struggle to change gender.
in which a man and a woman who develop sexual organs of the opposite sex.
tells the story of the life of a butch
named Jess Goldberg and the trials and tribulations she faces growing up in the pre-Stonewall
era. Published in 1993, the novel became an underground hit before surfacing into mainstream literature. It is generally regarded as a groundbreaking work on the subject of gender
and is one of the best known pieces of LGBT literature
. While the focus of the novel is on butch and femme
culture during the late 1960s, the novel also deals with trans
issues such as women taking testosterone to pass as men.
. It tells of the transwoman Patrick "Pussy" Braden's escape from the fictional Irish town of Tyreelin and a drunk foster mother, to find herself and the biological mother who gave her away.
-winning novel by Jeffrey Eugenides
published in 2002. Narrator and protagonist Cal Stephanides (initially called "Callie") is an intersex
ed man of Greek descent with a condition known as 5-alpha-reductase deficiency
, which causes him to have certain feminine traits.
. In this installment, Price investigates the assault of a post-operative transsexual ex-convict
, Dr. Lynn Ingram.
, 2004), a young adult novel, is the story of male-to-female transsexual Luna (born Liam) O'Neill as told through the perspective of her sister, Regan. Peters has stated in an interview that she decided to tell the story of Luna through her sister because she is not transsexual herself, and she felt the authenticity of the story would be compromised. The novel has won several awards and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award
in the Children’s/Young Adult category.
, 2005) is a coming of age
story of twelve-year-old Berry, a boy who seeks out antiandrogen
s in order to suppress his testosterone
and prevent voice change from affecting his ability to sing in the choir
. The novel won the Lambda Literary Award
in the Transgender/GenderQueer category.
, 2006) is a mystery, part of a serial featuring Juliet Appelbaum, a stay-at-home mom
and former public defender
. In this installment, Appelbaum is approached by Heavenly, a transsexual woman who asks her to investigate the murder
of her sister, Violetta, a prostitute
and drug addict.
, 2007) is a young adult novel that describes the coming out story of a transgendered teenage boy named Grady. The title refers to the fact that parrotfish
can change their gender.
n novel released May 4, 2011 The story is set in the year 2404 A.D. in a time where technology and society have relapsed and a corrupt and repressive theocracy
known as the Dominion of Divinity rules most of what was once the United States
. The main protagonist is a male to female transgender teenager by the name of Emily La Rouche who has been living in stealth since the age of six, but is unwittingly forced into an arranged marriage
to the son of her land lord when she turns sixteen years old. Much of the story is a backdrop for the American culture war
s and incorporates issues such as separation of church and state
, GLBT rights, unreasonable search and seizure, invasion of privacy, as well as enhanced interrogation techniques
.
from the American Library Association in 2011.
Transgender and transsexual writers
Transgender
Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....
persons in either a peripheral or central role.
Sacred Country
Sacred Country by Rose TremainRose Tremain
Rose Tremain CBE is an English author.-Life:Rose Tremain was born Rosemary Jane Thomson on August 2, 1943 in London and attended Francis Holland School then Crofton Grange School from 1954 to 1961; the Sorbonne from 1961–1962; and graduated from the University of East Anglia in 1965 where she then...
published in 1992 is a prizewinning novel about Mary Ward, who at the age of six decides she should be a boy. The novel concerns her struggle to change gender.
Cock and Bull
Cock and Bull is a 1992 novel by Will SelfWill Self
William Woodard "Will" Self is an English novelist and short story writer. His fictional style is known for being satirical, grotesque, and fantastical. He is a prolific commentator on contemporary British life, with regular appearances on Newsnight and Question Time...
in which a man and a woman who develop sexual organs of the opposite sex.
Stone Butch Blues
Stone Butch Blues (1993) by Leslie FeinbergLeslie Feinberg
Leslie Feinberg is a transgender queer and communist activist, speaker, and author. Feinberg's first novel Stone Butch Blues is widely considered a groundbreaking work about gender.- Career :...
tells the story of the life of a butch
Butch and femme
Butch and femme are LGBT terms describing respectively, masculine and feminine traits, behavior, style, expression, self-perception and so on. They are often used in the lesbian, bisexual and gay subcultures...
named Jess Goldberg and the trials and tribulations she faces growing up in the pre-Stonewall
Stonewall riots
The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City...
era. Published in 1993, the novel became an underground hit before surfacing into mainstream literature. It is generally regarded as a groundbreaking work on the subject of gender
Gender
Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...
and is one of the best known pieces of LGBT literature
LGBT literature
Gay literature is a collective term for literature produced by or for the LGBT community, or which involves characters, plot lines or themes portraying male homosexual behavior.-Subgenres:...
. While the focus of the novel is on butch and femme
Butch and femme
Butch and femme are LGBT terms describing respectively, masculine and feminine traits, behavior, style, expression, self-perception and so on. They are often used in the lesbian, bisexual and gay subcultures...
culture during the late 1960s, the novel also deals with trans
Transgender
Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....
issues such as women taking testosterone to pass as men.
Breakfast on Pluto
Breakfast on Pluto (1998) is a Booker prize shortlisted novel by Patrick McCabePatrick McCabe
Patrick McCabe is an Irish novelist, known for his mostly dark and violent novels set in contemporary, often small-town, Ireland. His books include The Butcher Boy and Breakfast on Pluto , both shortlisted for the Booker Prize...
. It tells of the transwoman Patrick "Pussy" Braden's escape from the fictional Irish town of Tyreelin and a drunk foster mother, to find herself and the biological mother who gave her away.
Middlesex
Middlesex is a bestselling Pulitzer PrizePulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
-winning novel by Jeffrey Eugenides
Jeffrey Eugenides
Jeffrey Kent Eugenides is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and short story writer. Eugenides is most known for his first two novels, The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex . His novel The Marriage Plot was published in October, 2011.-Life and career:Eugenides was born in Detroit, Michigan,...
published in 2002. Narrator and protagonist Cal Stephanides (initially called "Callie") is an intersex
Intersex
Intersex, in humans and other animals, is the presence of intermediate or atypical combinations of physical features that usually distinguish female from male...
ed man of Greek descent with a condition known as 5-alpha-reductase deficiency
5-alpha-reductase deficiency
5-Alpha-reductase deficiency is an autosomal recessive intersex condition caused by a mutation of the 5-alpha reductase type 2 gene.-Normal function:...
, which causes him to have certain feminine traits.
Inside Out: A Mystery
Inside Out: A Mystery (ISBN 978-0-31-228582-1, Elise Title, 2003) is a mystery, part of a serial featuring Natalie Price, a corrections officer operating in BostonBoston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
. In this installment, Price investigates the assault of a post-operative transsexual ex-convict
Convict
A convict is "a person found guilty of a crime and sentenced by a court" or "a person serving a sentence in prison", sometimes referred to in slang as simply a "con". Convicts are often called prisoners or inmates. Persons convicted and sentenced to non-custodial sentences often are not termed...
, Dr. Lynn Ingram.
Luna
Luna (ISBN 978-0-31-673369-4, Julie Anne PetersJulie Anne Peters
-Personal life:Julie Anne Peters was born in Jamestown, New York, on 16 January 1952. When she was five, her family moved to the Denver suburbs in Colorado. Her parents divorced when she was in high school...
, 2004), a young adult novel, is the story of male-to-female transsexual Luna (born Liam) O'Neill as told through the perspective of her sister, Regan. Peters has stated in an interview that she decided to tell the story of Luna through her sister because she is not transsexual herself, and she felt the authenticity of the story would be compromised. The novel has won several awards and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award
Lambda Literary Award
Lambda Literary Awards are awarded yearly by the US-based Lambda Literary Foundation to published works which celebrate or explore LGBT themes. Categories include Humor, Romance and Biography. To qualify, a book must have been published in the United States in the year current to the award...
in the Children’s/Young Adult category.
Choir Boy
Choir Boy (ISBN 978-1-93-236081-3, Charlie AndersCharlie Anders
Charlie Jane Anders is an American transgender fiction author and commentator.She has written several books and is the publisher of other magazine, the "magazine of pop culture and politics for the new outcasts", she was winner of a 2005 Lambda Literary Award and a 2009 Emperor Norton Award...
, 2005) is a coming of age
Coming of age
Coming of age is a young person's transition from childhood to adulthood. The age at which this transition takes place varies in society, as does the nature of the transition. It can be a simple legal convention or can be part of a ritual, as practiced by many societies...
story of twelve-year-old Berry, a boy who seeks out antiandrogen
Antiandrogen
Antiandrogens, or androgen antagonists, first discovered in the 1960s, prevent androgens from expressing their biological effects on responsive tissues. Antiandrogens alter the androgen pathway by blocking the appropriate receptors, competing for binding sites on the cell's surface, or affecting...
s in order to suppress his testosterone
Testosterone
Testosterone is a steroid hormone from the androgen group and is found in mammals, reptiles, birds, and other vertebrates. In mammals, testosterone is primarily secreted in the testes of males and the ovaries of females, although small amounts are also secreted by the adrenal glands...
and prevent voice change from affecting his ability to sing in the choir
Choir
A choir, chorale or chorus is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform.A body of singers who perform together as a group is called a choir or chorus...
. The novel won the Lambda Literary Award
Lambda Literary Award
Lambda Literary Awards are awarded yearly by the US-based Lambda Literary Foundation to published works which celebrate or explore LGBT themes. Categories include Humor, Romance and Biography. To qualify, a book must have been published in the United States in the year current to the award...
in the Transgender/GenderQueer category.
Bye-Bye, Black Sheep: A Mommy-track Mystery
Bye-Bye, Black Sheep: A Mommy-track Mystery (ISBN 978-0-42-521018-5, Ayelet WaldmanAyelet Waldman
Ayelet Waldman is a novelist and essayist who was formerly a lawyer. She is noted for her self-revelatory essays, and for her writing about the changing expectations of motherhood...
, 2006) is a mystery, part of a serial featuring Juliet Appelbaum, a stay-at-home mom
Homemaker
Homemaking is a mainly American term for the management of a home, otherwise known as housework, housekeeping or household management...
and former public defender
Public defender
The term public defender is primarily used to refer to a criminal defense lawyer appointed to represent people charged with a crime but who cannot afford to hire an attorney in the United States and Brazil. The term is also applied to some ombudsman offices, for example in Jamaica, and is one way...
. In this installment, Appelbaum is approached by Heavenly, a transsexual woman who asks her to investigate the murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
of her sister, Violetta, a prostitute
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
and drug addict.
Parrotfish
Parrotfish (ISBN 978-1416916222, Ellen WittlingerEllen Wittlinger
Ellen Wittlinger is an author for young adults, including Gracie's Girl and the Printz Honor book Hard Love.- Biography :...
, 2007) is a young adult novel that describes the coming out story of a transgendered teenage boy named Grady. The title refers to the fact that parrotfish
Parrotfish
Parrotfishes are a group of fishes that traditionally had been considered a family , but now often are considered a subfamily of the wrasses. They are found in relatively shallow tropical and subtropical oceans throughout the world, but with the largest species richness in the Indo-Pacific...
can change their gender.
10000 Dresses
10000 Dresses by Marcus Ewert is a children's picture book about a young transgendered girl named Bailey whose family does not agree with her want to wear dresses. During the course of the book she meets an older girl who needs dress ideas and whom does not disagree with Bailey's gender identity.The Butterfly and the Flame
The Butterfly and the Flame by Dana De Young is dystopiaDystopia
A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
n novel released May 4, 2011 The story is set in the year 2404 A.D. in a time where technology and society have relapsed and a corrupt and repressive theocracy
Theocracy
Theocracy is a form of organization in which the official policy is to be governed by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided, or simply pursuant to the doctrine of a particular religious sect or religion....
known as the Dominion of Divinity rules most of what was once the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. The main protagonist is a male to female transgender teenager by the name of Emily La Rouche who has been living in stealth since the age of six, but is unwittingly forced into an arranged marriage
Arranged marriage
An arranged marriage is a practice in which someone other than the couple getting married makes the selection of the persons to be wed, meanwhile curtailing or avoiding the process of courtship. Such marriages had deep roots in royal and aristocratic families around the world...
to the son of her land lord when she turns sixteen years old. Much of the story is a backdrop for the American culture war
Culture war
The culture war in American usage is a metaphor used to claim that political conflict is based on sets of conflicting cultural values. The term frequently implies a conflict between those values considered traditionalist or conservative and those considered progressive or liberal...
s and incorporates issues such as separation of church and state
Separation of church and state
The concept of the separation of church and state refers to the distance in the relationship between organized religion and the nation state....
, GLBT rights, unreasonable search and seizure, invasion of privacy, as well as enhanced interrogation techniques
Enhanced interrogation techniques
Enhanced interrogation techniques or alternative set of procedures are terms adopted by the George W. Bush administration in the United States to describe certain severe interrogation methods, often described as torture...
.
Almost Perfect
Almost Perfect by Brian Katcher tells the story of an adolescent closeted transgender girl named Sage. Sage moves to a new high school in Missouri where she meets and becomes good friends with the protagonist Logan. When she confides her secret in Logan, he must choose between his friendship with and attraction to Sage and his inner feelings of homophobia and transphobia. Katcher's novel is geared towards young adults and won the Stonewall Book AwardStonewall Book Award
Sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table of the American Library Association , the Stonewall Book Award is for LGBT books...
from the American Library Association in 2011.
See also
- List of transgender characters in film and television
- Transgender publicationsTransgender publications-Books:There are now many books available covering transgender, including cross-dressing and transsexualism.The Lazy Crossdresser is a carefree and useful guide by Charles Anders , who crossdressed publicly for several years...
Transgender and transsexual writers
- Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-century French HermaphroditeHerculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-century French HermaphroditeHerculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-century French Hermaphrodite is a 1980 English-language translation of Herculine Barbin's nineteenth-century memoirs, which were originally written in French. The book contains an introduction by Michel Foucault, which only...
(non-fiction) - Mom, I Need to be a GirlMom, I Need to be a GirlMom, I Need to be a Girl by Just Evelyn is a true story about Danielle Lindenmuth , a transsexual woman who began her transition from male to female at 15, and completed sex reassignment surgery at 18, with the help of her mother and older brothers...
(non-fiction) - My Husband Betty (non-fiction)
- My Face for the World to SeeMy Face for the World to See"My Face for the World to See" is the published diaries of Warhol Superstar Candy Darling....
(non-fiction)