Welcome back to Book Break, and I hope you've got a nice cup of tea ready because
this might be a long video. I'm going to recommend you 21 brilliant books by trans,
non-binary and genderqueer authors. I've got a real mix in here of fiction and non-fiction,
literary fiction and sci-fi, even some poetry. So settle in! Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by
Andrea Lawlor is gender fluidity made literal. So our main character Paul is a shape-shifter,
he can change his body at will, and in doing so he uses this to explore a different range
of genders and identities. It's a really really fun book, it's set in the 90s, so it's a real
tour of 90s queer subcultures, and it really takes everything you thought you knew about gender and
throws it away and starts again. This book is very clever, and there's a lot of discussion of gender
identity in here, but it's also really funny, it's very accessible I found, and easy to read.
It's very sexy, there are lots of very graphic descriptions in here so just be aware of that,
and overall I think it's going to be a complete future cult classic. And then another book that
totally scrapped everything I thought I knew about gender is Detransition, Baby by Torey
Peters. This one got a lot of buzz for being longlisted for the Women's Prize last year,
so this is about three main characters: a trans woman called Reese, her ex-lover Amy who has
de-transitioned to become Ames, and a cis woman called Katrina who Ames accidentally gets pregnant
while thinking that he's infertile. And then it's about the baby that the three of these characters
decide to raise together in an unconventional new kind of family. So this book is all about gender
and identity and it's all about specifically trans identity and it's incredible. I've just seen that
Andrea Lawlor has actually blurbed this book here, so yeah those two books I've described so far
really go together. Both really really interesting, fascinating deep dives into gender,
that are also really funny and readable. Next up some historical fiction. She Who Became the Sun by
Shelley Parker-Chan is a re-imagining of the rise to power of the first Emperor of the Ming dynasty
but with genderqueer characters who subvert everything expected of them by their society.
So it's about the desire for greatness and the desire to outrun your destiny, and it's absolutely
stunning. And so many people are talking about this one at the moment. It's been described as
a cross between Mulan and Song of Achilles, so that gets you at least halfway to understanding
quite how epic this book is. The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven by Jo Clifford is a play
that reimagines Jesus as a trans woman, and when the play first debuted in 2009 in Glasgow,
Jo Clifford herself played the main character, Jesus coming back to Earth and experiencing life
from her own perspective, as a trans woman. And when the play first came out, it was very
controversial within the Christian community as you could imagine, but the play is actually really
in line with core Christian values. It takes the concept of Christian love and applies it
to those who have been historically excluded, for example trans people. And then another historical
reimagining - Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg reimagines the life of the 18th century
London thief Jack Shepherd as a trans man. And then we also have a present day storyline where
an academic finds this manuscript full of Jack's confessions and is on a mission to authenticate
them. And these two characters’ lives, in past and present, become increasingly entwined. Paradise by
Kae Tempest is a Greek myth reimagining that's going to be staged at the National Theatre
with a cast that was chosen regardless of the gender of the characters. So it's a retelling
of the story of Philoctetes, once a Greek war hero and now an outcast on a desolate island.
And Kae Tempest is very famous and celebrated on the British poetry and drama scene, particularly
for their treatment of old stories like this given new contemporary relevance. I'll give
you a heads up for a book coming in October that you'll definitely want to watch out for, and that
is Deep Wheel Orcadia by Harry Josephine Giles. This is a really unusual book. It's a sci-fi book
written in verse, in the Orkney dialect, and then it also comes with a parallel translation
which is chosen to carry just as much nuance and playfulness as the original wording. So our
two main characters Astrid and Darling meet on a distant space station, Deep Wheel Orcadia, both
searching, for different reasons, for somewhere to belong. And the author Harry Josephine Giles is
very well known as a poet, an incredible performer of their own work, but this novel marks something
brand new for them and completely brand new on the scene. Freshwater by Akwake Emezi is about a young
Nigerian woman called Ada who develops separate selves, or multiple personalities, as a result
of trauma, but there's also a magical element to it. So Ada is born partly into this other realm of
gods and demons who make up some of her selves. And the book opens being told in first person
plural perspective, so from the point of view of Ada's other selves - also called brothersisters
which comes from Nigerian mythology - and they call Ada ‘the Ada’ and narrate her life.
Sorrowland by River Solomon is another really haunting novel. So in this one our
main character is Vern ,an albino Black woman who is seven months pregnant and on the run from the
religious compound where she was raised, and then in the woods where she gives birth to her twins,
her body undergoes a sort of metamorphosis. And through this Solomon explores issues of
gender, race, misogyny, the treatment of black bodies, motherhood, and so much more. The Subtweet
by Vivek Shraya is a contemporary novel about the friendship between two musicians, Neela
and Rukmini. Neela is a quite well-established pop star whose song is covered by the internet-famous,
on the rise, Rukmini - very successfully. But as Rukmini’s celebrity grows and Neela’s stagnates,
jealousy grows between the pair, and with one single tweet, their friendship explodes, one
of their careers is destroyed, and the two find themselves at the center of an internet firestorm.
Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel by Julian K. Jarboe is a collection of short stories:
a mixture of sci-fi, horror and fairy tales. There's a mixture of lengths as well. We get some
flash fiction, some of the stories are just a page long, some of them are just little poems really,
and then some are much longer, veering more into novella territory. And the collection as a whole
captures what it's like to live under capitalism while genderqueer or disabled or mentally ill,
but it also captures a lot of the hope and opportunity that come from living within your
community and finding your own self-expression. All of the stories kind of use looking at the
future to shine a light on our present. And on a similar theme, the book Depart Depart by Sim Kern
is about a Jewish trans man sheltering after a hurricane, and finding a community with other
queer refugees, but still feeling at risk. And he starts having visions of his great grandfather Abe
who fled as a boy from Nazi Germany. And the more that the climate crisis intensifies,
and conditions within the shelter deteriorate, the stronger Abe's ghost appears. So this book
is really about finding community after climate disaster. It's about the intersection of climate
change and social justice so that's why I link it to that theme of looking at the future to shine a
light on the problems that are happening now. Then for something a bit more light-hearted,
Something to Talk About by Meryl Wilsner is about a Hollywood showrunner and her assistant,
who accidentally spark a rumour that they're a couple after being photographed looking a little
too friendly on the red carpet, but it turns out the rumours might not be totally off base. So
this one has got the enemies to lovers trope, it's got a sort of new angle on the fake dating trope,
I know a lot of you will eat this one up. And then one more fiction before I finish up with
some great non-fiction books, I've got Little Fish by Casey Plett. So this is about Wendy,
who is a 30 year old transgender woman who discovered some evidence that her grandfather,
who was a devout Mennonite farmer, may have been transgender himself. So it's about her
unraveling the mystery of his life and the parallels with her own life.
Okay now let's talk about some great non-fiction starting with The Transgender Issue by Shon Faye.
So in this book Faye points out that trans people make up fewer than one percent of the
population and yet are constantly at the centre of this toxic and increasingly hysterical debate
that is constantly being found on the front page of newspapers. And so Shon Faye points
out we are having the wrong conversations, and we are not giving voice to any actual trans people.
So in this book she explores a huge range of trans lives and voices which all come together to create
a manifesto for change. Top to Bottom by Finley Games is a very personal story of phalloplasty,
which is a form of gender confirmation surgery, and at first wasn't something that Finn wanted
as part of his trans journey, but increasingly began to matter to him. So I first discovered Finn
through his YouTube channel, FinntheInfinncible which I will link to below, where he shared his
journey of his transition. He's got a great, really warm, honest, funny voice, and this book is
part memoir and part self-help guide, and really lays out the different challenges and options and
stages, and shows quite how life-changing this kind of surgery can be for some trans people.
What's the T? by Juno Dawson is a book specifically for teenagers that lays out
what it's like to be a trans or non-binary person in the 21st century, and this book includes loads
of contributions from a huge range of trans and non-binary authors, so you get this really diverse
range of lives and experiences. And the sort of adult equivalent of that is Trans Power by Juno
Roche. This book really pushes to redefine what trans means and to make it its own identity with
its own strength and autonomy. And again this book contains loads of contributors,
lots of conversations, with a huge range of trans and non-binary voices to show what a massive range
of experiences and identities that are out there. In Their Shoes by Jamie Windust is specifically
about navigating non-binary life. So it's good advice on everything from trying on clothes,
to going on first dates, to having polyamorous relationships, to passports, to pronouns. It's
a guide to how to navigate the world, and your own ever-evolving identity. Transitions is an
anthology of experiences of what it's like to be trans, and it showcases eight really exciting new
trans writers. So each of these are first-person accounts of trans life, covering everything from
chest binding to gender dysphoria to coming out later in life to love and relationships.
It's a real celebration of the beauty of trans life, and essentially a love letter to the trans
community. And finally I want to recommend a book that any trans, non-binary or genderqueer viewers
I think will particularly enjoy, and that is The Trans Self-Care Workbook by Theo Nicole Lorenz.
This is a creative journal with colouring pages, journaling prompts and activities specifically
designed to be empowering to the trans community. The book draws on mindfulness and CBT techniques
to create a space for reflection and self affirmations. That's a really beautiful book. I
will link here to a playlist of all of our videos on Book Break promoting books by queer voices and
I would love to know your recommendations in the comments below of any particularly brilliant books
you've read recently by trans, non-binary or genderqueer authors. See you next time!