Lists
by Powell's Staff, March 31, 2023 9:16 AM
March 31 is International Transgender Day of Visibility, a day dedicated to celebrating the lives and accomplishments of transgender and gender-nonconforming people, while continuing to bring attention to the ongoing prejudice and violence the community faces every day. It’s also a day that serves as an important reminder to cisgender folks to dedicate time to listening (and reading!), in order to learn more about the transgender experience.
This year, we’re pleased to present a list of recent titles by transgender and gender-nonconforming authors, about transgender and gender-nonconforming characters. These are stories that break apart conventions and celebrate joy, tenderness, found family, and, occasionally, horror.
Happy International Transgender Day of Visibility!
We Won’t Be Here Tomorrow
by Margaret Killjoy
Killjoy is a Queer Feminist Anarchist Punk, in the best of ways, and these short stories magnify and celebrate that. From the surprisingly heart-rending “The Free Orcs of Cascadia” to the oddly tender “Into the Gray,” each story makes you want to read the next and the next and the next, until you run out, and start looking for anything else she's written. — Zee C.
The Sunbearer Trials
by Aiden Thomas
Portland author Aiden Thomas (Lost in the Never Woods, Cemetery Boys) is bringing all my favorite YA things in this duology opener: rich mythology, perilous competitive trials, teen drama, witty banter, found family, joyful queerness, and dazzling worldbuilding. Plus, if that wasn’t enough, there are so many fun birds. More YA books should have fun birds. — Sarah R.
The Fifth Wound
by Aurora Mattia
The Fifth Wound, Aurora Mattia’s debut novel, is a book that defies categorization and convention: it's memoir, poetry, fantasy, myth, lyric, epistolary, and so much more. It’s the story of Aurora, a trans woman living in Brooklyn, and her doomed romance with Ezekiel. While the book does spend time pulling at trauma and transphobic violence, there’s also humor to be found in the absurd — nuns and mermaids, fairies and erotic text messages — and Mattia’s writing is always sharp and beautiful. In the transfixing The Fifth Wound, the glut of story and form is the point. — Kelsey F.
Tell Me I’m Worthless
by Alison Rumfitt
In Tell Me I’m Worthless, Alison Rumfitt manages to take that legendary line from The Haunting of Hill House — ““No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality" — and, with a bold underline, replaces “absolute reality” with the starker truth of our world: fascism, as well as the bodily threats that fascism poses to those who don’t “fit” their standards. This book does haunted houses with the best of them — I was genuinely spooked for so much of it, which is saying a lot! — but its horror doesn’t always come from the carnivorous house at its center. Rumfitt doesn’t shy away from how regularly and insidiously cruel the world is to trans people. Stark and terrifying but thoroughly worthwhile. — Kelsey F.
Hell Followed With Us
by Andrew Joseph White
Blood, spit, innards, and bone brought to genesis by the religious nightmares of trans youth. An infernal Dies Irae for the gays. Queer horror at its most unholy and blasphemous. I could go on and on. This book is the dormant eruption that lies within every queer soul in existence. Be not afraid to let it burst from thee. — Stacy Wayne D.
World Running Down
by Al Hess
Set in a post-apocalyptic world where androids run rampant and Salt Lake City is a haven for trans people, where the medical care they need to transition is free, World Running Down focuses on Valentine, a trans man currently surviving by salvaging in the wastelands of Utah. Enter Osric: an A.I. who’s been exiled into an android body and is also looking for an in to Salt Lake City. Much less bleak than most post-apocalyptic books, World Running Down has romance and hope, survival and joy. — Kelsey F.
Your Body Is Not Your Body
edited by Matt Blairstone and Alex Woodroe
WTFs abound in this anthology benefitting trans youth from a powerful union of trans writers exploring the darkest pits of body horror. No pulled punches to be found here, and why should they be? Trans people live through horrors every waking minute. Sit down, get uncomfy, and PROTECT TRANS KIDS ALWAYS. — Stacy Wayne D.
The Story of the Hundred Promises
by Neil Cochrane
A trans- and queer-centered homage to Beauty and the Beast! This book is wonderfully imaginative, lushly written, and just a downright joy. — Gigi L.
X
by Davey Davis
The noir-esque X takes place in a dystopic version of Brooklyn, where Lee finds distraction from their soul-sucking job and the state of the world in true crime podcasts. After meeting the mysterious X at a warehouse party, Lee’s search to find her again leads them through many different subcultures, exploring the rampant xenophobia and fear. But X is about so much more than Lee’s search: it’s also about queer theory, pain, pleasure, consent, our collective fixation on crime narratives, and so much more. This is a moody, mysterious, transgressive book and pairs perfectly with the very-real dystopia of our current world. — Kelsey F.
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In 2019, author Casey Plett wrote an original essay for the Powell’s Blog for Trans Day of Visibility. For more book recommendations, check out 17 Reads for Kids and Families This Transgender Day of Visibility and this list we published in 2021.
For more resources and information about Trans Day of Visibility, visit GLAAD.
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