Staff Picks

"Gender is a story, not just a word. Alok Vaid-Menon dares the world to see gender not in black and white, but in full color. Taking from their own experiences as a gender non-conforming artist, they show us that gender is a malleable and creative form of expression. The only limit is your imagination."--from publisher's description

"A timely second edition of the classic text on transgender history, with a new introduction and updated material throughout Covering American transgender history from the mid-twentieth century to today, Transgender History takes a chronological approach to the subject of transgender history, with each chapter covering major movements, writings, and events. Chapters cover the transsexual and transvestite communities in the years following World War II; trans radicalism and social change, which spanned from 1966 with the publication of The Transsexual Phenomenon, and lasted through the early 1970s; the mid-'70s to 1990-the era of identity politics and the changes witnessed in trans circles through these years; and the gender issues witnessed through the '90s and '00s. Transgender History includes informative sidebars highlighting quotes from major texts and speeches in transgender history and brief biographies of key players, plus excerpts from transgender memoirs and discussion of treatments of transgenderism in popular culture"--From publisher's description

"In Normal Life Dean Spade presents revelatory critiques of the legal equality framework for social change and points to examples of transformative grassroots trans activism that are raising demands that go beyond traditional civil rights reforms. Spade explodes the assumptions about what legal rights can do for marginalized populations and describes transformative resistance processes and formations that address the root causes of harm and violence. Setting forth a politic that goes beyond the quest for mere legal inclusion, Normal Life is an urgent call for justice and trans liberation, and the radical transformations it will require"-- Back cover.

"The story of Christine Jorgensen, Americas first prominent transsexual, famously narrated trans embodiment in the postwar era. Her celebrity, however, has obscured other mid-century trans narratives-ones lived by African Americans such as Lucy Hicks Anderson and James McHarris. Their erasure from trans history masks the profound ways race has figured prominently in the construction and representation of transgender subjects. C. Riley Snorton identifies multiple intersections between blackness and transness from the mid-nineteenth century to present-day anti-black and anti-trans legislation and violence. Drawing on a deep and varied archive of materials-early sexological texts, fugitive slave narratives, Afro-modernist literature, sensationalist journalism, Hollywood films-Snorton attends to how slavery and the production of racialized gender provided the foundations for an understanding of gender as mutable. In tracing the twinned genealogies of blackness and transness, Snorton follows multiple trajectories, from the medical experiments conducted on enslaved black women by J. Marion Sims, the father of American gynecology, to the negation of blackness that makes transnormativity possible. Revealing instances of personal sovereignty among blacks living in the antebellum North that were mapped in terms of cross dressing and canonical black literary works that express black mens access to the female within, he concludes with a reading of the fate of Phillip DeVine, who was murdered alongside Brandon Teena in 1993, a fact omitted from the film Boys Don't Cry out of narrative convenience."--Provided by publisher

A collaborative intervention in art and design pedagogy. Offers faculty a radical rethink on how to work with queer and transgender students on their path to becoming artists and designers – from the first day of school through to seminars, studio classes, and critiques. Draws directly from student experiences to help faculty of all orientations bring equitable teaching practices and queer curricula into art and design classes. Queer Publishing Project is a working group of over 100 students, alumni, staff and faculty at OCAD University and beyond who identify as queer and/or transgender.

"Critically Sovereign traces the ways in which gender is inextricably a part of Indigenous politics and U.S. and Canadian imperialism and colonialism. The contributors show how gender, sexuality, and feminism work as co-productive forces of Native American and Indigenous sovereignty, self-determination, and epistemology. Several essays use a range of literary and legal texts to analyze the production of colonial space, the biopolitics of "Indianness," and the collisions and collusions between queer theory and colonialism within Indigenous studies. Others address the U.S. government's criminalization of traditional forms of Dine marriage and sexuality, the Inupiat people's changing conceptions of masculinity as they embrace the processes of globalization, Hawai'i's same-sex marriage bill, and stories of Indigenous women falling in love with non-human beings such as animals, plants, and stars. Following the politics of gender, sexuality, and feminism across these diverse historical and cultural contexts, the contributors question and reframe the thinking about Indigenous knowledge, nationhood, citizenship, history, identity, belonging, and the possibilities for a decolonial future."--provided by publisher.

"This book is a one-stop guide for autistic trans adults setting out practical strategies and advice to help them navigate through life. The book has chapters on coming out, relationships, sexuality, physical appearance, medical aspects, social transition, work, family life etc. The book is written from a perspective of empowerment and self-acceptance and has a strong focus on promoting pride and self-worth" - Publisher

"A revelatory book about gender, mental illness, parenting, mortality, bike mechanics, work, class, and the task of living in a body. Inquisitive and expansive, Like a Boy but Not a Boy explores author andrea bennett's experiences with gender expectations, being a non-binary parent, and the sometimes funny and sometimes difficult task of living in a body. The book's fourteen essays also delve incisively into the interconnected themes of mental illness, mortality, creative work, class, and bike mechanics (apparently you can learn a lot about yourself through trueing a wheel). In "Tomboy," andrea articulates what it means to live in a gender in-between space, and why one might be necessary; "37 Jobs 21 Houses" interrogates the notion that the key to a better life is working hard and moving house. And interspersed throughout the book is "Everyone Is Sober and No One Can Drive," sixteen stories about queer millennials who grew up and came of age in small Canadian communities. With the same poignant spirit as Ivan Coyote's Tomboy Survival Guide, Like a Boy addresses the struggle to find acceptance, and to accept oneself; and how one can find one's place while learning to make space for others. The book also wonders what it means to be an atheist and search for faith that everything will be okay; what it means to learn how to love life even as you obsess over its brevity; and how to give birth, to bring new life, at what feels like the end of the world. With thoughtfulness and acute observation, andrea bennett reveals intimate truths about the human experience, whether one is outside the gender binary or not." - Publisher

The Transgender Archives: Foundations for the Future by Dr. Aaron Devor explains the origins and explores the holdings of the Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria Libraries. The Transgender Archives is the largest collection of transgender archival materials in the world. It is accessible to the public free of charge, and available to faculty, students, and scholars for teaching and research.

"In this collection of speeches and new writing, Leslie Feinberg argues passionately for the acceptance of all trans peoples - and for the absolute necessity of building coalitions between all progressive political groups." - Publisher

"Essays, conversations, and archival investigations explore the paradoxes, limitations, and social ramifications of trans representation within contemporary culture." - Publisher

"Centring the voices and experiences of trans identified people as experts on their own lives and agents of change, Trans Activism in Canada opens up a dialogue between scholars and community members in an effort to improve the lives of sex and gender variant people." - Publisher

"This anthology features work by and about queer, trans, and gender nonconforming Latinx communities, including immigrants and social dissidents who reflect on and write about diaspora and migratory movements while navigating geographical and embodied spaces in the United States." - Publisher

" A look at the transatlantic, transgender community that shaped the history and study of sexuality. From the turn of the twentieth century to the 1950s, a group of transgender people on both sides of the Atlantic created communities that profoundly shaped the history and study of sexuality. By exchanging letters and pictures among themselves they established private networks of affirmation and trust, and by submitting their stories and photographs to medical journals and popular magazines they sought to educate both doctors and the public. Others of My Kind draws on archives in Europe and North America to tell the story of this transatlantic transgender community. This book uncovers threads of connection between Germany, the United States, and the Netherlands to discover the people who influenced the work of authorities like Magnus Hirschfeld, Harry Benjamin, and Alfred Kinsey not only with their clinical presentations, but also with their personal relationships." - Publisher

"In this fascinating personal journey through history, Leslie Feinberg - one of the most prominent transgender rights activists today - unearths a vast body of evidence that throughout history there have always been people who defy cultural boundaries of sex and gender." "During an embattled childhood and teenage years as a gender outlaw, Feinberg began a search for others struggling to assert an identity. What s/he found was a long tradition of individuals fighting back against injustice - from Joan of Arc to the Welsh peasants who cross-dressed to protest taxes, from the Black and Latina drag queens who led the Stonewall rebellion to transsexual parents fighting for custody today. Traditional society often exacted a terrible price from these transgender warriors, and Feinberg urges us now to receive them as hero/ines and visionaries." - Publisher

"This one-of-a-kind collection of prose and poetry radically explores the intersection of fat and queer identities, showcasing new, emerging and established queer and trans writers from around the world. Celebrating fat and queer bodies and lives, this book challenges negative and damaging representations of queer and fat bodies and offers readers ways to reclaim their bodies, providing stories of support, inspiration and empowerment." - Publisher

The Liminal Chrysalis: Imagining Reproduction and Parenting Futures Beyond the Binary is an edited collection that works to identify and deconstruct many of the countless binaries that operate within the realms of parenting and reproduction. Weaving poetry, speculative fiction, and autobiography, with interviews, critical analysis and research, the authors take as their starting place that there is magical potential and possibility in the ambiguous, disorienting spaces of the in-between and the beyond. The collection challenges the constructedness of binaries connected to sex, gender, sexuality, and parenting roles, as well as the cis-, hetero-, repro-, trans- and amatonormativities which pervasively circulate and inform how we think about parenting and reproductive life. The collection amplifies the voices of non-binary authors among others, and tells stories of menstruation, pregnancy, abortion, assisted reproductive technologies, fertility preservation, parenthood, and activism in the face of violent binaries and reproductive injustices.--Publisher's description

First published in 1999, the groundbreaking Exile and Pride is essential to the history and future of disability politics. Eli Clare's revelatory writing about his experiences as a white disabled genderqueer activist/writer established him as one of the leading writers on the intersections of queerness and disability and permanently changed the landscape of disability politics and queer liberation. With a poet's devotion to truth and an activist's demand for justice, Clare deftly unspools the multiple histories from which our ever-evolving sense of self unfolds. His essays weave together memoir, history, and political thinking to explore meanings and experiences of home: home as place, community, bodies, identity, and activism. Here readers will find an intersectional framework for understanding how we actually live with the daily hydraulics of oppression, power, and resistance. At the root of Clare's exploration of environmental destruction and capitalism, sexuality and institutional violence, gender and the body politic, is a call for social justice movements that are truly accessible to everyone. With heart and hammer, Exile and Pride pries open a window onto a world where our whole selves, in all their complexity, can be realized, loved, and embraced.

"In Black Trans Feminism Marquis Bey offers a meditation on blackness and gender nonnormativity in ways that recalibrate traditional understandings of each. Theorizing black trans feminism from the vantages of abolition and gender radicality, Bey articulates blackness as a mutiny against racializing categorizations; transness as a nonpredetermined, wayward, and deregulated movement that works toward gender's destruction; and black feminism as an epistemological method to fracture hegemonic modes of racialized gender. In readings of the essays, interviews, and poems of Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Jayy Dodd, Venus Di'Khadija Selenite, and Dane Figueroa Edidi, Bey turns black trans feminism away from a politics of gendered embodiment toward a conception of it as a politics grounded in fugitivity and the subversion of power. Together, blackness and transness actualize themselves as on the run from gender. In this way, Bey presents black trans feminism as a mode of enacting the wholesale dismantling of the world we have been given." - Publisher

"Some days—or weeks, or months, or even years—being trans feels bad. In Side Affects, Malatino opens a new conversation about trans experience that acknowledges the reality of feeling fatigue, envy, burnout, numbness, and rage amid the ongoing onslaught of casual and structural transphobia in order to map the intricate emotional terrain of trans survival." - Publisher

"In Cistem Failure Marquis Bey meditates on the antagonistic relationship between blackness and cisgender. Bey asks what does it mean to have a gender that "matches" one's sex, that is, cisgender, when decades of feminist theory have destroyed the belief that there is some natural way to be a sex? Moving from the The Powerpuff Girls to the greeting "how ya mama'n'em" to their own gender identity, Bey finds that cisgender is too flat of a category to hold the myriad ways that people-who may not have undergone gender affirmative interventions-depart from gender alignment. At the same time, blackness, they contend, strikes at the heart of cisgender's invariable coding as white: just as transness names a non-cis space, blackness implies a non-cis space. By showing how blackness opens up a way to subvert the hegemonic power of the gender binary, Bey makes a case for an antiracist gender abolition project that rejects cisgender as a regulatory apparatus." - Publisher

"In the fifteen years since the release of Gender Outlaw, Kate Bornstein's groundbreaking challenge to gender ideology, transgender narratives have made their way from the margins to the mainstream. Today's transpeople, genderqueers, and other sex/gender radicals are writing a drastically new world into being. Gender Outlaws, edited by the original gender outlaw, Bornstein, together with writer, raconteur, and theater artist S. Bear Bergman, collects and contextualizes the work of this generation's trans and genderqueer forward thinkers -- new voices from the stage, on the streets, in the workplace, in the bedroom, and on the pages and websites of the world's most respected news sources. Gender Outlaws includes essays, commentary, comic art, and conversation from a diverse group of trans-spectrum people who live and believe in barrier-breaking lives." - Publisher