Recommended by members of Quaker Rainbow, here are some literary recommendations to help enlighten the trans experience.
To recommend a book or add your own review to any of the recommendations below, get in touch the Amplifying Our Message group via the Contact Us page.
"A rich mixture of trans history and personal experience."
"The first book I read after our daughter came out as trans. It did a huge amount to help me (and my spouse) navigate the new world in which we found ourselves as we supported our daughter."
"Essays on the author's experience of being trans in relationships: in marriage; in family; in community."
"A graphical memoir, and a wonderful story of discovering one’s nonbinary identity. Aimed at teenagers and young adults, but hugely informative for older queer people and allies, too."
"A wonderful book about trans people writing letters to their younger selves, and it’s genuinely such a restoring and bittersweetly healing book."
"The diary about a trans man who fought to allow gay trans people to medically transition and build the American transmasc community during the AIDS pandemic, writing about transmasc history and never giving up even in the face of death. He’s definitely not perfect, but it’s very cool to see."
"Lamya H’s memoir of growing into their identity as a queer and nonbinary Muslim, woven together with reflections on key figures from the Qur’an. A moving account of the tensions between personal self-discovery and remaining within a largely-conservative minority community, and also a fresh perspective on stories that may be too familiar to us in their biblical versions: Maryam/Mary, Musa/Moses, Nuh/Noah, and above all “Allah, who is neither male nor female.”
"For me, this portrays the experience and challenges of being a trans teenager in the 00's far better than anything else I have come across. While it's pretty dark in places, it reflects aspects of the trans experience that, although common, are often pushed aside. The BBC dramatisation is also good."
"I came across Rachel Mann in 2020. She was giving a series of Lent talks on BBC R4 shortly before I left my marital home and started living as Dilys in May that year. She'd already written this book, which describes her trans journey, including surgery, "bloody and painful" and her parallel spiritual journey + related issues in her life. She's an occasional contributor to R4's Thought For The Day. I appreciated this book as other books on trans experience tend not to address the spiritual aspects of transition so directly."
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