[TDOV 2023] book recs

Continuing to (attempt to) make this an annual thing.

March 2021, after my partner asked me, "I’m proofing a Transgender Day of Visibility doc for someone in [a Facebook group]. Do you have particular kid or adult books you’d recommend? (And how is it that I don’t actually have any?)" I pulled a bunch of book recs and made a post, and have been trying to do it annually (you can check out the trans tag).

This post is definitely smaller than past years -- largely due to fatigue/burnout/etc. impacting how much reading I did, period (despite the hopeful intentions I expressed in my post last year) and also how many words I could pull together about what I read (as you can see).

I wanna say (as I did last year) that I've read most all the extant trans picturebooks at this point, but I literally have about a half a dozen on my shelf right now that I haven't had a chance to read yet. 😂 (In my defense, most of them came out in the past year or so, some of them very recently.)

I continue to include the publication year (and publisher), since I know queer lit can often feel dated as Discourse, language, etc. changes. I also tried to flag the identities of the authors as far as I knew, since I want to mainly center trans voices.

picturebooks

[general] Payden's Pronoun Party written by Blue Jaryn & illustrated by Xochitl Cornejo (2022, Page Street Publishing Company) -- both author and illustrator use they/them pronouns

This book reminds me of What Are Your Words? A Book About Pronouns but the narrative of this one feels more ... organic?

[trans masc] If You're a Kid Like Gavin: The True Story of a Young Trans Activist written by Gavin Grimm and Kyle Lukoff & illustrated by J Yang (2022, Katherine Tegen Books) -- both authors are trans men; illustrator is a queer Asian-American

You may have encountered some of the news stories about Gavin Grimm. I wasn't sure how this would translate to a picture book for a wide audience, but this book really works well.

middle grade

Different Kinds of Fruit by Kyle Lukoff (Dial/Penguin Random House, 2022) -- author is a trans man

I loved this book so much! A non-binary kid shows up at our 6th-grade protagonist Annabelle's small school, and blows open her world in a lot of disruptive, but exciting ways. A lot of educating happens in the book, but it feels really organic. The epilogue-y bit didn't really work for me, but the overall happy ending did (I know some reviewers felt like it was too fast/easy, but it generally felt earned to me).

adult

(Note: These are all by/about trans women. As a cis woman, I've generally been more interested in stories by/about women. Also, my partner is a trans femme/woman, so I read a lot of books with/for her.)

[short story collection] A Dream of a Woman by Casey Plett (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2021) -- author is a Canadian trans woman

Although the protagonists in this collection are younger than the ones in A Safe Girl to Love, the characters in this collection feel more grounded in their lives.

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters (One World / Penguin Random House, 2020) -- author is a USian trans woman

I'm honestly surprised and impressed that this book got published, given its immediate opening with some potentially off-putting stuff. I hesitate to recommend it to cis people both for that reason (and there's rough stuff throughout the book) and because it's not a starter book, period. One Autostraddle review is titled, "“Detransition, Baby” Is a Book For Trans Women — The Rest of You Are Lucky to Read It."

Per the provocative title, it says some smart things about detransition, as well as a lot of other things about trans experience. It's a trans book that's really honest about a lot of the mess, that isn't catering to cis readers. The characters aren't always likable, but the multiple POVs work well to help us understand where characters are coming from, even if we don't always approve of their decisions.

One of our three protagonists, Katrina, is mixed-race (half-Chinese and half-Jewish), and the author is, I believe, white. While Katrina definitely checks other characters on their white privilege at times, I've read reviews by POCs (I'm white) which compellingly point out how this is still a very white novel (in the treatment of Katrina among other things).

Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki (Tor / Macmillan, 2021) -- author is a Japanese-American trans woman

There are 3 (female) protagonists in this book -- 1 of whom is a young mixed-race trans girl violin prodigy (also named Katrina, it occurs to me). She experiences both micro- and macro-aggressions, but there's also a lot of joy in the story. She sometimes has to educate well-meaning cis people, but that's only a small part of the novel. There are aliens and pacts with demons and So Much Food.