I hope this topic hasn't been done before many times.
i'm looking for some new reading material, so maybe this will give me some ideas, hah.


what are your favourite trans themed books, and do you have any specific reasons why?

Phallus Palace is one of the most popular FTM books around. It's a great read!

The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula Le Guin, and Middlesex, by Geoffrey Eugenides, are both (in their very different ways) more intersex-themed but well worth reading as explorations of fluid gender.

Almost Perfect by Brian Katcher

It might not be the easiest book to find, but Venus Plus X is a science fiction novel by Theodore Sturgeon that explores a modern man's adjustment to life in a future society called "Ledom" where Humanity is a species with only one gender. I usually reccommend this to anyone who asks for a work of fiction that seriously explores the politics of gender and/or sexuality.

As for nonfiction, As Nature Made Him: the Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl by John Colapinto examines the life of two twin boys, one of whom was surgically reassigned as female at birth because of a circumcision accident. As most people on these forums could expect, the boy's innate internal gender came to express itself and he rejected all attempts to foist a female role onto him. And while the subject of the book is undoubtedly the experience of an FTM (or perhaps an unwilling MTFTM depending on how you look at it), it resonated with me very deeply as someone who considers herself MTF.

Venus Plux X is a great book - even though it's still somehow steeped with the assumptions of its era, it also leaps way ahead of them at the same time.

Parrotfish by Ellen Wittlinger is a decent read.
I found it interesting when I was younger because I learned from the title that Parrotfish are sequential hermaphrodites, which means they are born as one sex, but can later change into the alternate sex.

Here are some of my favourites:

'Luna' by Julie Ann Peters is a lovely read. A YA (Young Adult) fiction Touching and rich in symbolism.
'Transparent' By Cris Beam.
'Becoming A Visable Man'. Biography by Jamison Green
'Both Sides Now'. Biography by Dhillon Khosla
'The Testosterone Files'. Biography by Max Wolf Valerio
'Sex changes: The Politics of ->-bleeped-<-' By Patrick Califia

'The Phallus Palace' By Dean Kotula is a very good, informative read aswell, as mentioned.

'Parrotfish' I didn't enjoy, found it fairly bland and a bit stereotyping but generally am pleased to see YA fiction addressing FtM visability at all.
I am about to read another YA fiction 'Almost Perfect' by Brian Katcher from the reviews I've read it sounds well written.

Ranma 1/2- The main character is a guy who changes in to a girl every time he gets splashed with cold water, so in a sense apart time F2M and a sometimes M2F and an all the time gender steriotype breaker; mostly after the middle though...

I guess The Bone Doll's Twin by Lynn Flewelling would count.  It's a fantasy book about a king who kills all his female relatives, as it is supposed to be a queen on the throne.  There are two twins born, a boy and a girl.  The daughter has a spell put on her to look like the boy, and the son is killed in her place.  He then haunts her throughout her life as she is raised in his place.  Eventually she finds out that she is a girl and saves the kingdom, and they all live happily ever after.  It's a fairly good book.

Quote from: Padma on March 11, 2011, 03:02:42 AM
The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula Le Guin

Definitely!

There are a number of Heinlein stories to look at. All You Zombies is a good short story that involves a sex change character. Some people suggest I Will Fear No Evil, but that is not one of my favorites.

I recommend Time Enough for Love. There are several gender change characters in it. One is Heinlein's old character Andrew Jackson Libby, the inventor of faster than light travel. He is rejuvenated as Libby Long because the doctor said there was a genetic anomaly and did tests to determine what sex Andrew really should have been. Libby said that she was in a place of light, and someone kept asking, "Do you want to be a boy or a girl?" until she said, "I want to be a girl."

Both Sides Now, by Dhillon Khosla, is a decent book. It's about the author's journey through womanhood, and his transition to male. His story is not the same as everyone else's, (of course....), but the book does focus a lot on being treated differently as female and male, hormones, relationships, work, and surgeries.

"I Will Fear No Evil" by Robert A. Heinlein, haven't read it for many years but remember it as being excellent.

Even better are the two Tahar ben Jelloun books on transgender: "The Sand Child" and "The Sacred Night". Both of which deal with transgender and gender issues in a North African context. If you can read French please read it in the original or even the Italian translation. The English translation is a little stilted and fails to generate the dreamlike atmosphere of the original. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sand_Child

Two-Spirit People: Native American Gender Identity, Sexuality, and Spirituality
by Sue-Ellen Jacobs ,

It's not transgender themed, but Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami, has a wonderful character who's FTM.  He's a librarian described in a way that makes me think he looks like Masafumi Gotoh or Kazuhito Ohba's character in Versus...

but he's gay (why, bishonen?)...

Ah well.  Murakami did a great job of presenting a character who's not only trans, not only FTM, but also gay (showing a great deal of insight into how diverse we are), and of course wrote the main character, who's a teenager on the run, to be completely confused and not at all understanding, but very sympathetic. 

"I don't care what you are.  Whatever you are, I like you,"...
"I know I'm a little different from everyone else, but I'm still a regular human being.  That's what I'd like you to realize.  I'm just a regular person, not some monster.  I feel the same things everyone else does, act the same way.  Sometimes, though, that small difference feels like an abyss.  But I guess there's not much I can do about it."

Beautiful.  I know the feeling exactly.

I also recommend 'Luna' by Julie Ann Peters. It's Young (Teenage) Adult fiction set in the view of an MtF TG's younger sister. It sounds off but the book is a very good one. Gives some insight into what it's like for 'everyone else'. :]]

Gah, no one here has mentioned Kate Bornstein?!?! Gender Outlaws is definitely my favourite book that I've read about being trans~It's got a really neat style to it that's part politics, part memoir. I also read a book called The Riddle of Gender: Science Activism and Transgender Rights. That was really interesting, it detailed a lot about the politics and history of the movement, as well as exploring some of the biological factors of being trans.

And I've got my trust textbook-esque LGBT Bible~~~ it's called I Could Not Speak My Heart, it's a collection of essays from the University of Regina about different topics surrounding Lesbian, Gay, Queer, and Trans issues. I found it in the used section of a local bookstore and I almost cried when I read the title, I was working a job where I couldn't come out at the time because my mother worked in the same building.

I Am J was really good. It's a book about a teenage transguy. It's a new book, pretty sure it came out this year. I'd recommend it.

Luna was alright. I did not like Parrotfish.

So much fiction. I should lighten up more. I used to read tons of science fiction, lol I could at least go back to that.

The last trans book I read was The Riddle of Gender. It's kind of a sampler of current scientific (including social science) thought on gender and ->-bleeped-<-. It got a little stilted at times, and was written/compiled by a complete outsider, but I enjoyed it very much.

I think the one I read before that was Transgender Metamorphosis. It was similar, but mostly excerpts from full memoirs.

I read John Money's Man and Woman, Boy and Girl before that. Fascinating and at times infuriating. Interesting, though.

I just got done reading " Becoming Alex" that was pretty detailed and right on what a lot of FTM's go through it was easy to read but it got the point across I liked it.