Another Pride Month has arrived, and the streets are awash in rainbows. Despite the ubiquity of Pride celebrations, it's a particularly difficult time to be trans in America. Not that it's ever been easy, but the past eighteen months has seen the introduction of over 1,000 bills targeting trans people around the United States. These bills seek to whittle away trans rights: blocking access to gender affirming healthcare, restricting legal gender marker changes, criminalizing bathroom use. Most horrifically, many of these bills reveal a concerted effort to legislate trans people out of existence, going so far as to bar people from so much as speaking about us in many public spaces.
It should come as no surprise that attempts to ban books from libraries and schools have risen in tandem with anti-trans sentiment. Stories featuring trans lives are frequently challenged, condemned–often sight unseen–as "obscene." Books about trans people account for a whopping eight percent of all successful book challenges.
As a trans Chicagoan, I'm grateful that Chicago and Illinois more broadly are sanctuaries, both for trans people seeking protection and for the freedom to read books about their lives. It is only right that we use our position of relative privilege this Pride Month to celebrate the richness and diversity of trans stories. Just as trans people have always existed, we've always been here telling our stories. This list is by no means exhaustive, and there are so many trans authors and poets doing brilliant work today and every day who all deserve your readership.
I Have Always Been Me
By Precious Brady-Davis (she/her)
Topple Books & Little a
A debut memoir published in 2021 by Amazon's Topple Books imprint, I Have Always Been Me is a powerful and at times raw celebration of self-reliance, resilience, and trans joy. The book explores Brady-Davis's gender journey and path to activism. A legend in the Chicago trans community, Precious Brady-Davis has been advocating on behalf of LGBTQ and environmental issues for many years. She currently serves as a commissioner of Chicago's Metropolitan Water Reclamation District and has recently been named Chief Strategy Officer of the Center on Halsted, Chicago's preeminent LGBTQ services organization.
Several People Are Typing
By Calvin Kasulke (he/him)
Anchor Books
A unique debut that captured the mid-pandemic zeitgeist, Several People Are Typing is a novel constructed entirely in chats in the workplace instant messaging platform Slack. When the protagonist's consciousness is accidentally uploaded to the company Slack channel, he must enlist the help of a colleague to care for his body until he is freed. The book explores themes of work-life balance, physicality and love, mind/body disconnect, and the relationship between technology and offline life. In the tradition of The Matrix franchise before it, Several People Are Typing executes on the trope of science-fiction-as-trans-allegory masterfully. Kasulke currently works as assistant publisher at Lit Hub.
Every Body Looking
By Candice Iloh (they/them)
Dutton Books for Young Readers
Named one of the best books of 2020 by Kirkus Reviews and a finalist for the National Book Award, Candice Iloh's debut novel Every Body Looking is remarkable. A novel for young adults written entirely in verse, Every Body Looking draws heavily on Iloh's real-life experiences in its exploration of complex identities. The book interrogates race, particularly as it intersects with experiences of immigration and gender expansiveness and notions of safety. There are accompanying teaching materials available from Penguin Random House to facilitate classroom discussions. Candice Iloh also partners with Lambda Literary's LGBTQ Writers in Schools program which connects authors with classrooms around the country. Candice Iloh has since published two additional novels, Break This House (2022) and Salt the Water (2023), all available from Penguin Random House.
Laziness Does Not Exist
By Devon Price (he/it)
Atria Books
Another influential Chicagoan, Dr. Devon Price is an associate professor of psychology at Loyola University. His first book, Laziness Does Not Exist, was published by Atria Books in 2021. Laziness Does Not Exist brings a fresh perspective to the American obsession with productivity, tracing its history in the Puritan work ethic and investigating the ways it particularly harms neurodiverse individuals. Price has published two more books since: Unmasking Autism (2022) and Unmasking Shame (2024). Price has been a prolific writer online for many years before traditionally publishing and continues to post regular blogs on its Substack, usually considering intersections between queer, trans, and neurodivergent identities and experiences.
Felix Ever After
By Kacen Callender (they/he)
Balzer & Bray/Harperteen
Published in 2020 and already named one of the 100 best YA Novels of all time by Time Magazine, Felix Ever After is a coming-of-age story about a Black trans teen discovering himself as he falls in love for the first time. The book has been a particular target of book bans impacting schools and public libraries due to its trans protagonist. Kacen Callender is a transmasculine author from St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. They are the author of eleven books that span several genres and ages: adult, YA, and middle grade. Their middle grade novel King and the Dragonflies won the 2020 National Book Award for children's literature. Callender also partners with Lambda Literary to bring their books to schools across America.
Detransition, Baby
By Torrey Peters (she/her)
One World
Detransition, Baby was one of the first novels by an out trans person to be published by a big five publisher when it debuted from Penguin Random House in 2021. A story about forging identity and what it means to be and make a family, Detransition, Baby is funny, emotionally compelling, and compassionate in its depiction of all of its characters, trans and not. Evanston native Torrey Peters became the first trans woman nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction for the book, a longlisting so controversial that opponents of her nomination wrote an open letter in protest and forged the signatures of long-dead authors Emily Dickinson and Willa Cather.
Gender Queer
By Maia Kobabe (e/em)
Oni Press
The memoir that launched 1,000 book bans, Gender Queer was published in 2019, and has been the number one banned book in the United States every year since 2021. This memoir is presented in the form of a graphic novel, and the story is beautifully told in both words and images. The story is one of self-discovery, of gender exploration, and of finding peace in one's body. The author, Maia Kobabe, started to write the book as a means of explaining eir nonbinary and asexual identities to eir family, and while most of the book is incredibly personal, much of the content can be used as a guide for what it means to be different. Kobabe has published comics in a wide array of anthologies, and eir next book is forthcoming from Scholastic sometime in 2025.
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