PUBLISHED STORIES
Explore books written by trans men and trans masc individuals. Discover powerful stories and find inspiration through their written journeys. Submit your favorite books below.
A special thank you to the trans authors who have bravely shared their personal stories through their books. Your willingness to be visible and vulnerable uplifts and inspires countless others in our community, offering hope to those on their own journeys.
Sorted: Growing Up, Coming Out, and Finding My Place (A Transgender Memoir)
by Jackson Bird
An unflinching and endearing memoir from LGBTQ+ advocate Jackson Bird about how he finally sorted things out and came out as a transgender man.
When Jackson Bird was twenty-five, he came out as transgender to his friends, family, and anyone in the world with an internet connection.
Assigned female at birth and raised as a girl, he often wondered if he should have been born a boy. Jackson didn’t share this thought with anyone because he didn’t think he could share it with anyone. Growing up in Texas in the 1990s, he had no transgender role models. He barely remembers meeting anyone who was openly gay, let alone being taught that transgender people existed outside of punchlines.
In this “soulful and heartfelt coming-of-age story” (Jamia Wilson, director and publisher of the Feminist Press), Jackson chronicles the ups and downs of growing up gender-confused. Illuminated by journal entries spanning childhood to adolescence to today, he candidly recalls the challenges and loneliness he endured as he came to terms with both his gender and his bisexual identity.
With warmth and wit, Jackson also recounts how he navigated the many obstacles and quirks of his transition—like figuring out how to have a chest binder delivered to his NYU dorm room and having an emotional breakdown at a Harry Potter fan convention. From his first shot of testosterone to his eventual top surgery, Jackson lets you in on every part of his journey—taking the time to explain trans terminology and little-known facts about gender and identity along the way.
Am I Trans Enough? The answer is undoubtably yes. You are.
Alo Johnston has been where you are. From watching every transition story on YouTube and navigating online message boards for answers to finally starting testosterone and transitioning himself, he now walks alongside you every step of the way to guide you towards acceptance of who you truly are.
Born out of thousands of hours of research and conversations with hundreds of trans people, Am I Trans Enough? digs deep into internalized transphobia and the historical narratives that fuel it. It unveils what happens after you come out, or begin questioning living as a trans person, in a world that works against you.
Use this book as a space to engage with your fears and explore your doubts without the pressure of needing to be a perfect trans representative. If you are just beginning your trans journey, are twenty years into transition or have no idea if you are even trans at all, this book will help you to become your most authentic self.
Am I Trans Enough?
by Alo Johnston
The T in LGBT: Everything You Need to Know About Being Trans
by Jamie Raines
A practical and highly accessible guide for those navigating society as a trans person or trying to gain understanding of the trans experience, from psychologist, content creator, and LGBTQ+ advocate Jamie Raines, with over one million YouTube subscribers.
Hey, I'm Jamie, a 29-year-old trans guy from the UK. I've been transitioning for 12 years now after realizing I was trans (by accident!) at sixteen years old. I knew I was a boy since the age of four, but realized while growing up that I was different. It was only in my teens that I found the words to express who I was and what I needed to do. Since then, I've been on testosterone for more than a decade. I've also had top and bottom surgery and legally changed my sex, so I know a few things about the transitioning process and being trans!
I want to welcome you to The T in LGBT where you can explore and learn about so many topics surrounding gender identity: realizing you're trans, starting hormones, considering surgery, and everything in between. Whether you're questioning your own identity and are looking for advice on certain stages of transition, or whether you're wanting to learn about the trans experience to support someone or understand allyship, I hope this book can be your one-stop guide to everything trans related.
And don't just take my word for it either; this book is packed full of advice, tips, and the personal stories of a range of trans voices, because no one journey is the same.
Pageboy
by Elliot Page
Full of intimate stories, from chasing down secret love affairs to battling body image and struggling with familial strife, Pageboy is a love letter to the power of being seen. With this evocative and lyrical debut, Oscar-nominated star Elliot Page captures the universal human experience of searching for ourselves and our place in this complicated world.
“Can I kiss you?” It was two months before the world premiere of Juno, and Elliot Page was in his first ever queer bar. The hot summer air hung heavy around him as he looked at her. And then it happened. In front of everyone. A previously unfathomable experience. Here he was on the precipice of discovering himself as a queer person, as a trans person. Getting closer to his desires, his dreams, himself, without the repression he’d carried for so long. But for Elliot, two steps forward had always come with one step back.
With Juno’s massive success, Elliot became one of the world’s most beloved actors. His dreams were coming true, but the pressure to perform suffocated him. He was forced to play the part of the glossy young starlet, a role that made his skin crawl, on and off set. The career that had been an escape out of his reality and into a world of imagination was suddenly a nightmare.
As he navigated criticism and abuse from some of the most powerful people in Hollywood, a past that snapped at his heels, and a society dead set on forcing him into a binary, Elliot often stayed silent, unsure of what to do. Until enough was enough.
Never a Girl, Always a Boy: A Family Memoir of a Transgender Journey
by Jo Ivester
Jeremy Ivester is a transgender man. Thirty years ago, his parents welcomed him into the world as what they thought was their daughter. As a child, he preferred the toys and games our society views as masculine. He kept his hair short and wore boys’ clothing. They called him a tomboy. That’s what he called himself.
By high school, when he showed no interest in flirting, his parents thought he might be lesbian. At twenty, he wondered if he was asexual. At twenty-three, he surgically removed his breasts. A year later, he began taking the hormones that would lower his voice and give him a beard—and he announced his new name and pronouns.
Never a Girl, Always a Boy is Jeremy’s journey from childhood through coming out as transgender and eventually emerging as an advocate for the transgender community. This is not only Jeremy’s story but also that of his family, told from multiple perspectives—those of the siblings who struggled to understand the brother they once saw as a sister, and of the parents who ultimately joined him in the battle against discrimination. This is a story of acceptance in a world not quite ready to accept.
Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation
by Kate Bornstein & S. Bear Bergman
This groundbreaking and inspiring collection of dozens of our most original trans voices is a “smart, sexy, and entertaining” (Jack Halberstam) exploration of gender today.
Transgender narratives have made their way from the margins to the mainstream and back again, and today’s trans and nonbinary people, genderqueers, and other sex/gender radicals are writing a drastically new world into being. Edited by the original gender outlaw, Kate Bornstein, together with writer, raconteur, and theater artist S. Bear Bergman, Gender Outlaws 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 publications. Gender Outlaws includes essays, commentary, comic art, and conversations from a diverse group of trans-spectrum people who live and believe in barrier-breaking lives.
Tomboy Survival Guide
by Ivan Coyote
Ivan Coyote is a celebrated storyteller and the author of ten previous books, including Gender Failure (with Rae Spoon) and One in Every Crowd, a collection for LGBT youth. Tomboy Survival Guide is a funny and moving memoir told in stories, in which Ivan recounts the pleasures and difficulties of growing up a tomboy in Canada’s Yukon, and how they learned to embrace their tomboy past while carving out a space for those of us who don’t fit neatly into boxes or identities or labels.
Ivan writes movingly about many firsts: the first time they were mistaken for a boy; the first time they purposely discarded their bikini top so they could join the boys at the local swimming pool; and the first time they were chastised for using the women’s washroom. Ivan also explores their years as a young butch, dealing with new infatuations and old baggage, and life as a gender-box-defying adult, in which they offer advice to young people while seeking guidance from others. (And for tomboys in training, there are even directions on building your very own unicorn trap.)
Tomboy Survival Guide warmly recounts Ivan’s adventures and mishaps as a diffident yet free-spirited tomboy, and maps their journey through treacherous gender landscapes and a maze of labels that don’t quite stick, to a place of self-acceptance and an authentic and personal strength. These heartfelt, funny, and moving stories are about the culture of difference a guide” to being true to one’s self.
Becoming a Visible Man
by Jamison Green
At least two generations of transgender, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people have emerged since Becoming a Visible Man was first published in 2004, but the book remains a beloved resource for trans people and their allies.
Since the first edition's publication, author Jamison Green's writings and advocacy among business and governmental organizations around the world have led to major changes in the fields of law, medicine, and social policy, and his (mostly invisible) work has had significant effects on trans people globally. This new edition captures the changes of the last two decades, while also imparting a message of self-acceptance and health.
With profoundly personal and eminently practical threads, Green clarifies transgender experience for transgender people and their families, friends, and coworkers. Medical and mental health care providers, educators, business leaders, and advocates seeking information about transgender concerns can all gain from Green's integrative approach to the topic. This book candidly addresses emotional relationships that are affected by a transition, and brings refined integrity to the struggle to self-define, whether one undergoes a transition or chooses not to.
Emphasizing the lives of transgender men—who are often overlooked—he elucidates the experience of masculinity in a way that is self-assured and inclusive of feminist values. Green's inspirational wisdom has informed and empowered thousands of readers. There is still no other book like Becoming a Visible Man in the transgender canon.
Free To Be
by Jack Turban, MD
This authoritative guide to understanding and navigating gender identity from an acclaimed expert on the mental health of transgender and gender diverse youth is “a must-read for anyone seeking to better understand how we can truly help all our children thrive” (Chelsea Clinton, #1 New York Times bestselling author).
Kids today are more gender-fluid and expansive than ever before. In America, around two percent of teenagers (over 700,000) openly identify as transgender. As it becomes increasingly common for us to encounter and know transgender kids, as well as kids with expansive notions of gender, it is vital that we have the tools to truly see and support them.
Free to Be is a comprehensive deep dive by internationally renowned child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr. Jack Turban into the science, medicine, and politics of gender identity. You will be immersed in the lives of three trans and gender diverse youth—Meredith, Kyle, and Sam—as they navigate their gender identities, make decisions around gender-affirming medical and psychological care, and confront an overwhelming political and social terrain.
By combining the latest scientific research, stories of transgender children, and the intricacies of today’s political gender wars, Free to Be is an essential “resource that will empower trans and non-binary people everywhere, as well as those who love and want to support them” (Jazz Jennings, author of Being Jazz and star of I Am Jazz).
Trans Mission: My Quest to a Beard
by Alex Bertie
A brave firsthand account of online personality Alex Bertie's life, struggles, and victories as a transgender teen, as well as a groundbreaking guide for transitioning teens.
Long before he became known for his YouTube videos, Alex Bertie was an isolated, often-afraid transgender teenager looking for answers. In this revolutionary memoir and valuable resource, Alex recounts his life, struggles, and victories as a young trans man. Along the way, he provides readers with accessible, highly researched explanations of gender, sexuality, and transitions. He explores without judgment how complicated all these things can be, and how many equally authentic ways there are to live as yourself and find happiness.
It can be hard for questioning teens to believe in a brighter future, let alone find any sense of community. Here, with clarity and compassion, Alex writes as a supportive older brother for transitioning teens, their allies, their parents, and anyone looking to better understand others -- and themselves.
Trans Masculine History
The Hidden Case of Ewan Forbes: And the Unwritten History of the Trans Experience
by Zoë Playdon
Ewan Forbes was born to a wealthy, landowning family, holders of a baronetcy, in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, in 1912. Assigned female at birth, his true identity was nevertheless clear even in childhood—and so, with the support of his mother, he was taken to European specialists and eventually treated with early preparations of synthetic testosterone. Raised as a boy at home but socially obliged to present himself as a girl in public until his official coming out to the Queen, Ewan grew up, became a doctor, and got married. (This required him to correct the sex on his birth certificate, which was possible at that time without much fuss.) For decades, he lived a quiet life as a husband, doctor, and a pillar of the local community.
But in 1965, Ewan’s older brother died unexpectedly—leaving Ewan, the next oldest man in the family, to inherit the baronetcy. When his cousin John—spurred on by Ewan’s sister—contested the inheritance he was forced to defend his male status in Scotland’s supreme civil court, where he prevailed.
This hugely important case would have changed the lives of trans people across the world—had it not been hidden. The hearing was conducted privately, the media were gagged, and those involved were sworn to secrecy. The case remained unknown until 1996 and is at last described here, along with the life of Ewan Forbes, for the first time. Enlightening and galvanizing, The Hidden Case of Ewan Forbes is a “remarkable…vital historical reference” (Booklist) for transgender history and the ongoing struggle for trans rights.
Stone Butch Blues, Leslie Feinberg’s 1993 first novel, is widely considered in and outside the U.S. to be a groundbreaking work about the complexities of gender. Feinberg was the first theorist to advance a Marxist concept of “transgender liberation.” Sold by the hundreds of thousands of copies and also passed from hand-to-hand inside prisons, Stone Butch Blues has been translated into Chinese, Dutch, German, Italian, Slovenian, Turkish, and Hebrew (with hir earnings from that edition going to ASWAT Palestinian Gay Women). The novel was winner of the 1994 American Library Association Stonewall Book Award and a 1994 Lambda Literary Award.
Stone Butch Bluese
by Leslie Feinberg
We Both Laughed In Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan narrates the inner life of a gay man moving through the shifting social, political, and medical mores of the second half of the 20th century. Sullivan kept comprehensive journals from age 11 until his AIDS-related death at 39. Sensual, lascivious, challenging, quotidian and poetic, the diaries complicate and disrupt normative trans narratives. Entries from twenty-four diaries reveal Sullivan’s self-articulation and the complexity of a fascinating and courageous figure.
We Both Laughed In Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan
by Lou Sullivan
Trans Blogs
Janitorqueer
Tranifesto
The Stages of Not Going on T (blogpost)
How to figure out if you’re transgender?
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