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Trans Day of Visibility Reads
To recognize the International Transgender Day of Visibility (TDOV)—a day dedicated to celebrating transgender people and their contributions to society and raising awareness of discrimination faced by transgender people worldwide—we bring you books that reflect stories of transgender people and characters.
All Books in this Collection
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Out Proud
$19.95Produced in partnership with Egale Canada Human Rights Trust, Out Proud: Stories of Pride, Courage, and Social Justice is the second in a series of essay anthologies designed to give attention to issues that are sometimes ignored in the mainstream media—and a voice to those most closely affected by them. Expertly edited by sociologist Dr. Douglas Gosse, Out Proud features more than fifty short essays on the experience of LGBTTIQQ2SA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual, Transgendered, Intersexual, Queer, Questioning, 2-Spirited and Allies) and written by members of our diverse, Canadian community. Following the critical success of the first book in the series, Out Loud: Essays on Mental Illness, Stigma and Recovery, Out Proud aims to broaden the conversation around sexuality and social justice.
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Pass Me By: Gone Fishin’
$20.002020 BPAA Best Illustrated Book Of The Year Award Winner
Pass Me By is an award-winning queer, coming of age, and coming out romance. A five book series starts with Ed, a reserved man recently diagnosed with dementia, living in a small northern Canadian town. As Ed’s memory declines he loses touch with the present and spends more time in a past he chose to forget, touring with a glam rock band across Canada in the early 1970s. In Gone Fishin’, we are introduced to Ed, a retired man spending his time fishing and ordering the same dishes at the local diner with his close friend Rory. Rocked by a recent dementia diagnosis, Ed attempts to keep a semblance of a normal life. As his health worsens and daily routines become increasingly difficult, his panic begins to grow. Forgetting what he orders every day at the diner, disoriented by a grocery list, lost in familiar spaces, Ed’s memories become a faded photograph of a past with the potential to disappear forever.
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Plenitude
$20.00A non-binary faun wishes their body had a variety of sex organs, interchangeable daily. A prison abolitionist scrutinizes Rothko paintings on the carceral state’s boardroom walls. The insurrectionary tactics of mass social movements spread, like a secret handshake, from Chile to Hong Kong to Toronto.
Shaped by Daniel Sarah Karasik’s experience of grassroots social and political advocacy, these poems are an offering to those engaged in struggles for a better world—and an acknowledgement of the sometimes contradictory meanings of those struggles. How do individual erotic desires relate to collective desires for deliverance from alienation and exploitation? How might we dream of a more humane future, and work towards building it, without minimizing the challenges that stand in our way?
Plenitude cartwheels towards a world that might be: a world without cops or bosses, without prisons, without oppressive regulation of gender and desire. It is a song for the excluded and forgotten and those who struggle alongside them.
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Radiant Voices
$22.00A collection of essays inspired by EMMA Talks, a speakers’ series committed to amplifying the voices of thinkers, activists, scholars, artists, and community builders who are also women-identified, trans, and gender-nonconforming folks.
From Idle No More to Black Lives Matter to the Me Too movements and more, one thing is certain: There is a burgeoning collective desire to hear non-dominant voices in subtle, curious, generative ways.
The Vancouver-based EMMA Talks speakers’ series amplifies the voices of women-identified, trans, and gender-nonconforming folks. Curated by carla bergman, the series showcases a diversity of writers, thinkers, activists, scholars, artists, and community builders. Radiant Voices is the anthology inspired by EMMA Talks.
Through engaging essays by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Silvia Federici, Vivek Shraya, Chief Janice George, dr. amina wadud, Astra Taylor, and others, seasoned writers align with emerging writers who share from a worldview that promotes anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-ageism, and anti-ableism, and much more. Themes of connection, rediscovery, creating, social justice, celebration, and matriarchy are revealed in these 21 essays.
This is an era in which the marginalized can publicly share their stories en masse. Now is the time to celebrate the eruption of all these radiant voices.
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Second Lives, Second Chances
$29.95The engrossing memoir of a plastic and reconstructive surgeon involved in groundbreaking and life-changing procedures
Through his work in plastic and reconstructive surgery, Dr. Donald Laub changed the lives of thousands of people who had been shunned by society. Dr. Laub’s influence fostered the development of three key areas in the surgical profession: pioneering and influencing international humanitarian medical missions in the developing world, being at the forefront of gender affirmation surgery for transgender people since 1968, and the education and training of over 50 plastic and reconstructive surgeons.
His unstinting efforts to surgically correct cleft palates gave new lives to thousands of children in developing countries. As one of the original surgeons to perform gender affirmation surgery, Laub not only continually improved on his methods, but he also became a tireless advocate for the rights of transgender people. His non-profit foundation (Interplast, now called ReSurge International) has sent thousands of multidisciplinary teams to perform transformative and reconstructive surgery in the developing world.
Second Lives, Second Chances is more than just a memoir; it’s a testament to how the determination of one person can bring others together to make a lasting difference in the world.
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Sideshow Concessions
$15.95Sideshow Concessions is the first book from queer performer and scholar Lucas Crawford. A collection populated by the circus-like bodies and experiences of a narrator navigating rural pasts and urban presents, Sideshow Concessions is the unofficial story of someone who is both a bearded lady and the fattest man in the world.
“Sideshow Confessions is an accessible glimpse at the absurd — a clever look at a trans narrative which explores its challenges without drowning in them… Crawford’s sense of humour is a breath of fresh air.”—Broken Pencil
“Sideshow Concessions is fresh, honest, heartbreaking, and funny, with turns of phrase equally intelligent and moving.”—Karen Solie
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Small Beauty
Coping with the death of her cousin, Mei abandons her life in the city to live in his now empty house in a small town. There she connects with his history as well as her own, learns about her aunt’s long-term secret relationship, and reflects on the trans women she has left behind.
Small Beauty explores the protagonist’s transness, but it also tenderly yet bitterly unpacks her experiences as a mixed-race person of Chinese descent, cycles of death and loss, and queer and intergenerational community. Small Beauty wanders through isolation, and then breaks it.
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Special Topics in Being a Parent
$26.95An illustrated guide of practical parenting advice informed by queer experiences for anyone doing the work of parenting, from the author and illustrator of Special Topics in Being a Human
Being a parent is enormously joyful, but it is also an enormous amount of work. Parenting requires you to make dozens of decisions a day, every one of which in some way shapes the person your child will grow into. It can be difficult to know in these moments whether you’re on the right track. Progressive parents especially can feel adrift when caregiving in ways that were not modelled for them.
From S. Bear Bergman – advice columnist, educator, and queer dad with fifteen years of parenting under his belt – comes Special Topics in Being a Parent, a witty and insightful collection of child-rearing tips for those in search of realistic ideas about screens and lunches that don’t come with a side order of judgment. Using his own choices – and errors – by way of example, Bergman offers suggestions for various stages of the parenting journey, from asking “Are we ready to have a kid?” to talking with children about diversity and difference, to questioning gender expectations placed on both kids and parents. With plenty of humour and compassion, and featuring charming illustrations by Saul Freedman-Lawson, this guide helps parents to live their parenting values while enabling their kids to grow their capacities, understand the world, and above all, feel connected and loved.
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Stages of Tanning Words and Remembering Spells
$19.95In their second poetry collection, Tawahum Bige explores belonging and voice of a Two-Spirit Dene youth.
These poems are a stark plunge—an answer to how voice emerges for a young Two Spirit growing up in so-called “Surrey, BC,” far from his Łutselk’e Dene territories. The fundamental thrum in which vocal cords produce sound to whisper, cry, holler and laugh—these inner workings are made corporeal through moments of growth from childhood to young adulthood to show how the seeds sprouted for someone who needed to learn to express to find their path.
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The Fifth
$22.95Critically acclaimed in the original French, The Fifth offers a refreshing take on sexuality and desire. Alice, Gayle, Camille and Simon live together in a polyamorous relationship, affectionately referred to as the Family. Camille, a trans woman, and Gayle are lovers; Simon is in a relationship with Alice; and Alice is in a relationship with everyone. But when Alice invites her seemingly straight ex-boyfriend Eloy to move into their Sherbrooke, Quebec apartment—albeit temporarily—the Family’s dynamic begins to change in unexpected ways.
Narrated by each Family member along with script-like interludes, the daily lives of Alice, Gayle, Camille, Simon, and Eloy show a loving and satisfying non-traditional relationship. Infused with Quebecois culture, The Fifth is a story rarely represented in Canadian literature. Not about infidelity or possessiveness, rather, it is about the individuals as they navigate love and desire, and punch stereotypes and stigma in the face. Now available for the first time in English from translator and award-winning author Monica Meneghetti, The Fifth is honest, delightfully unconventional, breaks down barriers and challenges norms in our society.
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The Remedy
$22.95Lambda Literary Award winner
To remedy means to heal, to cure, to set right, to make reparations.
The Remedy invites writers and readers to imagine what we need to create healthy, resilient, and thriving LGBTQ communities. This anthology is a diverse collection of real-life stories from queer and trans people on their own health-care experiences and challenges, from gay men living with HIV who remember the systemic resistance to their health-care needs, to a lesbian couple dealing with the experience of cancer, to young trans people who struggle to find health-care providers who treat them with dignity and respect. The book also includes essays by health-care providers, activists, and leaders, with something to say about the challenges, politics, and opportunities surrounding LGBTQ health issues.
Both exceptionally moving and an incendiary call-to-arms, The Remedy is a must-read for anyone–gay, straight, trans, and otherwise–passionately concerned about the right to proper health care for all.
Contributors include Amber Dawn, Sinclair Sexsmith, Francisco Ibanez-Carrasco, Cooper Lee Bombardier, Kara Sievewright, Kelli Dunham, Vivek Shraya, and many more.
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The Subtweet
$21.952021 Dublin Literary Award Finalist
2021 Lambda Literary Awards Finalist for Transgender Fiction
2020 Toronto Book Awards Finalist“The Subtweet is affecting, unnerving, empowering, and often truly LOL.” — Foreword Reviews, starred review
“A beautifully crafted novel about race, music, and social media.” — Booklist
Includes an exclusive free soundtrack
Celebrated multidisciplinary artist Vivek Shraya’s second novel is a no-holds-barred examination of the music industry, social media, and making art in the modern era, shining a light on the promise and peril of being seen.
Indie musician Neela Devaki has built a career writing the songs she wants to hear but nobody else is singing. When one of Neela’s songs is covered by internet artist RUK-MINI and becomes a viral sensation, the two musicians meet and a transformative friendship begins. But before long, the systemic pressures that pit women against one another begin to bear down on Neela and RUK-MINI, stirring up self-doubt and jealousy. With a single tweet, their friendship implodes, a career is destroyed, and the two women find themselves at the centre of an internet firestorm.
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The Winter Knight
$24.95Arthurian legends are reborn in this upbeat queer urban fantasy with a mystery at its heartThe knights of the round table are alive in Vancouver, but when one winds up dead, it’s clear the familiar stories have taken a left turn. Hildie, a Valkyrie and the investigator assigned to the case, wants to find the killer — and maybe figure her life out while she’s at it. On her short list of suspects is Wayne, an autistic college student and the reincarnation of Sir Gawain, who these days is just trying to survive in a world that wasn’t made for him. After finding himself at the scene of the crime, Wayne is pulled deeper into his medieval family history while trying to navigate a new relationship with the dean’s charming assistant, Bert — who also happens to be a prime murder suspect. To figure out the truth, Wayne and Hildie have to connect with dangerous forces: fallen knights, tricky runesmiths, the Wyrd Sisters of Gastown. And a hungry beast that stalks Wayne’s dreams.The Winter Knight is a propulsive urban fairy tale and detective story with queer and trans heroes that asks what it means to be a myth, who gets to star in these tales, and ultimately, how we make our stories our own.
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Things She Could Never Have
$22.95Accomplished, sensitive, and often disturbing, these stories take us into the lives of modern Pakistanis-privileged and poor, gay, trans, and straight, men and women, in Karachi and Toronto. “Whisperings of the Devil” takes us into the mind of a mistreated maidservant’s boy who gets seduced into the role of a suicide bomber. In “To Allah We Pray,” two privileged and educated young men, one of them home from Toronto, gallivant through the streets of Karachi, finally walking into a doomed mosque. “Things She Could Never Have” is a love story about two young trans women living in Karachi. “Born on the First of July” opens the door into the home of a Toronto girl who has left to join ISIS and the devastated family she leaves behind. “The First” will astonish many readers by its depiction of sexual encounters of young college girls in Pakistan. These and other stories link us into the complexities of a sometimes troubled and often misrepresented Muslim society.
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transVersing
$19.95Originally produced for the stage by Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland and For the Love of Learning, transVersing features some of Newfoundland’s most vibrant and necessary trans-youth voices. Gathering the work of Violet Drake, Daze Jefferies, Fionn Shea, Perin Squires, Taylor Stocks, and Dane Woodland, and including the dramatic text by Berni Stapleton and Sharon King-Campbell, transVersing is where Shakespeare meets slam poetry and the fiddle meets soapbox rant. These are the creative and courageous voices charting our course to understanding and social justice for all.
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Vantage Points
$21.95Finalist, Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction
A provocative book by an acclaimed writer-filmmaker that combines memoir and media as seen through a trans lens
Following the death of the family patriarch, a box of newly procured family documents reveals writer-filmmaker Chase Joynt’s previously unknown connection to Canadian media maverick Marshall McLuhan. Vantage Points takes up the surprising appearance of McLuhan in Joynt’s family archive as a way to think about legacies of childhood sexual abuse and how we might process and represent them. To do so, Joynt stages a series of vignettes that place memoir in the context of other sources, media, and stories to create a tapestry – a montage-like experience of reading with surprising and revealing juxtapositions.
Joynt writes about difficult pasts and connects them to contemporary politics and ways of being, employing McLuhan’s seminal Understanding Media as an inciting framework. Vantage Points is a kaleidoscopic reckoning with the impact of media and masculinity on the stories we tell about ourselves and our families, a unique and highly visual approach to trans life writing, and an experimental move between gender and genre.
With black-and-white illustrations.