Favorite books with trans protagonists?
Favorite books with trans protagonists?
As the title says, what are your favorite books with trans protagonists?
I just finished Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki and thoroughly enjoyed it. The main character is a runaway trans girl who wants to be a violinist. Without spoiling too much it’s also a sci-fi/fantasy story and has a lesbian side-romance. TW for rape and general transphobia.
What Moves The Dead by T. Kingfisher is another favorite of mine. It has a nonbinary protagonist and is a SFF horror rewrite of The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe. If you like an alt-history Victorian setting with the undead this is straight up your alley.
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Most of my favourites are books vaguely about the trans (especially femme) experience. Not for everyone, but I can list a bunch anyway:
- Small Beauty - A quiet book following a trans-woman through processing grief and spirituality.
- Nevada - Classic trans-femme reading. The main character gets fired from her job and dumped and sets off to Nevada to find answers about herself.
- Hell Followed with Us - Very YA, but fairly enjoyable post-apocalyptic book following a trans-man main character.
- A Safe Girl to Love - Another classic trans-femme book, a collection of short stories covering a large range of trans experiences. Casey Plett's other books are also excellent.
Big recs on Nevada. Everyone should read this book at some point.
I tried, but I couldn't do it. I feel like I need to hand in my trans fem card or something...
Hey, it's fine. You know, I couldn't get past the very first level of Celeste, so...
It's hard to admit, but I'm bad at Fallout New Vegas
That's fair, I feel. It's admittedly written in a way that can be very hard to parse or follow and it could be a bit hard to connect with if you're not within a few years of the protag's age.
I do, however, still feel that one should give it another try eventually if it doesn't connect right away. It's a book after all and will not be going anywhere.
I'm not going to hold it up as some kind of trans bible, but Nevada holds a good amount of insight and thoughtful discussion of the way trans women navigate life and social situations both post- and pre-transition. The protagonist is dirty and complicated and arguably 'bad' representation and yet she's a beautiful look into being a trans woman that's not shown, and will never be shown, in popular media.
It's also available as an audiobook and it's read by the author which is a really awesome thing.
I think you're on to something there. I'm not American and I'm a lot older than the protagonist. Her life felt very removed from mine, so I didn't get the feeling of resonating with her experiences the way many people seem to. But you make a good point about coming back to it at some point! I should do that
I tried reading Hell Followed With Us, but as a trans man from a deeply religious rural community in the south it was a little too real for me at the time. 😂 I’ve been thinking about giving it another shot though, from what I remember reading the author’s experiences overlap a lot with mine and I love a good post apocalypse book.
I’ll have to add the rest to my to-read list as well, thanks for the recommendations!
Hello fellow trans man from a deeply religious community in the south. I will definitely be reading that book.