Confront Hate With Support: Seven Trans Writers — Seven Trans Novels
By: Som Paris
Tags: Transgender, Nonbinary, Books, LGBTQ, Book Review

Confront Hate With Support: Seven Trans Writers — Seven Trans Novels

As a trans reader, once I started one of these novels, I couldn’t rest until it was finished. I devoured them. Simply seeing trans people printed onto paper was an emotional and beautiful experience. For cis readers, these novels will be an insight into what it means to belong to one of the more marginalised communities in our society.

The world has far to go before it really, profoundly understands what it means to be trans, but reading trans novels is definitely a great way to start.

Here are 7 of my recommendations.

1. Dreadnought, by April Daniels

Danny, trapped in a transphobic family, has very little in the way of an outlet to express herself. While sneaking off to the mall to buy secret nail polish for her toes, she witnesses the death of a legendary superhero. His powers pass to her, and suddenly she finds herself a beautiful and very powerful woman.

If you’ve ever wanted to read a trans superhero story, this is the one, just waiting for you.

It’s got a fantastic baddie and a very smartly written TERF superhero/supervillain. TERF is the acronym for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist.” (It means someone who calls themself a radical feminist, but is really just obsessed with kicking down trans women.)

Dreadnought is, in many ways, a trans fantasy, as in, its premise contains the fantastic dream: what if physical transition just happened to me… suddenly and painlessly. This one is for lovers of trans fiction and superhero fiction alike.

2. If I Was Your Girl, by Meredith Russo

Another young adult novel, If I was Your Girl, is a carefully crafted teen tale to help people understand what it means to grow up trans.

Author Meredith Russo curated the details of her protagonist’s life to present a mainstream story that wouldn’t distract from her primary mission. The central character, Amanda, is white, heterosexual, thin, and pretty — and she’s the new girl in school (with a secret).

This one is for your conservative white friends, to try and help them gain understanding and empathy, and it’s very good at what it sets out to do.

If I was Your Girl is an emotional story that doesn’t shy away from the difficult hurdles of trans teen life, even if you’re white, straight, thin, and pretty.

3. Felix Ever After, by Kacen Callender

Felix Ever After is a good counterpart, and counterpoint, to If I was Your Girl. Felix is Black and transmasculine. He also oozes the anxieties of teen life, but his circle of friends, and he himself, are decidedly more queer.

The author, Kacen, uses they/them pronouns, and has given us a character who knows that he is trans, but isn’t entirely sure what that means. Is he definitely a boy?

The cover art is gorgeous. Yes! We need more representation of transmasculine people of colour, crowned in flowers, with their chest scars peaking out from their tank tops.

And the cover art promises exactly what this book delivers: a tasty emotional teenage story full of feelings, pain, art, and love.

4. Little Fish, by Casey Plett

Little Fish is a mess — in a really good way. This novel is not shy about delving into some of the darker aspects of surviving in this world as a trans woman. Most of us find ways to cope; Wendy drinks her way through a rough patch of life that shines light into some of the traumas that repeat themselves eternally amongst trans women.

The author also manages to deftly and sensitively weave in the role that conservative religion has taken in many of our lives.

This book exemplifies what it means to have long made it past your teenage years and young adult trials, and yet still find that society has left you, as a trans woman, very few ways to survive. Full of heart, pain, and avoidance, Little Fish flows beautifully, and is easy to read.

5. Nevada, by Imogen Binnie

From one mess to another, these two books complement each other, both throwing you into the mind of trans women who can’t quite pull life together.

Nevada is a true brainy road-story mess, in the great U.S. tradition of Hunter S. Thompson, Bukowski, or William Boroughs, except that it’s genuinely more interesting. (The shallow angst of drugged-out cis white men can really only take you so far.) Let Maria Griffiths take you even farther. No one does mess like a trans woman, especially one who has read too much and thinks far too much about gender and sex. If you pick up this book, your mind will definitely be taken on a road trip.