TNBI LIBRARY
All the Information You Need
These are just some of the books available that have really helped a lot of people from our community and they're here to borrow, for free, so you have access to everything you need.
If you would like to borrow any of the titles below, just drop us a chat message and we'll arrange it.
QUEER. A GRAPHIC HISTORY.
By Meg-John Barker and Julia Scheele
"Activist-academic Meg-John Barker and cartoonist Julia Scheele illuminate the histories of queer thought and LGBTQ+ action in this groundbreaking book.
A kaleidoscope of characters from the diverse worlds of pop culture, film, activism and academia - such as James Bond, Judith Butler and the Wizard of Oz - guide us on a journey through the ideas, people and events that have shaped queer theory.
From identity politics and gender roles to privilege and exclusion, Queer explores how we came to view sex, gender and sexuality in the ways that we do, and how culture can shift out perspective of what's 'normal'. So shake off the status quo and start seeing things queerly."
NOT JUST A TOMBOY
A TRANS MASCULINE MEMOIR
By Caspar J. Baldwin
"This is the story of one trans man's exploration of gender identity, set against changing cultural attitudes from the '90s to the present day.
Caspar Baldwin grew up in a time when being trans was not widely accepted by society, and though progress has been made since then, trans men are still underrepresented and misunderstood. Grappling with the messy realities of gender expectations while giving a stark and moving account of his own experiences, Baldwin grants a nuanced understanding of what it's like to be a trans boy or man. With its unflinching portrayal of the vulnerability, confusion, dysphoria, empowerment, peace and joy that are all part of transitioning, this book provides an invaluable source of support for trans men and is a memoir that breaks the mould."
HOW TO UNDERSTAND YOUR GENDER. A PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR EXPLORING WHO YOU ARE
By Alex Iantaffi and Meg-John Barker
Foreword by S. Bear Bergman
"Have you ever questioned your gender identity? Do you know somebody who is transgender or who identifies as non-binary? Do you ever feel confused when people talk about gender diversity?
This down-to-earth guide is for anybody who wants to know more about gender, from its biology, history, and sociology to the role it plays in our relationships and interactions with family, friends, partners, and strangers. Activities throughout the book will engage people of all genders in a thoughtful, practical way, and help you understand people whose gender might be different from your own."
BLACK ON BOTH SIDES. A RACIAL HISTORY OF TRANS IDENTITY
By C. Riley Snorton
"Black On Both Sides identifies multiple intersections between blackness and transness from the mid-nineteenth century to present-day anti-black and anti-trans legislation and violence. Drawing on a deep and varied archive of materials, C. Riley Snorton attends to how slavery and the production of racialized gender provided the foundations for an understanding of gender as mutable."
LIFE ISN'T BINARY.
ON BEING BOTH, BEYOND, AND IN-BETWEEN
By Meg-John Barker & Alex Iantaffi
Foreword by CN Lester
"Much of society's thinking operates in a highly rigid and binary manner; something is good or bad, right or wrong, a success or failure, and so on. Challenging this limited way of thinking, this groundbreaking publication looks at how non-binary methods of thought can be applied to all aspects of life, offering new and greater ways of understanding ourselves and how we view and understand the world we live in and how we all bend, blur, or break society's binary codes."
TRANS MISSION
MY QUEST FOR A BEARD
By Alex Bertie
"I guess we should start at the beginning. I was born on 2 November 1995. The doctors in the hospital took one look at my genitals and slapped an F on my birth certificate. 'F' for female, not fail - though that would actually have been kind of appropriate given present circumstances.
When I was 15, I realised I was a transgender man. That makes it sound like I suddenly had some lightbulb moment. In reality, coming to grips with my identity has taken a long time.
Over the last 6 years, I've come out to my family and friends, changed my name, battled the healthcare system, started taking male hormones and have had surgery on my chest. My quest to a beard is almost complete. This is my story."
BECOMING A VISIBLE MAN
By Jamison Green
"In this artful and compelling inquiry into the politics of gender, leading transsexual activist Jamison Green combines candid autobiography with informed analysis to offer unique insight into the multiple challenges of the female-to-male transsexual experience, ranging from encounters with prejudice and strained relationships with family to the development of an FTM community and the realities of surgical sex reassignment.
Brimming with frank and often poignant recollections of Green's own experiences - including his childhood struggles with identity and his years as a lesbian parent prior to his sex-reassignment surgery - the book examines transsexual-ism as a human condition, and sex reassignment as one of the choices that some people feel compelled to make in order to manage their gender variance."
THE TESTOSTERONE FILES
MY HORMONAL AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION FROM FEMALE TO MALE
By Max Wolf Valerio
"Max Wolf Valerio's observations about transitioning from a lesbian to a heterosexual male both challenge and confirm our assumptions about gender. As Valerio undergoes the physical and emotional changes associated with testosterone treatment, he is intrigued by his eye-opening discoveries about the nature of masculinity and femininity. Raw, gripping and poetic, The Testosterone Files offers a perspective on men and women that only someone who's lived in both skins can speak to with such insight and eloquence."
THE BOY WHO WAS BORN A GIRL.
ONE MOTHER'S UNCONDITIONAL LOVE FOR HER CHILD
By Jon & Luisa Edwards
"Brought up as female for fifteen years, Jon can remember feeling different from other girls since he was only five years old.
But it will take years of depression, incessant bullying, self-harm and isolation before he discovers why.
When Jon eventually confides to his mother that he feels like a boy, Luisa commits herself unconditionally to helping her child.
For Jon, the changes that follow are his path to happiness. But for Luisa, this means coming to terms with the enormous loss of her daughter."
QUEER SEX
A TRANS AND NON-BINARY GUIDE TO INTIMACY, PLEASURE AND RELATIONSHIPS
By Juno Roche
"In this frank, funny and poignant book, transgender activist Juno Roche discusses sex, desire and dating with leading figures from the trans and non-binary community.
Calling out prejudices and inspiring readers to explore their own concepts of intimacy and sexuality, the first-hand accounts celebrate the wonder and potential of trans bodies and push at the boundaries of how society views gender, sexuality and relationships.
Empowering and necessary, this collection shows all trans people deserve to feel brave, beautiful and sexy."
TRANS*
A QUICK AND QUIRKY ACCOUNT OF GENDER VARIABILITY
Jack Halberstam
"In the past decade, public discussions of transgender issues have increased exponentially. What was once regarded as an unusual or even unfortunate disorder has become an accepted articulation of gendered embodiment as well as a new site for political activism and recognition. With this increased visibility of trans people have come power and regulation. What prompted such an extensive rethinking of our understanding of gendered embodiment? How did a stigmatized identity become so central to U.S. and European articulations of self? And how have people responded to new definitions of sex and the gendered body? In Trans*, Jack Halberstam examines these recent shifts in the meaning and representation of the gendered body, exploring the possibilities of a nongendered, gender-optional, or gender-queer future."
FINDING SELF
A TRANSGENDER PERSON'S GUIDE TO PHYSICAL TRANSITION (FOR TRANSMASCULINE AND NONBINARY PEOPLE)
By Sage Buch
"When I first realized I was trans, the journey of transition felt like a never ending uphill-battle to me. The amount of information was simultaneously overwhelming and nonexistent. I found pieces here and there that felt fitting for me, but so much of the information I found felt exclusionary. At the time, I didn't have trans people around me to ask questions of, or to lean on. Because of that, I spent the last seven years doing deep-dive research into all aspects of physical transition through not just reading recorded scientific research, but also through my own personal experience, interviews and interactions with doctors, fellow trans people, parents, families, and attending large gender conferences such as the Philadelphia Trans wellness conference (Philadelphia, PA), and Genderevolution (Salt Lake City, UT). As I collected all of the information I could, I pooled all my notes together and created what is now this book.
This book exists for you. So that whatever questions you have are answered, or are clarified enough for you to do more research. So that your journey may be a touch easier. So that no matter where you are in the world, no matter what kind of support you have around you, you can hear the voice of another trans person calling out to you, uplifting you. - Sage."
FEMALE HUSBANDS
A TRANS HISTORY
By Jen Manion
"Long before people identified as transgender or lesbian, there were female husbands and the women who loved them. Female husbands - people assigned female who transed gender, lived as men, and married women - were true queer pioneers. Moving deftly from the colonial era to just before the First World War, Jen Manion uncovers the riveting and very personal stories of ordinary people who lived as men despite tremendous risk, danger, violence, and threat of punishment. Female Husbands weaves the story of their lives in relation to broader social, economic, and political developments in the United States and the United Kingdom, while also exploring how attitudes towards female husbands shifted in relation to transformations in gender politics and women's rights, ultimately leading to the demise of the category of 'female husband' in the early twentieth century. Groundbreaking and influential, Female Husbands offers a dynamic, varied, and complex history of the LGBTQ past."
TRANSGENDER HEALTH
A PRACTITIONER'S GUIDE TO BINARY AND NON-BINARY TRANS PATIENT CARE
By Ben Vincent PHD
Foreword by Dr Stuart Lorimer
"The number of people coming out as transgender continues to rise, and this book informs healthcare and medical practitioners on how to deliver excellent primary and secondary care to gender diverse patients.
This guide shows how to sensitively treat and care for transgender patients in healthcare settings. Distilling cutting-edge research into practical advice, it covers everything from referral procedures to respectful language and insights on the wider social and ethical issues experienced by this growing client group."
WHAT DOES GOD THINK?
TRANSGENDER PEOPLE AND THE BIBLE
By Cheryl B. Evans
"A thought provoking book that offers hope, healing and understanding.
Presented with the idea that her transgender child was "not of God", Cheryl B. Evans set out to see what God really thinks about transgender people. What does the Bible say? Why is there such a great divide among Christians? Why do some Christians insist there is no such thing as a transgender person while other Christians accept and affirm transgender people? And most importantly, what does God think?
This is an invitation to examine scriptures and give consideration to the social, cultural, and scientific facts that impact what we believe, and the way we internally feel about transgender people."
TRANS LIKE ME
A JOURNEY FOR ALL OF US
By CN Lester
"What does it mean to be transgender? How do we discuss the subject? In this eye-opening book, CN Lester, academic and activist, takes us on a journey through some of the most pressing issues concerning the trans debate: from pronouns to Caitlyn Jenner; from feminist and LGBTQ activists to the rise in referrals for gender variant children - all by the way of insightful and moving passages about the author's own experience. Trans Like Me shows us how to strive for authenticity in a world which often seeks to limit us by way of labels."
TRANS BRITAIN
OUR JOURNEY FROM THE SHADOWS
(Edited) By Christine Burns
"In recent years, transgender people have seemed to burst into the public eye, from our television screens to the ballot box. This apparently overnight emergence, though, is just the latest stage in a long and varied history. The renown of Paris Lees and Hari Nef has its roots in the efforts of those who struggled for equality before them but were met with indifference - and often outright hostility - from mainstream society.
Trans Britain chronicles this journey in the worlds of those who were there to witness a marginalised group develop into the visible phenomenon we see today. Here is everything you always wanted to know about the background of the trans community, but never knew how to ask."
BEYOND THE GENDER BINARY
By Alok Vaid-Menon
"Is it really a choice when you don't get to select the options you are given to begin with?
Alok Vaid-Menon dares the world to see gender not in black and white, but in full color. Taking from their own experiences as a gender non-conforming artist, they show us that gender is a malleable and creative form of expression. The only limit is your imagination."
NONBINARY
MEMOIRS OF GENDER AND IDENTITY
Compiled and Edited By Micah Rajunov and Scott Duane
"The voices in this anthology highlight how our experiences are shaped by a deeply entrenched gender binary. Powerful first-person narratives break away from mainstream portrayals of gender diversity, cutting across lines of age, race, ethnicity, ability, class, religion, family, and relationships. Thirty authors illustrate what life could be if we allowed the categories of "man" and "woman" to loosen and bend."
TRANS
EXPLORING GENDER IDENTITY AND GENDER DYSPHORIA
Compiled and Edited by Dr Az Hakeem
"This book, the first of its kind, presents an easy-to-read, jargon-free guide to help anyone understand the terminology, the concept and the day-to-day reality of gender dysphoria and related concepts.
TRANS is a book for everyone - insightful enough for professionals, but accessible enough for all. Put simply, TRANS explains what gender dysphoria is, how it affects people, and what is available, medically and psychotherapeutically, to support people with gender dysphoria.
The editor, Dr Az Hakeem, has assembled a group of contributors to give readers a truly accessible guide to the psychology and the everyday reality of gender dysphoria, transvestism, gender reassignment, and being trans. The book even addresses 'the difficult questions' like "What do we tell the children?" and "What happens when you change your sex, then change your mind?"."
THEY/THEM/THEIR
A GUIDE TO NONBINARY & GENDERQUEER IDENTITIES
By Eris Young
"In this insightful and long-overdue book Eris Young explores what it's like to live outside of the gender binary and how it can impact on one's relationships, sense of identity, use of language and more.
Drawing on the author's own experiences as a nonbinary person, as well as interviews and research, They/Them/Their shares common experiences and challenges faced by those who are nonbinary, and what friends, family and other cisgender people can do to support them. Breaking down misconceptions and providing definitions, information on healthcare, the history of nonbinary identities and gender-neutral language, this much-needed guide is for anyone wanting to fully understand nonbinary and genderqueer identities.
Eris Young is a queer, nonbinary trans writer and editor from Santa Ana, California, and currently lives in Edinburgh, UK."