Exile and Pride
Author: Eli Clare
Publisher: South End Press
ISBN: 978-0896086050
Format: Paperback 
Publication Date: 1999
Pages: 160

At long last, an essay on the politics and poetics of queer disability. Eli Clare, a poet with cerebral palsy, movingly describes her attempt to climb Mount Adams--not, she points out, as a "supercrip," like the boy without hands who bats .486 on his Little League team, but just as an impaired person who loves to hike: a story about ableism rather than disability. Avoiding easy answers and journalistic sunshine, she recounts the story of the fight for disabled access, touching on the history of the freak show. She tracks the origins of her own tenacity and self-knowledge to her rural Oregon upbringing and the conflicting personality of her father--who sexually abused her, but also taught her how to frame a house, how to use a chainsaw. "I think of the words crip, queer, freak, redneck," Clare remarks. "None of these are easy words. They mark the jagged edge between self-hatred and pride, the chasm between how the dominant culture views marginalized peoples and how we view ourselves, the razor between finding home, finding our bodies, and living in exile, living on the metaphoric mountain." --Regina Marler

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Crossdressing: Erotic Stories
Author: Rachel Kramer Bussel
Publisher: Cleis Press
ISBN: 978-1573442886
Format: Paperback 
Publication Date: 2007
Pages: 200

From femmes who channel Marlene Dietrich in the sexiest of suits to men who love nothing more than the feel silky panties stretched tight against their skin, these characters boldly indulge their fantasies of being a girl — or a guy — for a night. Drag queens get dolled up for a night on the town, a dyke packs a special surprise beneath her dress, and a devoted husband puts his dress-up skills to the ultimate test in this seductive new collection.

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Transparent: Love, Family, and Living the T with Transgender Teenagers
Author: Cris Beam
Publisher: Harvest Books
ISBN: 978-0156033770
Format: Paperback 
Publication Date: 2008
Pages: 336

In this gripping, illuminating and deeply moving portrait of transgender teens in Los Angeles, the smallest incidents reverberate sharply. Beam, volunteering at a support center for trans teens, helps a young woman named Christina make changes on her driver's license: her name from Eduardo and the gender from male to female. The DMV clerk adamantly refuses to make the adjustment and only acquiesces after the humiliated Christina has a meltdown and Beam, pretending to be an ACLU lawyer, demands a supervisor. Christina is one of several, mostly minority, male-to-female transgender women to whom Beam becomes attached. Their group interactions—including fights, friendships and daily struggles to survive—form the center of the book. Though these women's lives are difficult—when Christina is beaten during an attempted rape, she has to lie to the police about being transgender—there are also moments of quick wit. As Beam morphs from parent to therapist, chum, cheerleader and legal adviser, she seamlessly blends memoir, reportage and advocacy. The result is a vivid and fiercely empathetic narrative that juxtaposes dead-on portraits of these young women with clearly articulated fury at a culture that's not only fearful of anyone who deviates from traditional gender roles but treats minorities and the poor with contempt.

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Becoming Alec
Author: Darwin Ward
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 978-0615174686
Format: Paperback 
Publication Date: 2007
Pages: 248

Alec always thought she was a lesbian. She got thrown out of her house for it as a teenager, in fact. But when she moves to Chicago she begins a journey of self- discovery that leads to a place that she never imagined possible. She discovers that she isn't a lesbian at all....but a straight man.

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