Feinberg, Leslie. Stone Butch Blues. Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books, 1993.
| The Library of Congress has shoehorned this book into the single subject heading "Transsexuals--Fiction." This classic novel of course deals with transsexuality, and it deals with FTM TGs, and it deals with lesbian culture in the 60s up to the present. If you haven't read this book, make it the next one you read, and be ready for your heart to be ripped to shreds and redeemed again and again in quick succession. | ||
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Hall, Radclyffe. The Well of Loneliness. New York: Covici Friede, 1928.
| I had always counted Stephen, the female hero of this classic lesbian novel of the 1920s, as a woman, until a lesbian I knew referred to Stephen with masculine pronouns, contrary to the pronouns Hall uses in reference to her protagonist. This is one of those excruciatingly beautiful books that should be made into a film by those folks who are keen on costuming and the English/European countryside. The books brings you perfectly into its fantasy. Stephen and hir cohorts become your friends; their bliss and sorrow will resonate with you, and you will dread turning the last page and closing the book on the life you've lead with them. | ||
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Taste This [Performance Group]. Boys Like Her: Transfictions. Vancouver: Press Gang Publishers, 1998.
| This is a gorgeous collection of short performance pieces by Taste This, the group name of Canadian performance artists Anna Camilleri, Ivan E. Coyote, Zoe Eakle, and Lyndell Montgomery. These "transfictions" are richly illustrated with photography by Tala Brandeis, Chloe Brushwood Rose, and Tricia McDonald. It is a book almost in the book arts tradition, combining text, graphics, and typography to enliven stories that were meant to be performed. At times, the format seems like a cover for its few, weaker and more self-conscious pieces, but as a whole, it is an engaging and effective collection. It refuses to fix identities, tattle on the particulars of the characters, or simplify the performers' experiences. | ||
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Waters, Sarah. Tipping the Velvet. New York: Riverhead Books, 1999.
| Set late in the 19th century, Tipping the Velvet is an incredible tale rendered believable by Waters' well crafted language. The characters lead alternatingly impoverished, glamorous, debauched, ruinous, and wholesome lives, set in the backdrop of the London theatrical, political, and sexual undergrounds. The protagonist spends much of the novel in boy drag, and Waters' careful attention to haberdashery is divine. | ||
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