Top 5 Trans titles by Marika

This is our second in a monthly series of top five recommended titles by a member of our Book Buying Group, which includes classics as well as new titles. Here are Trans titles recommendations by Marika, who is an academic and is currently involved with a grassroots group "Trade Unionists for Trans Rights", she also co-hosts the Radical Reading Group that meets 2nd Tuesday of the Month at 7pm.

Kit Heyam, Before We Were Trans. Trans people have always existed … kind of. Heyam’s book offers a series of snapshots from around the world and across history of people whose gender hasn’t fitted into neat binaries, and the different freedoms and constraints they encountered in the societies they lived in.

Akwaeke Emezi, Freshwater. Emezi’s award-winning debut considers questions of gender, migration and trauma in a work of speculative fiction which draws on both Emezi’s own nonbinary identity and the Igbo spirituality of their Nigerian birthplace.

Talia Bhatt, Trans/Rad/Fem. Funny, fierce, and furious, Bhatt makes the case for a radical materialist transfeminism capable of challenging the pious platitudes of white western feminism.

Jules Gill Peterson, A Short History of Trans Misogyny. Why is so much more hatred directed at trans women than at trans men? Building on the work of earlier thinkers such as Julia Serano, Gill Peterson places contemporary trans politics and transmisogyny within a longer global history of gender panics.

Alison Rumfitt, Tell Me I’m Worthless. It’s not exactly escapist, but Rumfitt’s haunted house story explores the eldritch horrors lying just beneath the surface of contemporary British politics.

All of the books are available in the shop to buy or on line.  The exceptions are that Trans/Rad/Fem is not available on our website, but can be ordered through us,  A Short History of Trans Misogyny is due to be published on 25th June and can be pre-ordered.