Trans

'It's a boy!' or 'It's a girl!' are the first words almost all of us hear when we enter the world. Before our names, before we have likes and dislikes - before we, or anyone else, has any idea who we are. And two years ago, as Juno Dawson went to tell her mother she was (and actually, always had been) a woman, she started to realise just how wrong we've been getting it. 

In the updated second edition of Whipping Girl, Julia Serano, a transsexual woman whose supremely intelligent writing reflects her diverse background as a lesbian transgender activist and professional biologist, shares her powerful experiences and observation - both pre- and post-transition - to reveal the ways in which fear, suspicion, and dismissiveness toward femininity shape our societal attitudes toward trans women as well as gender and sexuality as a whole.

Covering American transgender history from the mid-20th century to today, Transgender History takes a chronological approach to the subject of transgender history, with each chapter covering major movements, writings, and events.

The transgender memoir you won't stop hearing about. Rhyannon Styles will do for transgender what Matt Haig did for mental health. Elle columnist Rhyannon Styles tells her unforgettable life story in The New Girl, charting her incredible journey from male to female. A powerful book about being true to ourselves, for anyone who's ever felt a little lost. Imagine feeling lost in your own body. Imagine spending years living a lie, denying what makes you you. This was Ryan's reality. He had to choose: die as a man or live as a woman.

A worldwide best seller, The Female Eunuch is a landmark book in the history of the women's movement and a ground-breaking feminist tract. Drawing from history, literature, and popular culture - past and present - Germaine Greer's searing examination of women's oppression is both an important social commentary and a passionately argued polemical masterpiece. This is one of the most famous, most widely read books on feminism ever written.

In Trans Like Me, CN Lester takes listeners on a measured, thoughtful, intelligent yet approachable tour through the most important and high-profile narratives around the trans community, turning them inside out and examining where we really are in terms of progress. From the impact of the media's wording in covering trans people and issues to the way parenting gender-variant children is portrayed, Lester brings their charged personal narrative to every topic and expertly lays out the work left to be done.

Jazz Jennings is one of the youngest and most prominent voices in the national discussion about gender identity. At the age of five, Jazz transitioned to life as a girl, with the support of her parents. A year later her parents allowed her to share her incredible journey in her first Barbara Walters interview, aired at a time when the public was much less knowledgeable about or accepting of the transgender community.

My Transgender Coming Out Story is the memoir of Parker Marie Molloy, a transgender woman from Chicago, detailing her upbringing, the struggles she had coming to terms with her transgender status, her experience starting hormone replacement therapy, and the act of building and sustaining relationships in a post-transition life. She also shares thoughts on gender, coming out, and the concept of self-discovery.

Frances is a 21-year-old college student in Dublin; she performs at spoken word events with her best friend and ex-lover, Bobbi. When they are profiled by journalist Melissa, they enter an orbit of beautiful houses and raucous dinner parties. Initially unimpressed, Frances begins an affair with Nick, Melissa's husband, which gives way to an unexpected intimacy.

A searing account of her search for identity and true self, Tranny reveals the struggles and victories that Laura Jane Grace, the lead singer of the cult punk rock band Against Me!, experienced in her quest for gender transition. Illuminated by Laura Jane's never-before-published journal entries reaching back to childhood, Tranny is an intensely personal and revelatory look inside her struggles with identity and addiction.

Sandra Pankhurst founded her trauma cleaning business to help people whose emotional scars are written on their houses. From the forgotten flat of a drug addict to the infested home of a hoarder, Sandra enters properties and lives at the same time. But few of the people she looks after know anything of the complexity of Sandra's own life. Raised in an uncaring home, Sandra's miraculous gift for warmth and humour in the face of unspeakable personal tragedy mark her out as a one-off and make this biography unmissable.

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2015. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara is an immensely powerful and heartbreaking novel of brotherly love and the limits of human endurance. When four graduates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they're broke, adrift and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success and pride.

The provocative best seller She's Not There is the winning, utterly surprising story of a person changing genders. By turns hilarious and deeply moving, Jennifer Finney Boylan explores the territory that lies between men and women, examines changing friendships, and rejoices in the redeeming power of family. Told in Boylan's fresh voice, She's Not There is about a person bearing and finally revealing a complex secret.

Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in rural Ireland. The similarities end there; they are from very different worlds. When they both earn places at Trinity College in Dublin, a connection that has grown between them lasts long into the following years. This is an exquisite love story about how a person can change another person's life - a simple yet profound realisation that unfolds beautifully over the course of the novel. It tells us how difficult it is to talk about how we feel and it tells us - blazingly - about cycles of domination, legitimacy and privilege. 

From the first time he was stopped and searched as a child, to the day he realised his mum was white, to his first encounters with racist teachers - race and class have shaped Akala's life and outlook. In this unique book he takes his own experiences and widens them out to look at the social, historical and political factors that have left us where we are today. Covering everything from the police, education and identity to politics, sexual objectification and the far right, Natives speaks directly to British denial and squeamishness when it comes to confronting issues of race and class that are at the heart of the legacy of Britain's racialised empire.