November 20th is the Transgender Day of Remembrance. This yearly observance honors the memory of transgender people who were killed due to transphobic violence. TDOR was started in 1999 by transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith as a vigil to honor the memory of Rita Hester, a transgender woman who was killed in 1998. The vigil commemorated all the transgender people lost to violence since Rita Hester’s death, and began an important tradition that has become the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance.
GLAAD has a yearly memoriam of those who have been lost to anti-transgender violence over the years here.
Duke University Libraries has a LGBT Studies Resource Guide with specific primary sources within the Transgender Collections here.
Resources from our Collections:
We have several titles which focus on the transgender experience, along with resources highlighting LGBTQ+ and gender studies. All reviews provided by publisher.
All items are available for checkout and are located in the Engel Collection or the Graphic Medicine Collection in the Reading Room, Level 1.
First Year Out: A Transition Story Sabrina Symington
From laser hair removal and coming out to her parents, through to dating, voice training and gender reassignment surgery, this intimate and witty graphic novel follows the character of Lily as she transitions to living as her true, female self. Providing support and guidance on a range of issues such as hormones, medical procedures and relationships, the story traces the everyday thoughts, emotions and struggles many trans and non-binary people face and seeks to empower those who are starting to question their gender as well as promoting wider discussion about the complexities of gender and identity. Based on the author's own experiences as a trans woman, this honest and powerful work is a testament to being who you are and a celebration of gender diversity.
Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender Kit Heyam
A groundbreaking global history of gender noncomformity.
Today's narratives about trans people tend to feature individuals with stable gender identities that fit neatly into the categories of male or female. Those stories, while important, fail to account for the complex realities of many trans people's lives.
Before We Were Trans illuminates the stories of people across the globe, from antiquity to the present, whose experiences of gender have defied binary categories. Blending historical analysis with sharp cultural criticism, trans historian and activist Kit Heyam offers a new, radically inclusive trans history, chronicling expressions of trans experience that are often overlooked, like gender-nonconforming fashion and wartime stage performance. Before We Were Trans transports us from Renaissance Venice to seventeenth-centur Angola, from Edo Japan to early America, and looks to the past to uncover new horizons for possible trans futures.
More Than Organs Kay Ulanday Barrett
A love letter to Brown, Queer, and Trans futures, Kay Ulanday Barrett's More Than Organs questions "whatever wholeness means" for bodies always in transit, for the safeties and dangers they silo. These poems remix people of color as earthbenders, replay "the choreography of loss" after the 2015 Pulse shooting, and till joy from the cosmic sweetness of a family's culinary history. Barrett works "to build / a shelter // of / everyone / they meet," from aunties to the legendary Princess Urduja to their favorite air sign. More Than Organs tattoos grief across the knuckles of its left hand and love across the knuckles of its right, leaving the reader physically changed by the intensity of experience, longing, strength, desire, and the need, above all else, to survive.
Gender: A Graphic History Meg-John Barker, Jules Scheele
Join the creators of Queer: A Graphic History ('Could totally change the way you think about sex and gender' VICE) on an illustrated journey of gender exploration.
Is masculinity ‘toxic’? Why are public toilets such a political issue? How has feminism changed the available gender roles – and for whom? Why might we all benefit from challenging binary thinking about sex/gender?
In this unique illustrated guide, Meg-John Barker and Jules Scheele travel through our shifting understandings of gender across time and space – from ideas about masculinity and femininity, to non-binary and trans genders, to intersecting experiences of gender, race, sexuality, class, disability and more.
The Care We Dream Of: Liberatory & Transformative Approaches to LGBTQ+ Health Zena Sharman
Through a series of essays (by the author and others) and interviews, this book by the editor of the Lambda Literary Award-winning anthology The Remedy offers possibilities - grounded in historical examples, present-day experiments, and dreams of the future - for more liberatory and transformative approaches to LGBTQ+ health and healing.