Library Spotlight: Posts

Transgender Day of Remembrance

On Monday November 21st from 11am-12pm, Michelle Emson will share her journey of transition in the context of Transgender Day of Remembrance. Learn from Michelle’s lived experience and acquire a richer understanding of some of the challenges that face transgender people in society, in work, and in life. A Transgender Journey from Lived Experience 

As part of Humber's Centre for Human Rights, Equity & Inclusion Dialogue 2022-23 series, Humber Libraries is highlighting additional resources related to the dialogues. 

Selected readings on Trans identities 

Trans Power by Juno Roche, 2019

Through intimate conversations with leading and influential figures in the trans community, such as Kate Bornstein, Travis Alabanza, Josephine Jones, Glamrou and E-J Scott, this book highlights the diversity of trans identities and experiences with regard to love, bodies, sex, race and class, and urges trans people - and the world at large - to embrace a 'trans' identity as something that offers empowerment and autonomy. Powerfully written, and with humour and advice throughout, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in the future of gender and how we identify ourselves. 

Fairest by Meredith Talusan, 2020 

A singular, beautifully written coming-of-age memoir of a Filipino boy with albinism whose story travels from an immigrant childhood to Harvard to a gender transition and illuminates the illusions of race, disability, and gender. 

Becoming a Visible Man by Jamison Green, 2020

With profoundly personal and eminently practical threads, Green clarifies transgender experience for transgender people and their families, friends, and coworkers. Medical and mental health care providers, educators, business leaders, and advocates seeking information about transgender concerns can all gain from Green's integrative approach to the topic. This book candidly addresses emotional relationships that are affected by a transition, and brings refined integrity to the struggle to self-define, whether one undergoes a transition or chooses not to.

Selected readings on Trans care and community 

Trans Bodies, Trans Selves by Laura Erickson-Schroth (Editor), 2022

Now in a new, thoroughly updated edition, Trans Bodies, Trans Selves remains a revolutionary resource-a comprehensive, reader-friendly guide for transgender people, with each chapter written by transgender and gender expansive authors. 

Trans Care by Hil Malatino, 2020

 

A radical and necessary rethinking of trans care What does it mean for trans people to show up for one another, to care deeply for one another? How have failures of care shaped trans lives? What care practices have trans subjects and communities cultivated in the wake of widespread transphobia and systemic forms of trans exclusion? Trans Care is a critical intervention in how care labor and care ethics have been thought, arguing that dominant modes of conceiving and critiquing the politics and distribution of care entrench normative and cis-centric familial structures and gendered arrangements. A serious consideration of trans survival and flourishing requires a radical rethinking of how care operates. 

Shuster, S. M., & Westbrook, L. (2022). Reducing the Joy Deficit in Sociology: A Study of Transgender Joy. Social Problems, 00, 1-19,  https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spac034 

Joy is a crucial element of people’s everyday lives that has been understudied by sociologists. This is particularly true for scholarship about transgender people. To address what we term a joy deficit in sociology, we analyze 40 in-depth interviews with trans people in which they were asked what they find joyful about being trans. 

Selected readings on Transphobia 

Transpeople: Repudiation, Trauma, Healing by Christopher Acton Shelley, 2008

 

Transgendered people face an array of interpersonal repudiations in their everyday lives, emanating from the political right through to the left, from social conservatives, various leading psychiatrists, radical feminists, as well as many lesbians and gays. In Transpeople, Christopher Shelley examines why so many transpeople are treated with such prejudice from a broad range of the socio-political spectrum, and how society can - and must - improve its understanding of transpeople and trans-related issues. Shelley's study of discrimination and acceptance uses an interdisciplinary approach that includes in-depth interviews with ten male-to-female and ten female-to-male transpeople, along with psychological, feminist, and political theory. 

Unlivable Lives: violence and identity in transgender activism by Laurel Westbrook, 2020

 

The vast majority of anti-violence activism in the United States occurs within the framework of identity politics. Identity-based movements, such as those to stop violence against people of color, women, and LGBT people, have become so commonplace as to seem to be a natural way to reduce violence. Unlivable Lives examines how identity politics and anti-violence activities shape group identity and practices of activism in ways that can be unintentionally damaging to the very groups they aim to protect.  

Selected collections of Canadian poets and prose.  

I Hope We Choose Love by Kai Cheng Thom, 2019

What can we hope for at the end of the world? What can we trust in when community has broken our hearts? What would it mean to pursue justice without violence? How can we love in the absence of faith? In a heartbreaking yet hopeful collection of personal essays and prose poems, blending the confessional, political, and literary, acclaimed poet and essayist Kai Cheng Thom dives deep into the questions that haunt social movements today. With the author's characteristic eloquence and honesty, I Hope We Choose Love proposes heartfelt solutions on the topics of violence, complicity, family, vengeance, and forgiveness. 

It Was Never Going to Be Okay by jaye simpson, 2021

A collection of poetry and prose exploring the intimacies of understanding intergenerational trauma, Indigeneity and queerness, while addressing Urban Indigenous Diaspora and breaking down the limitations of sexual understanding as a trans woman. 
 

Why I Was Late by Charlie Petch, 2021

Why I Was Late fuses text with performance, bringing a transmasculine wisdom, humour, and experience to bear upon tailgates, spaceships, and wrestling rings. Fierce, tender, convention re-inventing—Petch works hard. And whether it's as a film union lighting technician, a hospital bed allocator, a Toronto hot dog vendor, or a performer/player of the musical saw, the work is survival. Heroes are found in unexpected places, elevated by both large and small gestures of kindness, accountability and acceptance. 

About the speaker 

Michelle Emson (she/her) is an international human rights advocate specializing in diversity and inclusion, trans rights, 2SLGBTQI issues, and mental health. An award-winning public speaker, Michelle has been delivering professional workshops and talks since 2012 to clients in education, healthcare, corporate, policing, and government both in Canada and internationally. In addition to being a facilitator at Egale, she serves as Digital Director for Women’s March Global, on the Steering Committee of the North-Simcoe Muskoka Trans Health Service, and Principal Consultant for Sanctuary Studios Inc. Michelle is an author, entrepreneur, and documentary filmmaker supplementing a life-long career in information technology. In 2017, she received a YWCA Women of Distinction Award for her work. Michelle identifies as a lesbian woman with a transgender lived experience.