Transgender Lives: Complex Stories, Complex Voices

Gr 9 Up—This ambitious book combines interviews from self-identified transgender people with sections on trans-related information. It includes medical transition, historical information, and profiles of major figures, in ways both basic and more complex. Unfortunately, Cronn-Mills uses language that subtly alienates trans readers. For example, she states that trans people are "just like any individual you know," thereby assuming that readers are cisgender; the introduction relates a situation common to most trans people and then inquires, "Does this story seem strange to you?" The term "trans*" is often incorrectly used throughout the book. Cronn-Mills accurately defines the use of the asterisk as "a way to include all individuals who identify in some way with a 'trans' identity"; however, she also uses it when an individual is discussing their specific, discrete gender, rather than the whole spectrum. There are a lot of positives here, like her coverage of the CeCe MacDonald case and definitions of terms such as "transmisogyny" (albeit incompletely). But Cronn-Mills attempts to cover too much deeply complex information in a slim volume. Her resource list relies on Wikipedia and generic websites, and her bibliography is woefully limited. This title will provide a broad perspective, especially if presented alongside materials written by or with trans people about their lives and communities, such as Kate Bornstein's anthology Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation (Avalon, 2010), Susan Kuklin's Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out (Candlewick, 2014), and books published by Topside Press.—Kyle Lukoff, Corlears School, New York City