Lena Dunham's Reading List (special edition): Trans Day of Visibility

Yesterday, I had the great honor of speaking in Washington for Trans Day of Visibility. I was invited by Christopher Street Project and representing FUTR (Families United for Trans Rights.)

I wanted to share the entirety of my remarks here. After all, what media picks up on is… this:

“Rare outing” is such funny code for “trans rights rally” but okay! (Also who wouldn’t want a break from being perceived when people continue to propogate the age old sin of photographing from below? But the sin is mine, because I read the Daily Wail as I call it and now I’ve been outed.)

BTW, the vibe was more this:

And I met so many incredible activists and thinkers (like my longtime internet bestie, brilliant writer and strategist Charlotte Clymer and tireless organizer, advocate & fellow animal lover Josie Caballero, among many others.)

In addition to the speech, I am also sharing a list of books by trans authors that are essential reading, whether you are a trans person, love a trans person, or simply want to understand more about the trans experience (that understanding is a gift to everyone, no matter your gender identity or expression.) These are just a smattering of favorites. I read my advance copy of Tommy Dorfman’s Maybe This Will Save Me as I drove from DC back to my parents’ apartment in the city- it has me meditating on family even more, thinking about the kind we are born into (my parents, who have placed a mattress in a walk in closet and often come in at 5am and drop literal shoes on my head because they’ve forgotten I’m there. And yet, there’s nowhere else I’d want to be tonight…) and the kind we make (DIET POKE, who is coming to spend some summer with me while I shoot a movie just because we can’t bear too much time without being under the same roof.)

I think the magic of meeting and re-meeting my brother through his transition is that somewhere along the way he became both.

REMARKS:

It’s an honor to be here today, to speak to and about a community that has impacted my life so profoundly.

We’ve heard from a range of incredible policy makers who can speak to the ways we can help to protect the civil rights of our trans friends and family.

We’ve heard a lot from people much more qualified than I am, about how to stand strong in the face of such hatred and misunderstanding.

Those experts have naturally addressed the dangers and traumas trans people face in America today, and hard truths about how trans people are valued by the current leadership of America.

But I wanted to take a moment to speak some joy- joy and gratitude that I have been able to love and be loved by trans people, and the happiness, heart and humor of those relationships and this community.

Growing up, I thought the best gift you could have in your corner was a sister- the connection, the shared experience, even the battles. What I’d seen on classic sitcoms was that sisters are there for each other, they protect each other and they teach each other. Even when they teased each other, it seemed sacred. But when my sibling came out as trans- and I learned I had never actually had a sister at all, but a wise, funny, resilient, powerful, remarkable brother- I found that the greatest thing you could have in your corner was a happy and embodied sibling, and- just as divine- a trans person in your family.

The experience of going through my brother’s transition has been a profound gift to our family. We have laughed, cried, learned, relearned and laughed some more (you really haven’t lived until you’ve seen your 75 year old cis hetero father stand in the middle or a party of chic trans girls calling something “slay.” He reaaally tried.) We all began to embrace constant motion and fluidity, to wear our identities lightly and to realize the only unshakable tenet of family is love. I’ve seen my parents grow into a new understanding of their child, and I re-met my sibling as the truest version of himself, the person he was as a child before society sent so many signals about what conformity meant and he had to shut away essential aspects of who he is.

But there have been extra special surprises, as I’ve gotten the chance to be close to my brother and to a myriad of dear trans friends and other family members- the gift of seeing the world in a new way, and learning I could exist in a new way too.

Like so many women, I have often felt constricted and inadequate, trying to measure up to the culture’s idea of what it means to be female. But as I have watched my trans loved ones come into their own truths, it was as if I went from perceiving only primary colors to an entire rainbow of subtle shades, from seeing flat images to experiencing the world in 4D. I released much of the need to define myself against someone else’s measuring stick, and was able to embrace aspects of myself that I had beaten into submission.

To know a trans person is to know someone who has taken a Herculean journey to overpower cultural assumptions, someone who has experienced profound inner and outer doubt and triumphed. Their very existence in this world is a miracle of self definition, and as a result my trans loved ones are the wisest, funniest and most embodied people I know, and they have a clarity of purpose that is rare and that makes everything they do that much more powerful. Their trans-ness doesn’t define them, but it does bring new definition to the lives of those who are given the gift of loving them.

When I asked my sibling what he might want to hear me say today (and what he did not want to hear me say, which included phrases like “boots the house down, mama”) he made it clear that there would be enough dialogue about what impossible odds are faced by trans people- especially trans youth and trans people of color- and enough conversation about the horrific abuses the government is attempting to commit. He said my only job was to express how special, sweet, fun, fab, delightful and divine it is to be embraced by trans people, to live in proximity to trans lives, to call this community our community.

If these words reach just one teenager who wonders if they’ve been abandoned by cis people, or one trans person struggling to remember how loved they are, I will have done my job.

We love you. We see you. We bow down to your charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent. And we are *lucky* to love you, to fight with and for you, to learn from you and to ensure that our rights are inseparable from yours. Trans lives don’t just matter- they transform the world into a place of possibility, joy and discovery.

I am so grateful to be here- supporting Christopher Street Project and Families United for Trans Rights. I’m grateful to fight alongside you for liberation. Trans liberation is all our liberation, and without it none of us are free.

READING:

Stone Butch Blues, Leslie Feinberg, 1993

In this seminal autobiographical novel, Leslie Feinberg writes the story of “Jess Goldberg” (a stand in for the author) a working class Jewish queer person who spends decades moving toward and away a new identity as a trans man, interfacing with both the burgeoning queer resistance and a different kind of resistance- from their family, their community and the police, who inflict continual violence on the bodies of the queer people who populate Jess’s world. While the novel deftly describes the experience of gendered violence, it is also erotic, romantic and often deeply funny.

Feinberg became a seminal figure in conversations about queerness, as they spent their life trying to understand if their identities as a lesbian and a trans person were at odds or could live in dialogue, as well as acting as a beacon for a new generation of queer people who could allow themselves more liberty and grace to explore and play with gender. Their last words were reported to be "Hasten the revolution! Remember me as a revolutionary communist."

Nevada, Imogen Binnie, 2013

Nevada is the deceptively low key story of Maria, a trans woman in Williamsburg who escapes her life on a road trip, where she is joined by James, a cis man questioning his gender. Their brief encounter is surprising and funny, tender and tragic. Since its publication, Binnie’s novel has acquired something of a cult status, enjoyed a celebrated republication in 2022 and has been credited with starting a modern trans literary movement.

An Unkindness of Ghosts, Rivers Solomon, 2017

Rivers Solomon’s novel reframes and undresses ideas about race, gender and history with the acuity of the best cultural critics- wrapped in the propulsiveness and texture of the best novels. Introducing me to the concept of “generation ships” this is the kind of speculative fiction that doesn’t just have you reflecting on the questions of outer space’s great beyond, but also on the vast expanse that is unknown inside us all.

A Year Without A Name, Cyrus Dunham, 2019

You may sense I am biased, but this is one of the most beautiful and surprising memoirs I’ve been lucky enough to read. At the risk of being a nepo sister (I’m the nepo because I’m related to him, NOT the other way around) I’ll say no more:)

Marsha: The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson, pre-order, 2025

This one is a must-read, for which I’ll simply share the blurb I was lucky enough to offer:

“Tourmaline continues her practice of creativity as a revolutionary act, this time to illuminate the remarkable life of Marsha P. Johnson. Marsha's story and Tourmaline's unique voice blend seamlessly, in a narrative that will break your heart and put it back together again, leaving you better than when it found you. This is a book for our times- full of inspiration, community, truth and - at its core- radical love.”

Light from Uncommon Stars, Ryka Aoki, 2021

Sci fi/fantasy (with a few notable exceptions like icon/heroine/bow down to the duchess Octavia Butler) was, for a long time, a pasty boys club. (I guess women were looking into the oven while men were lookin’ out at space, ammirite?) It’s not that we haven’t had people who don’t look like the Game of Thrones writer in the suspenders (does he actually wear suspenders? Can’t even be bothered to google and I’m sorry if that hurts you.) But they certainly haven’t gotten the same airtime as our Philip K. Dicks or our Robert A. Heinleins. I used to spend a lot of time at the sci fi bookshop near University Place with my father (RIP to that place and all the places.) It was during my “I only read books by women” phase- which lasted from 4th grade to age 20 and was honestly a choice made not from half-baked feminist principles but because I noticed a common thread of profound boredom every time I opened anything else. Kids are pretty practical.

It wasn’t usually easy to find something that fit my metric- though it did get me into Octavia and Ursula K. Le Guin early- but to quote Timothee Chalamet “the times they are a’ changin.”

That’s one of the many reasons Ryka Aoki is so exciting- as an artist and a figurehead. The minute I Googled her and saw her wearing cat ears on a panel, I was like “yes, totally, take my money.” But her work is even better than her headwear. If you’re a fan of The Three-Body Problem OR Diary of a Teenaged Girl, you’ll find much to love here.