Women’s stories are powerful and reading about the lives of these women in their own words will open your mind to life lessons you’d never thought of before. These five queer and trans women have shared their insights with their autobiographies in these pages and we recommend you pick up each of these books.
Bad Feminist author Roxane Gay takes on issues of weight and body image in this memoir about feeding your soul and body, how and why she gained a bigger body, and explores ideas of self-care, self-comfort, and self-preservation in this well-known memoir. It’s a raw story about recovering from sexual violence and every woman will be able to relate to struggling with our relationships to our bodies.
Multi-genre artist Vivek Shraya chronicles her insights into misogyny and toxic masculinity having been socialized as a boy and treated as a “too feminine” man and a “not feminine enough” woman. She’s seen inside the world of men from the inside and lived in the world as a woman and has something to say about the patriarchy, how we can all reimagine gender, and all be true to ourselves in every way.
Brittney Griner is finally home from her nine-month internment in Russia, an international news story that led to a prisoner exchange between the U.S. and Russia for her freedom. To get some backstory on WNBA star Griner, read her 2015 memoir to learn her coming-of-age and coming out stories.
This 2017 book is the follow-up to Janet Mock‘s first autobiography Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More. In Surpassing Certainty, Mock frames her 20s in the context of the struggle for human rights and it makes a great read for anyone in their 20s.
Glennon Doyle’s #1 New York Times bestseller has sold over two million copies because women connect with her message of living fearlessly for ourselves and believing that “we can do hard things.” Named a best book of the year by O: The Oprah Magazine, The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Bloomberg, and Parade, this memoir includes the story of how Doyle realized she loved soccer player Abby Wambach and left her husband for her.
