Tag Archives: reading recommendations

New Materials Monday: Trans Literature

Posted by on February 25, 2019 No comments

If you’ve read Becoming Nicole by Amy Ellis Nutt for the Summer Reading Program, then you may be interested in the following five books, selected by the author Susan Stryker. In a November 2018 interview with Five Books, Stryker explains how she made her selections. Jordy Rosenberg’s Confessions of a Fox is a retelling of the story of criminal Jack Sheppard (better known as Mack the Knife) as a transgender man, while I’ve Got a Time Bomb is an illustrated punk rock novel about “very non-normative sorts of trans lives.” Black on Both Sides looks at the intersection of blackness and transness. Histories of the Transgender Child explores “notions of the transgender child” that “[stretch] back to at least the early 20th century” and are “related to notions of emotional and physical plasticity or malleability that are intimately related to questions of race.” Trap Door is an “art-focused” book that documents trans people’s contributions to visual culture.

All five books are available through The Ames Library. (And if you’re not sure about how to find them on the shelf, just ask a librarian!)

Confessions of a Fox by Jordy Rosenberg: PS3618.O8323 C66 2018

I’ve Got a Time Bomb by Sybil Lamb: PS3612.A5449 I94 2014

Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity by C. Riley Snorton: E-book

Histories of the Transgender Child by Julian Gill-Peterson: HQ77.95.U6 G55 2018

Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility, edited by Reina Gossett, Eric A. Stanley, and Johanna Burton: NX650.G44 T73 2017

Black Folklore for Halloween

Posted by on October 23, 2018 No comments

If you’re the type of person who likes to curl up with a creepy story around Halloween, look no further than this list from Shondaland.com, a website founded by Shonda Rhimes. The list features several pivotal works of African-American folklore, such as Virginia Hamilton’s The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales, to get you into that Halloween mood!

“Hamilton’s expansive set of folktales is the perfect introduction to a staple of African trickster characters, slave folklore, and the tradition of oral storytelling that black Americans have long held close. Perhaps most importantly, Hamilton provides a straightforward, blunt explanation of the origin and importance of black folklore in America, noting that while you’re having fun reading these stories you must remember, “these were once a creative way for oppressed people to express their fears and hopes to one another… We must look look on the tales as a celebration of the human spirit.”

You can find The People Could Fly; The Dark-Thirty: Southern Tales of the Supernatural by Patricia C. McKissack; Her Stories: African American Folktales, Fairy Tales, and True Tales by Virginia Hamilton; and The Annotated African American Folktales by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Maria Tatar right here at The Ames Library. If you need help locating them on the shelf, just drop by a librarian’s office on our first floor.