Tobia, Jacob. Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2019.

From the moment a doctor in Raleigh, North Carolina, put “male” on Jacob Tobia’s birth certificate, everything went wrong. Alongside “male” came many other, far less neutral words: words that carried expectations about who Jacob was and who Jacob should be, words like “masculine” and “aggressive” and “cargo shorts” and “SPORTS!” Naturally sensitive, playful, creative, and glitter-obsessed, as a child Jacob was given the label “sissy.” In the two decades that followed, “sissy” joined forces with “gay,” “trans,” “nonbinary,” and “too-queer-to-function” to become a source of pride and, today, a rallying cry for a much-needed gender revolution. Through revisiting their childhood and calling out the stereotypes that each of us have faced, Jacob invites us to rethink what we know about gender and offers a bold blueprint for a healed world–one free from gender-based trauma and bursting with trans-inclusive feminism.

Boylan, Jennifer Finney.She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders.Broadway Books, 2013.

When she changed genders, she changed the world. It was the groundbreaking publication of She’s Not There in 2003 that jump-started the transgender revolution. By turns hilarious and deeply moving, Boylan—a cast member on I Am Cait; an advisor to the television series Transparent, and a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times—explores the territory that lies between men and women, examines changing friendships, and rejoices in the redeeming power of love and family.

Immerwahr, Daniel. How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019.

We are familiar with maps that outline all fifty states. And we are also familiar with the idea that the United States is an “empire,” exercising power around the world. But what about the actual territories—the islands, atolls, and archipelagos—this country has governed and inhabited? In How to Hide an Empire, Daniel Immerwahr tells the fascinating story of the United States outside the United States. In crackling, fast-paced prose, he reveals forgotten episodes that cast American history in a new light.

Kinzer, Stephen. Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq. Times Books, 2007.

"Regime change" did not begin with the administration of George W. Bush, but has been an integral part of U.S. foreign policy for more than one hundred years. Starting with the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 and continuing through the Spanish-American War and the Cold War and into our own time, the United States has not hesitated to overthrow governments that stood in the way of its political and economic goals. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 is the latest, though perhaps not the last, example of the dangers inherent in these operations. In Overthrow, Stephen Kinzer tells the stories of the audacious politicians, spies, military commanders, and business executives who took it upon themselves to depose monarchs, presidents, and prime ministers. He also shows that the U.S. government has often pursued these operations without understanding the countries involved; as a result, many of them have had disastrous long-term consequences.

Kinzer, Stephen.The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire. Henry Holt & Co., 2017.

How should the United States act in the world? Americans cannot decide. Sometimes we burn with righteous anger, launching foreign wars and deposing governments. Then we retreat—until the cycle begins again. No matter how often we debate this question, none of what we say is original. Every argument is a pale shadow of the first and greatest debate, which erupted more than a century ago. Its themes resurface every time Americans argue whether to intervene in a foreign country. Revealing a piece of forgotten history, Stephen Kinzer transports us to the dawn of the twentieth century, when the United States first found itself with the chance to dominate faraway lands. That prospect thrilled some Americans. It horrified others. Their debate gripped the nation.

Gosset, Reina, and Eric A. Stanley, eds.Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility (Critical Anthologies in Art and Culture).MIT Press, 2017.

The increasing representation of trans identity throughout art and popular culture in recent years has been nothing if not paradoxical. Trans visibility is touted as a sign of a liberal society, but it has coincided with a political moment marked both by heightened violence against trans people (especially trans women of color) and by the suppression of trans rights under civil law. Trap Door grapples with these contradictions. The essays, conversations, and dossiers gathered here delve into themes as wide-ranging yet interconnected as beauty, performativity, activism, and police brutality. Collectively, they attest to how trans people are frequently offered "doors"—entrances to visibility and recognition—that are actually "traps," accommodating trans bodies and communities only insofar as they cooperate with dominant norms.

Karnow, Stanley.In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines. Ballentine Books, 2016.

Stanley Karnow won the Pulitzer Prize for this account of America’s imperial experience in the Philippines. In a swiftly paced, brilliantly vivid narrative, Karnow focuses on the relationship that has existed between the two nations since the United States acquired the country from Spain in 1898, examining how we have sought to remake the Philippines “in our image,” an experiment marked from the outset by blundering, ignorance, and mutual misunderstanding.

Foster, John Bellamy.Naked Imperialism: the U.S. Pursuit of Global Dominance. Monthly Review Press, 2006.

During the Cold War years, mainstream commentators were quick to dismiss the idea that the United States was an imperialist power. Even when U.S. interventions led to the overthrow of popular governments, as in Iran, Guatemala, or the Congo, or wholesale war, as in Vietnam, this fiction remained intact. During the 1990s and especially since September 11, 2001, however, it has crumbled. Today, the need for American empire is openly proclaimed and defended by mainstream analysts and commentators. John Bellamy Foster’s Naked Imperialismexamines this important transformation in U.S. global policy and ideology, showing the political and economic roots of the new militarism and its consequences both in the global and local context.

Talusan, Grace. The Body Papers: A Memoir. Restless Books, 2019.

Born in the Philippines, young Grace Talusan moves with her family to a New England suburb in the 1970s. At school, she confronts racism as one of the few kids with a brown face. At home, the confusion is worse: her grandfather’s nightly visits to her room leave her hurt and terrified, and she learns to build a protective wall of silence that maps onto the larger silence practiced by her Catholic Filipino family. Talusan learns as a teenager that her family’s legal status in the country has always hung by a thread—for a time, they were “illegal.” Family, she’s told, must be put first.

Velasco Shaw, Angel and Luis. H. Francia.Vestiges of War: The Philippine-American War and the Aftermath of an Imperial Dream 1899-1999. NYU Press, 2002.

U.S. intervention in the Philippines began with the little-known 1899 Philippine-American War. Using the war as its departure point in analyzing U.S.—Philippine relations, Vestiges of War retrieves this willfully forgotten event and places it where it properly belongs—as the catalyst that led to increasing U.S. interventionism and expansionism in the Asia Pacific region. This seminal, multidisciplinary anthology examines the official American nationalist story of "benevolent assimilation" and fraternal tutelage in its half century of colonial occupation of the Philippines.

Mendoza, S. Lily and Strobel, Leny Mendoza.Back from the Crocodile's Belly: Philippine Babaylan Studies and the Struggle for Indigenous Memory. Center for Babaylan Studies, 2013.

Back from the Crocodile’s Belly is a celebration of the beauty, richness, and diversity of indigenous ways of being as revealed in the critical studies and creative performances of living native traditions in the Philippines and in the United States diaspora. Through the use of primary and secondary research, the re-reading of historical and cultural archives, and the articulation of silenced stories, the book seeks to open up space for an alternative discourse on indigenous knowledge that does not merely reproduce progressivist and social evolutionary paradigms that invariably position the Indigenous Subject as “primitive,” “barbaric,” and nothing more than a “quaint relic of the past.”

Benedicto, Bobby.Under Bright Lights: Gay Manila and the Global Scene. University of Minnesota Press, 2014.

Bobby Benedicto draws on ethnographic research and employs affective, first-person storytelling techniques to capture the visceral experience of Manila, painting a remarkably counterintuitive portrait of gay spaces in postcolonial cities. He argues that Filipino gay men’s pursuit of an elusive global gay modernity sustains the very class, gender, and racial hierarchies that structure urban life in the Philippines.

Johnson, Mark. Beauty and Power: Transgendering and Cultural Transformation in the Southern Philippines. London, UK: Berg Publishers, 1997.

This compelling study of gender and sexual diversity in the Southern Philippines addresses general questions about the relationship between the making of gender and sexualities, the politics of national and ethnic identities and processes of cultural transformation in a world of contract labourers and transnational consumers.

Manalansan, Martin F.Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora. Duke University Press, 2003.

A vivid ethnography of the global and transnational dimensions of gay identity as lived by Filipino immigrants in New York City, Global Divas challenges beliefs about the progressive development of a gay world and the eventual assimilation of all queer folks into gay modernity. Insisting that gay identity is not teleological but fraught with fissures, Martin Manalansan IV describes how Filipino gay immigrants, like many queers of color, are creating alternative paths to queer modernity and citizenship.

Eugenides, Jeffrey. Middlesex: A Novel. Picador, 2002.

"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974. . ." So begins the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City, and the race riots of l967, before they move out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction.

Apostol, Gina. Insurrecto. Soho Press, 2018.

Two women, a Filipino translator and an American filmmaker, go on a road trip in Duterte’s Philippines, collaborating and clashing in the writing of a film script about a massacre during the Philippine-American War. Chiara is working on a film about an incident in Balangiga, Samar, in 1901, when Filipino revolutionaries attacked an American garrison, and in retaliation American soldiers created “a howling wilderness” of the surrounding countryside. Magsalin reads Chiara’s film script and writes her own version. Insurrectocontains within its dramatic action two rival scripts from the filmmaker and the translator—one about a white photographer, the other about a Filipino schoolteacher. Within the spiraling voices and narrative layers of Insurrectoare stories of women—artists, lovers, revolutionaries, daughters—finding their way to their own truths and histories.

Syjuco, Miguel.Ilustrado.Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010.

It begins with a body. On a clear day in winter, the battered corpse of Crispin Salvador is pulled from the Hudson River—taken from the world is the controversial lion of Philippine literature. Gone, too, is the only manuscript of his final book, a work meant to rescue him from obscurity by exposing the crimes of the Filipino ruling families. Miguel, his student and only remaining friend, sets out for Manila to investigate. To understand the death, Miguel scours the life, piecing together Salvador's story through his poetry, interviews, novels, polemics, and memoirs. The result is a rich and dramatic family saga of four generations, tracing 150 years of Philippine history forged under the Spanish, the Americans, and the Filipinos themselves. Finally, we are surprised to learn that this story belongs to young Miguel as much as to his lost mentor, and we are treated to an unhindered view of a society caught between reckless decay and hopeful progress.

Linmark, R. Zamora. Leche. Coffee House Press, 2011.

After thirteen years of living in the U.S., Vince returns to his birthplace, the Philippines. As he ventures into the heat and chaos of the city, he encounters a motley cast of characters, including a renegade nun, a political film director, arrogant hustlers, and the country’s spotlight-driven First Daughter. Haunted by his childhood memories and a troubled family history, Vince unravels the turmoil, beauty, and despair of a life caught between a fractured past and a precarious future.

José, F. Sionil. The Samsons: The Pretenders and Mass. Modern Library, 2000.

With these two passionate, vividly realistic novels, The Pretenders and Mass, F. Sionil José concludes his epochal Rosales Saga. The five volumes span much of the turbulent modern history of the Philippines, a beautiful and embattled nation once occupied by the Spanish, overrun by the Japanese, and dominated by the United States. The portraits painted in The Samsons, and in the previously published Modern Library paperback editions of Dusk and Don Vicente(containing Tree and My Brother, My Executioner), are vivid renderings of one family from the village of Rosales who contend with the forces of oppression and human nature.

Aoki, Ryka. Seasonal Velocities. Trans-Genre Press, 2012.

Seasonal Velocities invites the reader on a fragile and furious journey along the highways and skyways of discovery, retribution, and resolve. Through her poetry, essays, stories, and performances, award-winning writer Ryka Aoki has consistently challenged, informed, and enthralled queer audiences across the United States.

Vaid-Menon, Alok. Femme in Public. Self-published (available on Vaid-Menon’s website), 2017.

What feminine part of yourself did you have to destroy in order to survive in this world? At what point does femininity become synonymous with apology? Who hurt the people who hurt you? Let's figure it out. Femme In Public is a collection of poetry by nonbinary artist Alok Vaid-Menon. In the author's words it "is a dream of what it could look like to celebrate transfemininity in public – both in ourselves and for the people who desire us (by which I mean: everyone, across time, always)."

Hill, Katie Rain.Rethinking Normal: A Memoir in Transition.Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2015.

Katie never felt comfortable in her own skin. She realized very young that a serious mistake had been made; she was a girl who had been born in the body of a boy. Suffocating under her peers bullying and the mounting pressure to be normal, Katie tried to take her life at the age of eight years old. After several other failed attempts, she finally understood that Katie—the girl trapped within her—was determined to live. In this first-person account, Katie reflects on her pain-filled childhood and the events leading up to the life-changing decision to undergo gender reassignment as a teenager. She reveals the unique challenges she faced while unlearning how to be a boy and shares what it was like to navigate the dating world and experience heartbreak for the first time in a body that matched her gender identity. Told in an unwaveringly honest voice, Rethinking Normal is a coming-of-age story about transcending physical appearances and redefining the parameters of "normalcy" to embody one's true self.

Jennings, Jazz.Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen.Ember, 2017.

Jazz Jennings is one of the youngest and most prominent voices in the national discussion about gender identity. At the age of five, Jazz transitioned to life as a girl, with the support of her parents. A year later, her parents allowed her to share her incredible journey in her first Barbara Walters interview, aired at a time when the public was much less knowledgeable or accepting of the transgender community. This groundbreaking interview was followed over the years by other high-profile interviews, a documentary, the launch of her YouTube channel, a picture book, and her own reality TV series—I Am Jazz—making her one of the most recognizable activists for transgender teens, children, and adults.

Kuklin, Susan.Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out.Candlewick, 2019.

Author and photographer Susan Kuklin met and interviewed six transgender or gender-neutral young adults and used her considerable skills to represent them thoughtfully and respectfully before, during, and after their personal acknowledgment of gender preference. Portraits, family photographs, and candid images grace the pages, augmenting the emotional and physical journey each youth has taken. Each honest discussion and disclosure, whether joyful or heartbreaking, is completely different from the other because of family dynamics, living situations, gender, and the transition these teens make in recognition of their true selves.

Gino, Alex.George.Scholastic, Inc., 2015.

When people look at George, they think they see a boy. But she knows she's not a boy. She knows she's a girl. George thinks she'll have to keep this a secret forever. Then her teacher announces that their class play is going to be Charlotte's Web. George really, really, REALLY wants to play Charlotte. But the teacher says she can't even try out for the part ... because she's a boy. With the help of her best friend, Kelly, George comes up with a plan. Not just so she can be Charlotte—but so everyone can know who she is, once and for all.

Hennessey, M.G.The Other Boy.Harper Collins, 2018.

Twelve-year-old Shane Woods is just a regular boy. He loves pitching for his baseball team, working on his graphic novel, and hanging out with his best friend, Josh. But Shane is keeping something private, something that might make a difference to his friends and teammates, even Josh. And when a classmate threatens to reveal his secret, Shane’s whole world comes crashing down. It will take a lot of courage for Shane to ignore the hate and show the world that he’s still the same boy he was before. And in the end, those who stand beside him may surprise everyone, including Shane.

Russo, Meredith.If I Was Your Girl.Flatiron Books, 2016.

Amanda Hardy is the new girl in school in Lambertville, Tennessee. Like any other girl, all she wants is to make friends and fit in. But Amanda is keeping a secret. There's a reason why she transferred schools for her senior year, and why she's determined not to get too close to anyone. And then she meets Grant Everett. Grant is unlike anyone she's ever met—open, honest, kind—and Amanda can't help but start to let him into her life. As they spend more time together, she finds herself yearning to share with Grant everything about herself ... including her past. But she's terrified that once she tells Grant the truth, he won't be able to see past it. Because the secret that Amanda's been keeping? It's that she used to be Andrew.