Today is the last day of the #TransRightsReadathon! If you’re on BookTok, Bookstagram, or BookTwitter, then you’ve probably seen people posting all week using this hashtag. The Trans Rights Readathon is a decentralized fundraising effort started by author Sim Kern in response to recent anti-trans legislation being passed or proposed around the country. Using this hashtag, bookish content creators on all social media platforms have pledged to read as many books by trans authors or featuring trans representation as they can between March 20 and March 27, while raising money for organizations that support trans people and trans rights.
Sim Kern first announced the Trans Rights Readathon on TikTok earlier this month. The movement quickly gained traction, with over 1,300 creators signing up before the readathon even officially started and over 2,500 joining by the week’s end. Creators on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and other sites began using the hashtag to share their progress and spread reading lists and recommendations, as well as to promote individual fundraisers and make their own donation pledges. Many authors and publishers made books available for free or at a discounted price to enable more readers to participate in the challenge. (You can find a list of free ARCs and ebooks compiled by Sim Kern here.) Many libraries and bookstores also hopped on the bandwagon, making #TransRightsReadathon displays or sending out recommended reading lists in their newsletters.
I pledge to donate $50 to the Transgender Law Center’s Trans Health Legal Fund for every book by a trans author that I read this week.#TransRightsReadathon
— The Gothic Library (@gothic_library) March 20, 2023
While I’m not much of a social media content creator, I decided to make my own small pledge. Last Monday, I announced on Twitter my intention to join the Trans Rights Readathon and donate $50 to the Transgender Law Center’s Trans Health Legal Fund for every book by a trans author I read between March 20 and March 27. Since I’m not a fast reader, I decided to focus on reading novellas in audio format in order to maximize the number of books I could finish in a week. As of today, I’ve officially read a total of three books for the readathon. The first book I picked up was FINNA by Nino Cipri, a delightfully weird little sci-fi novella about retail workers in a Swedish furniture store that is prone to opening up portals into parallel worlds. The book is also a surprisingly sweet exploration of the new forms of caring and friendship that can evolve after the end of a romantic relationship. Next, I read Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt, a title I discovered through the #TransRightsReadathon hashtag. This one’s pretty heavy and dark, but it uses the haunted house genre (and plenty of literary allusions to Gothic works like The Haunting of Hill House, Jane Eyre, and The Bloody Chamber) to explore how hatred, bigotry, and fascism can corrupt people, places, and entire countries. And I just had time to squeeze in a third book over the weekend: Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey, which is a neo-Western set in a dystopian future where subversive Librarians traverse the desert landscape to spread both literature and liberation. Last night, upon finishing Upright Women Wanted, I donated $150 to the Trans Health Legal Fund. Feel free to match my pledge or donate to other trans rights organizations in solidarity.
If you’re only hearing about the Trans Rights Readathon now, just as it’s ending—not to worry! You can still read books by trans authors or featuring trans characters any time of the year, and trans rights organizations could always use more donations. If you need some recommendations, here are some of the books by trans and nonbinary authors that I’ve reviewed here over the years (this list is not comprehensive, as I’m pulling them by memory and from my limited knowledge of authors’ identities, so apologies to anyone I missed!):
- Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas—This debut YA novel by Aiden Thomas tells the story of trans teenager Yadriel who is raised within a highly gendered magic system. In an attempt to demonstrate his proficiency at the men’s role of summoning spirits, Yadriel accidentally summons the ghost of his school’s bad boy Julian Diaz and finds himself drawn into a murder investigation.
- The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders—This sci-fi novel set on a tenuously colonized planet where half the world is eternally engulfed in darkest night explores the boundaries of what is truly alien or monstrous.
- Lacrimore by SJ Costello—This indie-published debut novella is bursting with Gothic tropes and atmosphere. In a world ravaged by plague where death is a constant part of life, a fraudulent medium is drawn to an isolated mansion that harbors dark secrets.
- A Lady for a Duke by Alexis Hall—This regency romance centers trans protagonist Viola Carroll as she navigates her new role in a rigid society, all while falling in love with her childhood best friend, the Duke of Gracewood.
- Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin—This gore-soaked horror novel is a trans woman’s take on the gender apocalypse genre. A cast of primarily queer and trans characters try to survive in a world where a virus turns anyone with high enough testosterone levels into mindless cannibalistic beasts.
- The Merry Spinster by Daniel M. Lavery—This short story collection of “everyday horror” retells fairytales, folklore, and classic works of literature with a surreal twist, often playing with representations of gender and gendered language.
- The Midnight Bargain by C. L. Polk—This brilliant fantasy novel takes the tropes and atmosphere of a Regency romance and transports them into a unique secondary world where the practice of magic is segregated by gender.
- Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw—In this terrifying haunted house story, a wedding party learns that hauntings aren’t all fun and games when they spend the night in a Heian-era manor said to harbor the spirit of a bride who was buried alive.
- Queen of the Conquered by Kacen Callender—In this fantasy novel set on a fictitious island with a brutal history of colonization and racism, an ambitious young woman with a gift for reading and controlling minds makes questionable decisions in her quest to claw her way to power.
- The Scapegracers by H. A. Clark—This YA fantasy debut could be described as The Craft meets Mean Girls, except more heartwarming and queer. Lesbian outcast Sideways Pike finds herself suddenly in with a clique of popular girls after promising to provide magical entertainment for their Halloween party.
- She Is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran—In this debut YA horror novel, bisexual teen Jade Nguyen makes a deal with her estranged father to come to Vietnam and help out with the French Colonial house he’s renovating into a B&B. But the more time she spends in the house, the more Jade realizes the house is haunted by, not just individual ghosts, but also a dark history of violence, colonization, and hunger.
- Widdershins by Jordan L. Hawk—This first book in Jordan L. Hawk’s lengthy Whyborne & Griffin series is a subversive take on Lovecraft’s cosmic horror mythos that centers a love story between a former Pinkerton and a scholar of dead languages.
- The Witch King by H. E. Edgmon—In this YA fantasy romance, Wyatt left behind his fairy prince fiancé in order to live as his true self. But when Prince Emyr shows up on his doorstep and drags Wyatt back to his kingdom, Wyatt finds himself entangled in court intrigue that’s even messier than his feelings for Emyr.
Did you participate in the Trans Rights Readathon this week? What books did you read? Are there any books from this list you plan to pick up? Let me know in the comments!