Full Fathom Five cover art by Chris McGrath (Tor Books, 2014)
Like a lot of trans women of my generation, I grew up reading science fiction and fantasy novels to transport me away from a world where I wasn’t accepted for myself. I chose instead to inhabit worlds where clever downtrodden thieves could shake the foundations of empires, and where great heroes could ride dragons or catapult themselves to the stars. But what I never saw in all of those many alternate worlds of possibility was someone like me. So, I set out to write some.
Now, more years later than I’d care to admit, trans women’s representation in SFF is still in its most nascent stages. When I decided to write this article, listing five SFF books with trans women protagonists, I found that trans women’s representation is limited enough that compiling a list of five books was a challenge. We live in a world today where the gold standard for SFF representation is work that is in some form or fashion “own voices,” but trans women are as under-represented in the publishing industry as we are in literature. For that reason, I’ve included books by cis authors who have written trans women protagonists in their fiction. While I agree with the general principles of the own voices movement, as a trans woman who grew up desperate to see herself in fiction in some form, I owe a debt to those cis authors who took the time to portray trans women characters in a positive light. Many portrayals of transgender characters written by cis authors were extremely important to some of my dearest friends, inspiring them to take up the pen and craft new characters of their own. My hope is that in another ten years’ time, there will be far too many trans women protagonists in SFF for a five book list to even scratch the surface of the subject. Until then, I hope this list gives readers the chance to explore new worlds from our perspective.