The most recommended books on non-binary gender

It’s always great to get a reminder to be true to yourself when you don’t fit in easily.

This dystopian YA novel has good worldbuilding and a rich lexicon of new words that gives it that idiosyncratic futuristic feeling. The protagonist is a barely fifteen-year-old girl “bender”—someone who doesn’t feel comfortable in their assigned gender and doesn’t hide that. She has been sent to a camp that will determine her future, making sure she doesn’t end up in the “Blight”, a huge concentration camp for society’s undesirables.

But for a good outcome, she must conform, and her fellow campers and new experiences make that confusing and difficult. The ending is fairly open, but she has clearly learned to be true to herself and reject arbitrarily assigned labels.

I left this book for last because it is, perhaps, the heaviest and most gut-wrenching. In this book, Emezi crafts an exceptional paranormal story showing the true-life difficulties (that is the life-threatening and openly hostile discrimination) faced by LGBT+ people in Nigeria. A fact that’s sadly true in many other African countries too. This book has so many layers, every scene dripping with nuance and a clear tenderness for the subject matter. It would have been easy for this story to remain steeped in tragedy, but Emezi manages to elevate their characters and narrative above that, providing an ultimately heartwarming story that leaves the reader with a sense of wonder and hope while never dismissing the severity of the reality so many LGBT+ people face on the African continent.

I loved this book! The author has interviewed lots of trans people and has nicely captured the diversity of the different expressions of gender which is such an important part of being transgender. It covers all aspects of transitioning such as hormones, surgeries, coming out, sex and sexuality, and other areas.

The challenges faced by the trans community are also covered, from transphobia, discrimination, and hate crime to accessing vital health care. Declan Henry has provided valuable insights and lessons for the LGBTQ+ community and all who wish to be an ally to the trans community.

Somewhere in their fourteen-page digression on the 18th-century non-binary American prophet Universal Publick Friend did I realize—once again—that I was nearly done with T Fleischmann’s enchanting book-length essay on transness, time, and art. I have read it three times! As a trans person, I love this book for its meditations on the transitioning body and its sexy tales of intimate encounters. It also offers a critical engagement with the artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s work, as well as a memoir of discovery that, like Fleischmann themself, bounces from New York City to rural Tennessee and back again, charting a geography of queer friendship and memory. 

I read this book early in my exploration of genderqueer identity, and I found Professor Voth’s defiant joy in uncovering and sharing the historical story of Jack Sheppard, and in his own trans identity, permission-giving. This playful book dramatizes the search for trans histories and ancestries, ultimately transforming this search into a celebration of chosen family.

This beautiful and immersive novella is a winter-solstice-themed story about a woman and a genderqueer character who have nothing in common except for their mysterious, chaotic, magical, missing boyfriend. His magical experiment goes wrong and finding him requires them to cooperate. They make their way through a strange and wonderful set of clues that bring them closer together. Layla and Nat were both so richly drawn, and the contrast between their ordinary lives and the eerie, ineffable nature of the magic made the book so memorable for me. The whole cast is marvelously queer, and I laughed out loud a couple of times. A gem.

This complete compendium of Spare’s exhibition catalogues has been put together by the great Robert Ansell, a pioneering figure in Spare research. Running from 1907 to 1955, complete with their catalogue essays and some related bits of ephemera, the facsimile catalogues slowly change in their period feel and give the real trajectory of Spare’s career, all the way through to his late shows in pubs.

The book has a generous additional colour section of pictures, and it is all surprisingly readable and even vivid: “Not long now!” says the flyer for an upcoming exhibition in the Mansion House Tavern pub in south London: “The show you’ve been waiting for!” 

“I want to be a boyfriend who is a girl.” — Pen Oliveira, protagonist and all-around badass. While this YA novel isn’t specifically about being trans, it does explore gender from the angle of a girl who dresses like a boy, hangs out with the boys, and likes girls—much to the consternation of her parents. Pen does a lot of heavy thinking about what “girl,” “boy,” “man,” and “woman” mean, whether any of these labels apply to her, and the damage that results when others saddle her with expectations according to their own definitions of those words. I love books that make me rethink my definitions of femininity and masculinity, and this novel gave me a lot to mull over for a long time. 

I got diagnosed with autism and officially came out as non-binary this past summer. I had my suspicions about autism for a while, and I had started sharing with trusted people about my gender expression a few years earlier, but getting the diagnosis and coming out to the wider public about being non-binary has been quite the adventure.

I’ve needed support and understanding, and this book offers just that. Neurodivergence, queerness, and gender intersect on these pages in a way that makes being me feel less awkward and lonely while also compassionately educating me on how to start taking off the masks I’ve been wearing for decades. 

Julia Whalen is also a renowned audiobook narrator, and I listened to this book in her melodic voice, being carried to Oxford. Julia attended Oxford for a year, and she takes us there in this beautiful story.

The story is about a young American woman named Ella Durran who has made it to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. Through twists and turns, Ella must decide whether to turn her back on the man she’s falling in love with or follow her political dreams, which are coming true. Can we change our dreams? Read to find out.