TransRightsReadathon is underway

#TransRightsReadathon is underway, and here are some books I am hoping to dive into this week. Lots of #bookstagrammers across the web are posting wonderful organizations and mutual aid funds you can donate to to help out our transgender siblings. Follow the hashtag for more information and donate any money if you have the ability to do so, and finally make sure you’re listening to transgender voices and activists!!! It is strange to me when I talk to people I know and they don’t understand something and why it is wrong, but then don’t seek out information from the source or group being affected. Have questions? Confused? The answer is quite simple. Listen.To.Transgender.People. (and please actually listen, if it is not your lived experience, then sit back and shut up)

Here is what I’m hoping to get into:

the ship we built, by Lexie Bean: Rowan discovers a way to share his secrets: letters. Letters he attaches to balloons and releases into the universe, hoping someone new will read them and understand. But when he befriends a classmate who knows what it’s like to be lonely and scared, even at home, Rowan realizes that there might already be a person he can trust right by his side.

Freshwater, by Akwaeke Emezi: An extraordinary debut novel, Freshwater explores the surreal experience of having a fractured self. It centers around a young Nigerian woman, Ada, who develops separate selves within her as a result of being born “with one foot on the other side.” Unsettling, heartwrenching, dark, and powerful, Freshwater is a sharp evocation of a rare way of experiencing the world, one that illuminates how we all construct our identities.

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon: Vern – seven months pregnant and desperate to escape the strict religious compound where she was raised – flees for the shelter of the woods. There, she gives birth to twins, and plans to raise them far from the influence of the outside world. But even in the forest, Vern is a hunted woman. Forced to fight back against the community that refuses to let her go, she unleashes incredible brutality far beyond what a person should be capable of, her body wracked by inexplicable and uncanny changes.