I Can't Wait for... May Releases

Transgender Books Coming Soon!

Can't-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted over at Wishful Endings to spotlight and discuss the books we're excited about that have yet to be released, but not necessarily. It's based on the original Waiting on Wednesday that was hosted at Breaking the Spine. Once a month, I'll hop on the meme to share the books I'm most excited for in the coming weeks.

Title: Mistress of Wall Street
Author: Phoenix Cinders

Publication Date: May 10, 2021
Identities: Transgender

Genres: Erotica

Who doesn’t want to submit to a sexy trans woman?

(Warning: This book contains scenes of sex, prostitution, drug use, non-consensual sex that doesn’t fetishize it in any way but is a reflection of what happens in the real world, and offensive language. This is a story of a romance between a transgender woman and a cis-gendered man that is completely respectful.)

On Wall Street, everyone seeks to beat the market, but trans woman Addison Fields wants to dominate it. She wants to stick to the men who wouldn’t give her the opportunities to succeed. She’s determined to become the Mistress of Wall Street and dominate the financial world.

However, when her best friend from high school, Xavier Young, gets caught up in the middle of her conquest, she discovers there’s more to life than success. Xavier on the other hand had no idea his former best friend is now a beautiful dominant woman. When he loses his job at his Investment Firm, by chance, she’s there to take him in. However, when he finds out she used to be the boy he shared all his secrets with, will he accept her for who she is? Addison on the other hand doesn’t just want to be friends again, she wants him all for herself.

Will he submit to her dominance? Will the two find love? Read on to find out.

Title: The Best of Assigned Male
Author: Sophie Labelle
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Pub

Publication Date: May 21, 2021
Identities: Transgender

Genres: Graphic Novel

Includes New and Never Before Seen Stories!

Follow young trans girl, Stephie, and her group of queer friends as they navigate school, family and relationships, and experiences of being trans.

Humorous and acerbic, this ground-breaking graphic narrative brilliantly explores the journey of discovering and embracing your evolving gender identity, and promotes a sense of community and empowerment through artfully illustrated stories.

Based on the hugely successful and influential webcomic Assigned Male, and in print for the first time, this expanded collection contains exclusive content as well as familiar, well-loved characters.

Title: Arcadia
Author: Emmanuelle Bayamack-Tam
Publisher: Seven Stories Press

Publication Date: May 25, 2021
Identities: Transgender

Genres: Fiction

An English-language debut that reveals and subverts contemporary conceptions of normative sexuality, capitalist culture, and environmental degradation.

 

Farah moves into Liberty House—an arcadia, a community in harmony with nature—at the tender age of six, with her family. The commune’s spiritual leader, Arcady, preaches equality, non-violence, anti-speciesism, free love, and uninhibited desire for all, regardless of gender, age, looks, or ability. At fifteen, Farah learns she is intersex, and begins to go beyond the confines of gender, as she explores the arc of her own desires. What, Farah asks, is a man or a woman? What does it mean to be part of a community? What is utopia when there are refugees nearby seeking shelter who cannot enter?

Emmanuelle Bayamack-Tam delivers a magisterial novel, both a celebration and a critique of innocence in the contemporary world.

Title: Las Biuty Queens: Stories
Author: Iván Monalisa Ojeda
Publisher: Astra House

Publication Date: June 1, 2021
Identities: Transgender

Genres: Fiction

In this acclaimed story collection, Chilean transgender performer and author Iván Monalisa Ojeda delivers an irreverent, honest and full-throated love song to New York City from the perspective of a group of trans Latinx immigrant friends who walk the streets, smoke crystal meth, compete in beauty contests, look for clients on their impossibly high heels, and fall prey to increasingly cruel immigration policies.

Drawing from his/her own experience as a trans performer, sex worker, and undocumented immigrant, Iván Monalisa Ojeda chronicles the lives of Latinx queer and trans immigrants in New York City. Whether she is struggling with addiction, clashing with law enforcement, or is being subjected to personal violence, each character choses her own path of defiance, often responding to her fate with with irreverent dark humor. What emerges is the portrait of a group of friends who express unquestioning solidarity and love for each other, and of an unfamiliar, glittering and violent, New York City that will draw readers in and swallow them whole.

On every page, Iván Monalisa's unique narrative talent is on display as he/she artfully transforms the language of the streets, making it his/her own -- rich with rhythm and debauchery. This bold new collection positions Ojeda as a fresh and necessary voice within the canon of world literature.

Title: Transmutation: Stories 
Author: Alex DiFrancesco
Publisher: Seven Stories Press

Publication Date: June 1, 2021
Identities: Transgender

Genres: Science Fiction

Transgressive, transformative short stories that explore the margins of trans lives.

Building on the success of All City, here is a wry, and at the same time dark and risk-taking, story collection from author (and baker) Alex DiFrancesco that pushes the boundaries of transgender awareness and filial bonds. Here is the hate between 16-year-old Junie, who is transitioning, and their mom's boyfriend Chad when the family moves into Chad's house on Lake Erie. And here is the love being tested between Sawyer and his dad, who named his boat after his child and resists changing it from Sara to Sawyer now. There is DiFrancesco's willingness to enter lands that are violent and comfortless in some of these stories, testing the limits of what it means to be human, sometimes returning stronger and wiser and sometimes not returning at all as their characters surge forward into unknown spaces.

DiFrancesco's first novel All City (Seven Stories 2019) was praised by Publishers Weekly as a "loving, grieving warning [that] thoughtfully traces the resilience, fragility, and joy of precarious communities in an immediate, compassionate voice." All City was one of BookRiot's "Best Post-Apocalyptic Books of 2019," Entropy Mag's "Best of 2019," and Largehearted Boy's "Favorite Novels of 2019." It was a finalist for the 2019 Ohioana Book Award for Fiction.