Before Gender: Lost Stories from Trans History, 1850-1950 by Eli Erlick

Hello my lovely readers! I have a LOT to say about this book, so let's just get into it.

SYNOPSIS
Highlighting influential individuals from 1850-1950 who are all but unknown today, Eli Erlick shares 30 remarkable stories from romance to rebellion and mystery to murder. These narratives chronicle the grit, joy, and survival of trans people long before gender became an everyday term.

Organized into 4 parts paralleling today’s controversies over gender identity (kids, activists, workers, and athletes), Before Gender introduces figures whose forgotten stories transform the discussion

Mark and David Ferrow, two of the first trans teens to access gender-affirming medical treatment following overwhelming support from their friends, family, and neighbors.Gerda von Zobeltitz, a trans countess who instigated an LGBTQ+ riot 40 years before Stonewall.Frank Williams, a young trans man who was fired from over a dozen jobs for his gender.Frances Anderson, the world’s greatest female billiards player of the 1910s.

Bold and visionary, Erlick’s debut uncovers these lost stories from the depths of the archives to narrate trans lives in a way that has never been attempted before.

Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877 by Eric Foner

Hello my lovely readers! This was the book I chose to read for #MegaMay on Bookstagram. Let's get into it!

SYNOPSIS
Reconstruction chronicles the way in which Americans—black and white—responded to the unprecedented changes unleashed by the war and the end of slavery. It addresses the ways in which the emancipated slaves' quest for economic autonomy and equal citizenship shaped the political agenda of Reconstruction; the remodeling of Southern society and the place of planters, merchants, and small farmers within it; the evolution of racial attitudes and patterns of race relations; and the emergence of a national state possessing vastly expanded authority and committed, for a time, to the principle of equal rights for all Americans.

The Names by Florence Knapp

Hello my lovely readers! Oh my, how I loved this book! Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS

In the wake of a catastrophic storm, Cora sets off with her nine-year-old daughter, Maia, to register her son's birth. Her husband, Gordon, a local doctor, respected in the community but a terrifying and controlling presence at home, intends for her to name the infant after him. But when the registrar asks what she'd like to call the child, Cora hesitates...

Spanning thirty-five years, what follows are three alternate and alternating versions of Cora's and her young son's lives, shaped by her choice of name. In richly layered prose, The Names explores the painful ripple effects of domestic abuse, the messy ties of family, and the possibilities of autonomy and healing.

Strangers by Taichi Yamada

Hello my lovely readers! This was a Bookstagram find. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
A man is drawn back to his childhood home and discovers his parents living just as they were on the day they died thirty years before.

Screenwriter Harada is disconnected from the world. Lonely and jaded, he’s drifted apart from his son and is dismissive when approached with gestures of friendship, including from a lonely and mysterious tenant who lives in his mostly empty apartment building.

One night, when Harada returns to the dilapidated downtown district of Tokyo where he grew up, he meets a man who looks exactly like his long-dead father. And so begins Harada’s ordeal, thrust into a reality where his parents appear to be alive at the exact age they had been when they died many years earlier.

Stiff by Mary Roach

Hello my lovely readers! 

Two years ago, coincidentally around this time, I DNF'd this book because I wasn't in the headspace for it. You can read that "review" here.

I decided to give it another shot and I'm glad I did! Let's get into it.

SYNPOSIS
Cadavers have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings from France's first guillotines to helping solve the mystery of TWA Flight 800.

For every new surgical procedure, cadavers have helped make history. Stiff investigates the strange lives of our bodies postmortem and answers the question: What should we do after we die?

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

 Hello my lovely readers! I finished this book in two days and...whew! Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
Deep underground, thirty-nine women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only a vague recollection of their lives before.

As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl—the fortieth prisoner—sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground.

Clotel, or The President's Daughter by William Wells Brown

Hello my lovely readers! I was inspired to read this book after I read Junie. I was looking for a more authentic telling of life in the 1800s and I had this book on my shelf. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
First published in December 1853, Clotel was written amid then unconfirmed rumors that Thomas Jefferson had fathered children with one of his slaves. The story begins with the auction of his mistress, here called Currer, and their two daughters, Clotel and Althesa. The Virginian who buys Clotel falls in love with her, gets her pregnant, seems to promise marriage—then sells her. Escaping from the slave dealer, Clotel returns to Virginia disguised as a white man in order to rescue her daughter, Mary, a slave in her father’s house. A fast-paced and harrowing tale of slavery and freedom, of the hypocrisies of a nation founded on democratic principles, Clotel is more than a sensationalist novel. It is a founding text of the African American novelistic tradition, a brilliantly composed and richly detailed exploration of human relations in a new world in which race is a cultural construct.