Check out South Asian Trans Femmes Making History for a 11”x17” printable resource featuring the trans femmes mentioned above, and more trans femme trailblazers from the region.

Ma and Me

Putsata Reang was 11 months old when her family fled Cambodia, embarking on a 23-day sea journey which Reang might not have survived if not for her mother’s stubborn refusal to abandon the apparently dead infant. The family resettled in Oregon. Reang became a successful international journalist and visited the land of her birth. Her mother seemingly accepted Reang’s queerness when she came in her 20s, but when a middle-aged Reang announced her plans to marry her female partner, their once-close mother/daughter bond is put to the test…

Oregon Humanities Center, UO Today interview: Putsata Reang, author of Ma and Me: A Memoir, YouTube, 22 Feb. 2023:

Thanuja: A Memoir of Migration and Transition

Thanuja Singam and her family moved to India as Tamil refugees fleeing the civil war in Sri Lanka. After spending her childhood in India, Singam relocated to Germany at age 12 with her family. There, she excelled in school despite her peers’ queerphobic bullying. Singam knew that she was a transgender femme despite her schoolmates labeling her as a gay boy. Finding inspiration and support in other Tamil transwomen around the world, Thanuja transitioned to live as her authentic self, and built a Tamil language online platform to speak out on trans rights and women’s rights. In 2024, her memoir was published in Tamil and translated into English by Kiran Keshavamurthy.

Thanuja Singam, எனது சுயசரிதை /All about my Autobiography, YouTube, 21 Oct 2020:

Asylum: A Memoir & Manifesto

Edafe Okporo was aware of his gender non-conformity since his early childhood in Nigeria. Although he was closeted during his school years, his classmates perceived his homosexual nature and blackmailed him. Okporo eventually relocated to Abuja where he found an accepting queer community and worked in HIV/AIDS education. In 2016, Okporo sought asylum in the United States after surviving a mob beating in his neighborhood, but like others seeking safety, he was subjected to a lengthy stay in an immigration detention center run by a private contractor, under harsh conditions dictated by corporate profit margins …

TEDx Talks, Home is Joy | Edafe Okporo | TEDxAsburyPark, YouTube, 9 Nov. 2022:

Embracing My Shadow: Growing Up Lesbian in Nigeria

Unoma Azuah was born to Tiv and Igbo parents in Biafra during the Nigerian Civil War. Aware of her queerness since an early age, Azuah found support in her Igbo maternal grandmother, who told her, ”You are beautiful and a child of this goddess Onishe and she will always protect you.”. Azuah started writing on lesbian themes in high school and went on to graduate from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, with a BA in English. Facing backlash for elevating awareness of queer Nigerian lives, Azuah relocated to the U.S. in 1999, where she subsequently received two master’s degrees. She continues to work with the Nigerian LGBTQIA+ community.

Ake Arts & Book Festival, Writing Queer, Writing Black (Panel Discussion), YouTube, 23 Oct. 2020:

I’m in Seattle, Where Are You?

Mortada Gzar was raised in Basra, Iraq, where his queerness did not go unnoticed even as a child. Pressured by the larger community to suppress her son’s gayness, Gzar’s mother sent him to work as a scrap metal collector in a location where unexploded munitions took the lives of others trying to eke out a living. Gzar survived a rough childhood to attend university in Baghdad, where he fell in love with Morise, an African American soldier…

Seattle Public Library, Mortada Gzar Discusses “I’m In Seattle, Where Are You?”, YouTube, 21 Aug. 2021:

Crooked Teeth: A Queer Syrian Refugee Memoir

Danny Ramadan grew up in Damascus, where he came out to his family as a teen. After a stint as a reporter in Egypt, he returned to Damascus and built a thriving queer community. In 2012, Ramadan fled to Lebanon after being targeted for arrest. In 2014, a Canadian LGBTQ+ refugee rights group sponsored his resettlement in Canada. Since 2015, Ramadan has been organizing an annual fundraiser to sponsor the relocation of other queer Syrian refugees. His 2022 novel, the Foghorn, won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction. In 2024, Ramadan released his first English non-fiction book “Crooked Teeth”, a memoir exploring the interrelations of migration and queerness.

BC’s Office of the Human Rights Commissioner. I love my human rights: Danny Ramadan, YouTube, 29 Oct. 2021:

Are You This? Or Are You This? A Story of Identity and Worth

Madian Al Jazerah was born in exile to Palestinian parents in Kuwait. He lived in Africa, Oceania, Europe and North America, but made his home in Jordan, where he opened Books@cafe, the first internet cafe/bookstore in the Arab world. In his memoir, Al Jazerah shares the story of growing up between worlds. The book’s title came from his mother’s reaction to his coming out.

ExpaTalk Podcast, Are You This? LGBTQ Arabs| ExpaTalk| a Chat with Madian Al-Jazerah, YouTube, Sep. 2021:

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Friends, you’ve already met our Qing dynasty queer forbears Zheng Banqiao and Yuan Mei in earlier posts. They admired each other’s artistic achievements and bonded over a shared attraction to men,[1] but according to what they wrote and what others wrote about them, their nature of attraction worked differently.

Zheng Banqiao

The Chinese poet Zheng Xie, aka Zheng Banqiao, was known to have both female and male lovers. He wrote the poem《止足》in 1743,[2] musing on entering a life stage where joys and pleasures outweigh sorrows and disappointments. Among the pleasures that he listed in 《止足》 were “the young wife in her apartment, happy without suspicion; the young man under the flowers, clever and embraceable.”[3]

Some years later, Zheng wrote a letter to his friend, the poet-calligrapher Zhiqing Shanren, in which he described his distinct attraction to physical attributes of females and physical attributes of males.[4]

Zheng Banqiao again declared his sexual preferences in his 1760 autobiographical essay, referencing the 1st c. BCE Emperor Ai who famously shared his bed with a male courtier Dong Xian and also married Dong’s sister. [5]

Bisexuality is attraction to individuals from two or more genders. For example, a bisexual person can be attracted to what they consider to be distinguishing attributes of men, and to what they consider to be distinguishing attributes of women. Zheng appreciated women and men each for their unique qualities.

Yuan Mei

A pansexual person is indifferent to the gender of the people to whom they are attracted. They are attracted to qualities other than gender. This undifferentiated attraction is described in writings by and about Yuan Mei.

Yuan Mei, a poet friend of Zheng Xie, describes pansexuality in one of his poems.

Liu Xiachang (alternative pronunciation ‘Xiashang’), a young male student of Yuan Mei, accompanied the elderly poet on his travels. Along the way, Yuan Mei wrote poems about Liu’s liaisons with both men and women.

In 1784, the two were traveling in Guangdong when Liu Xiachang met a 17-year-old doorman Yuan Shijin. Shijin went through much effort to arrange a tryst, but at the appointed time, Shijin’s employer received an urgent summons, and Shijin had to leave with him in great haste. The young men parted in sorrow. Yuan Mei then wrote a poem for Liu. Here is the first half of the poem:

Full translation here.

References

[1] Bisexual 18th century artist Zheng Banqiao waxes poetic on male anatomy

[2] 《随园诗话》袁枚说郑板桥多外宠，是揭露朋友的隐私吗_百科TA说

[3] 郑板桥集 - 维基文库，自由的图书馆

[4] 郑板桥趣文一篇 - 简书

[5] 咬文嚼字：论「椒」——郑板桥出柜与皇后的宫殿_网易订阅

An explanation of the difference between “transgender” and “intersex” is provided in Vietnamese.

Trifold pamphlet version.

Queer Lore: a POC perspective on LGBTQ+ history and folklore is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Trifold pamphlet version.

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This retelling of “Chang E” is part-synopsis, part-direct translation. Some parts of the original story have been omitted for brevity.

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For optimal viewing experience, download the pdf. Free to reproduce with credit for educational purposes.

For optimal viewing experience, download the pdf. Free to reproduce with credit for educational purposes.

We Have Always Been Here

Born in Pakistan, Samra Habib moved to Canada with their parents as refugees escaping persecution as Ahmadi Muslims. Growing into adulthood in Toronto, Habib went through two very different heterosexual marriages before coming out as queer. In 2014, they launched the “Just Me and Allah: A Queer Muslim Photo Project” which featured interviews with other queer Muslims. Their book “We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir” won Canada Reads in 2020.

A Dutiful Boy

Mohsin Ali Zaidi was born in England to Pakistani Shia parents. Growing up in a rough neighborhood, Zaidi prayed unsuccessfully for years for his gayness to go away. Leaving home to attend Oxford University, Zaidi began his journey toward self-acceptance. Facing the racism of the British gay scene on one hand while navigating varying degrees of acceptance among family members on the other, Zaidi built a successful career as a barrister and was listed in Lawyer Magazine’s Hot 100 for 2021. His book “A Dutiful Boy: A Memoir of a Gay Muslim’s Journey to Acceptance”, won the 2021 Lamba Literary Award for gay Memoir/Biography.

Hijab Butch Blues

Born in an Urdu-speaking region of South Asia, Lamya H (she/they) moved with her parents to an Arabic-speaking country where Lamya realized at age 14 that she was attracted to women. After coming to the U.S. for college, they found community with other queer social activists and connected with other LGBTQ+ Muslims. In her 2023 memoir Hijab Butch Blues, Lamya argues that the North American picture of an “authentically gay” life – coming out to family and partaking in gay nightlife – should not be used to judge the queerness of LGBTQ+ people from other cultures who have their own ways of being queer. They started a Quran study group that combines their faith with their radical politics. Hijab Butch Blues won the Stonewall Book Award in 2024.

Angry Queer Somali Boy

Mohamed Abdulkarim Ali was born in Somalia in 1985. At age 4, Ali was kidnapped by his father and taken to Abu Dhabi by his stepfamily, where he faced racism at school. They moved again to the Netherlands before settling in Canada. In his memoir, Ali shares the impact of his repeated displacements. Struggling with alienation from both family and society, he turned to substance abuse but also found allyship in unexpected places. “Angry Queer Somali Boy – A Complicated Memoir”, written while Ali was in a shelter for unhoused men, was listed on The Advocate’s “The Best LGBTQ Memoirs for 2019”.

In Sensorium

Tanaïs (they/them) was raised in the United States by parents from Bangladesh. The queer writer and perfumer founded TANAÏS, the beauty and fragrance company, to create fragrances unlimited by the gender binary. Their memoir, “In Sensorium: Notes for My People”, won the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction in 2022.

Walk Like a Girl

Award-winning fashion designer Prabal Gurung was raised in the Nepal and educated in India, where he attended the National Institute of Fashion Technology. His 2025 memoir “Walk Like a Girl” tells the story of his childhood and career. Raised by an accepting mother and older siblings, Gurung never saw the need to hide his gender non-conforming fashion interests. This led to relentless bullying in school, sometimes by boys who were themselves closeted. In 1999, Gurung moved to the United States to study at the Parsons School of Design. He embraced New York’s open queer scene, a welcome change from the queerphobic abuse he endured in his earlier life, but now Gurung also had to face racism on a regular basis, in queer spaces and at school…

Horse Barbie

Released in 2023, Horse Barbie is the memoir of model and director Geena Rocero. She was born in the Philippines, where she found community and fame as a trans pageant queen in her teens. At the height of Rocero’s career, Rocero’s mother, who had migrated to the U.S., asked Rocero to join her. Rocero was initially reluctant to leave the Philippines, but her mother persuaded her to come to the U.S. with the prospect of obtaining identity documents that matched her name and gender. Rocero started a new life in the U.S., and faced, for the first time, the need to enter the closet to protect both her career and her physical safety…

Beautiful Monster

Actor and yoga teacher Miles Borrero shares his story in his 2023 memoir Beautiful Monster. Borrero is a Colombian immigrant who had lived half his life the U.S. He was close to middle age when he learned that his father might soon pass away. Now Borrero had the face the fact that he had been delaying his gender transition out of fear of upsetting his family, but he also needed to be recognized as his father’s son before it was too late…

Life as a Unicorn

Nonbinary writer/director Amrou Al-Kadhi was born in London to Iraqi parents. The family lived in Dubai and Bahrain before returning to U.K. where Al-Kadhi eventually graduated from Cambridge. Caught between parents who met Al-Kadhi’s childhood queerness with denial, and Eaton schoolmates who exotified and stereotyped them, Al-Kadhi spent subsequent years unlearning internalized racism and Islamophobia, developing their drag persona Glamrou from an imitation of white womanhood to a celebration of strong Arab women. Their memoir “Life as a Unicorn: A Journey from Shame to Pride and Everything In Between” won the Polari Prize in 2020.

I’m Afraid of Men

Vivek Shraya is a Canadian Screen Award winner and Polaris Music Prize nominee. In her memoir, I’m Afraid of Men, she talks about growing up as a transfeminine child with an accepting mother. Unfortunately, Canadian society was not as tolerant as her Indian immigrant mother. Shraya faced aggression in public spaces for her gender non-conforming presentation. In 2014, Arsenal Pulp Press published her YA short story collection “God Loves Hair”, about a genderqueer child of Indian immigrants growing up in Canada. “I’m Afraid of Men” was a finalist for Lambda Literary Awards in the Transgender Non-fiction category.

Fairest

Born in the Philippines, Meredith Talusan moved to the United States in her teens, passing for white as an albino Filipinx. In her 2020 memoir, she shares her perspective as someone who has lived on different sides of gender lines and racial lines. Talusan acknowledges the internalized white supremacy that helped her visualize a future at Harvard even though she was “a poor kid who’d gone to a mediocre public school in Chino, California”: “I relied on that perception to bolster my belief that I could do well in America, that I was better than the brown rural peasants I left behind.” As a gay male university student, she began exploring her femininity through drag, experiencing in the loss of safety conferred by male privilege when she passed as a woman on the street and was followed by strange men. Nevertheless, Talusan continued to move towards her authentic expression as a woman, even if it meant losing her gay male partner. “I would always wonder what it was like on the other side of gender and that wandering would be even worse than staying where I was for this man I loved.”

Have you heard of the Muslim couple who accepted their transgender son’s transition as the will of God? By the way, their family has been running a religious school for decades in the country with the largest Muslim population in the world.

Meet their beloved son and 5 other remarkable individuals whose faith is central to their lives. The 6 individuals listed below have lived on 4 different continents; all were born in Muslim families and raised in Muslim majority countries.

This short list of LGBT+ Muslims is NOT intended to be an exhaustive list of all out Muslim activists in the world. There are many more!

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Not an exhaustive list but more than enough reading for the holiday season ;-)

• Rev. Dr. Patrick Cheng is a visiting Professor of Anglican Studies at the Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary. ​ Cheng received a Ph.D. in systematic theology from Union Theological Seminary and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. His 2011 book Radical Love: An Introduction to Queer Theology has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Rev. Dr. Patrick Cheng, who migrated from Hong Kong to the U.S. as a one-year-old, experienced life at the intersections of multiple identities. In his 2013 book Rainbow Theology: Bridging Race, Sexuality, and Spirit, he explores the theological writings of LGBT people of color.
  

• Rev. Dr. Brandon Thomas Crowley grew up attending a Baptist church in Georgia. He sensed since his childhood that the anti-gay sermons he heard there were aimed at people like him. Although he was accepted by Harvard Divinity School, Crowley felt alienated by the church and considered abandoning his plans for a preaching career. But a friend encouraged him to apply for an open position at the famous Myrtle Baptist Church in Newton, Massachusetts. Crowley was accepted and served as a pastor there for 6 years before coming out to the congregation. Myrtle Baptist Church is now an open and affirming historically Black church. Rev. Dr. Brandon Thomas Crowley is the author of Queering Black Churches: Dismantling Heteronormativity in African American Congregations (2024), which offers proposals for moving congregations beyond surface-level allyship toward systemic structural changes.
  

• Rev. Mpho Tutu van Furth , daughter of Bishop Desmond Tutu, entered Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1999. Tutu was ordained as a priest in 2003. Mpho Tutu married Marceline van Furth with the blessing of Tutu’s parents in 2015. Both women had children from previous marriages. In response, the Diocese of Saldanha Bay in South Africa asked a bishop to revoke her license. But in 2018, Saldanha Bay became the first diocese in the Anglican Church of Southern Africa to bless same-sex civil unions. Rev. Mpho Tutu van Furth is one of the contributors to The Book of Queer Prophets (2021), an anthology of 24 LGBTQIA+ writers reflecting on their religious identities.
  

• Dr. Roberto Che Espinoza, PhD, was born into a bicultural Hispanic/Anglo household in Texas and grew up in the Southern Baptist church. Although they had an interest in theology, they were alienated by the church’s exclusion of LGBTQIA+ members. While studying for their master’s degree at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. Espinoza came out as non-binary and began their gender transition. After finishing their masters’ program in 2006, Espinoza worked for the Illinois Attorney General’s office. Dr. Roberto Che Espinoza received a Ph.D. in Theology from University of Denver in 2015. An advocate for social justice in the church and in academia, they wrote the books Activist Theology (2019) and Body Becoming: A Path to Our Liberation (2022).

• Rev. Karmen Michael Smith was raised in small-town Texas, where society offered limited opportunities for an out gay man. Smith said, “The world told me that to serve as a leader meant that I would have to do so from the background. I could never aspire to be like MLK Jr., but I could be like Bayard Rustin.” But Smith’s mother resisted these limiting messages about her child’s potential. Karmen Michael Smith acquired a varied skillset, working in the finance industry before starting a second career as a singer/songwriter/producer. He graduated from Union Theological Seminary with a master’s degree in 2019 and became Union’s first Director of the Center for Community Engagement and Social Justice. He is the author of Holy Queer: The Coming Out of Christ (2023).

• Rev. Dr. Mihee Kim-Kort (she/they) was born in Korea and migrated to the U.S. with her parents as an infant. They settled in Colorado where her family joined the local Korean Presbyterian (PCUSA) church. A 2004 Master of Divinity graduate from Princeton Theological Seminary, Kim-Kort came out as queer after ordination, marriage and motherhood. The author of Making Paper Cranes: Toward an Asian American Feminist Theology (2012) and Outside the Lines: How Embracing Queerness Will Transform Your Faith (2018), Kim-Kort co-pastors First Presbyterian Church in Annapolis, Maryland with her spouse Andrew Kort. She received her PhD in Religious Studies from Indiana University.

Click image to download printable pdf (designed to print on US Letter, 2-sided. Fold into thirds).

For an easier read without the folds, here is an English-only, single sheet pdf featuring the same individuals:

• Melody Boateng, a transgender human rights activist from Benin

• Obioma Chukwuike (they/them), a Nigerian intersex activist

• Angel Maxine Opoku, the first openly transgender Ghanaian musician

• Carlos Toh Zwakhala Idibouo (they/them), a gender non-conforming queer HIV/AIDS and GBV activist from Côte d’Ivoire’s

Click image to download printable pdf (designed to print on US Letter, 2-sided. Fold into thirds).

For an easier read without the folds, here is an English-only, single sheet pdf featuring the same individuals:

• Apostle Darlan Rukih, an intersex and genderfluid pastor from Kenya

• Victor Juliet Mukasa, a trans masc Ugandan human rights activist

• Faris Cuchi Gezahegn, a nonbinary and queer Ethiopian artist and human rights advocate

• Kelet Ali, a Finnish Somali trans woman model and activist

Asexual protagonist.

“Pet” by Akwaeke Emezi

Transgirl protagonist

“Cemetery Boys” by Aiden Thomas

Transboy protagonist, gay pairing.

“She is a Haunting” by Trang Thanh Tran

Bisexual protagonist, sapphic pairing

The Taking of Jake Livingston by Ryan Douglass

Gay protagonist

“Frontera” graphic novel, written by Julio Anta, illustrated by Jacoby Salcedo

Gay deuteragonist

“Black Water Sister” by Zen Cho

Lesbian protagonist