The 2024-2025 UUA Common Read
For more information about the UUA's Common Read, and to access the discussion guides for Authentic Selves, click here.
The September and October 2024 Justice and Spirit: Unitarian Universalist Book Club selection.
Groundbreaking in its depictions of joy and community, Authentic Selves celebrates trans and nonbinary people and their families in stunning photographs and their own words. Foreword by transgender activist Jazz Jennings and her mom and fellow activist, Jeanette Jennings.
So often trans and nonbinary people’s stories are told only through the lens of their struggles and challenges, including their political battles for legal rights, but trans and nonbinary people live rich and fulfilling lives full of joy and community too. Authentic Selves: Celebrating Trans and Nonbinary People and Their Families is a sweeping compilation of life stories and portraits of trans and nonbinary people, as well as their partners, parents, children, siblings, and chosen family members.
The compelling stories in Authentic Selves provide a glimpse into the real lives, both the challenges and the triumphs, of these remarkable people and their families, all of whom are working to create a more just, diverse, and compassionate world.
Developed in collaboration with PFLAG National and Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund.
“It feels wildly ambitious to create a single resource that is able to provide the reader with a window into the rich, varied lives of gender diverse people. Yet Authentic Selves does just that by introducing us to everyday trans and nonbinary people and the family members who are brilliantly and lovingly on the journey with them.”
—Aidan Key, founder of TransFamilies and author of Trans Children in Today’s Schools
“Authentic Selves is exquisite proof that transgender and nonbinary people don’t have to ask for permission to participate in the creativity of our own survival. Here are our families. Here is our love. There’s no denying.”
—Taylor Mac, theatre artist and author of Joy and Pandemic, Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, and A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, among others
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