What do you think?
Rate this book
Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir
Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir by Kai Cheng Thom is the highly sensational, ultra-exciting, sort-of true coming-of-age story of a young Asian trans girl, pathological liar, and kung-fu expert who runs away from her parents’ abusive home in a rainy city called Gloom. Striking off on her own, she finds her true family in a group of larger-than-life trans femmes who live in a mysterious pleasure district known only as the Street of Miracles. Under the wings of this fierce and fabulous flock, Dearly blossoms into the woman she has always dreamed of being, with a little help from the unscrupulous Doctor Crocodile. When one of their number is brutally murdered, the protagonist joins her sisters in forming a vigilante gang to fight back against the transphobes, violent johns, and cops that stalk the Street of Miracles. But when things go terribly wrong, she must find the truth within herself in order to stop the violence and discover what it really means to grow up and find your family.
Listening Length: 4 hours and 13 minutes
Listening Length: 4 hours and 13 minutes
Audiobook
First published November 15, 2016
190 people are currently reading
17628 people want to read
About the author
Kai Cheng Thom
14 books908 followersKai Cheng Thom is a writer, performance artist, social worker, fierce trans femme and notorious liar who loves lipstick and superhero cartoons. A prolific essayist and poet, her work appears online in publications including BuzzFeed, xoJane, Everyday Feminism, and Autostraddle; and in print in Asian American Literary Review, Plenitude, and Matrix Magazine, among others. Her first collection of poetry, a place called No Homeland, will be published by Arsenal Pulp Press in Spring 2017. As a spoken word artist, she has appeared and featured at venues including Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and the Banff Centre for the Arts. She is also a mental health community worker and co-founder of the collective Monster Academy: Mental Health Skills for Montreal Youth. Kai Cheng lives in Montreal and Toronto, both of which were built on unceded Indigenous territory. Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir is her first novel.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,026 reviews
March 16, 2019
5*****
I don’t believe in safe spaces. They don’t exist. I do, however, believe in dangerous stories.
The perfect book to read over World Book Day and International Women’s Day 🌷💃🏻
Read as part of the Our Shared Shelf March pick.
Their greatest hopes rested on me, because I was a boy.... Except for two things that threw a monkey wrench into my parents carefully devised plans: I was wild at heart, and I wanted to be a girl..
This is a coming of age story of a young Asian trans-woman, self-describing as the greatest escape artist, Kung-fu expert and pathological liar, who makes the decision to run away from her parents abusive home in the downcast place of Gloom. She embarks on her own journey and finds her true friends and family with a group of completely fascinating femmes who live and work in a mysterious pleasure district know as the Street of Miracles.
While enveloped into the group, the protagonist is able to expand and transform into her own identity and become the woman she has always dreamed of becoming. When the murder of a fellow femme happens again on the Street of Miracles, our protagonist joins her femme sisters to form a vigilante gang of vicious, strong femme warriors: the 'Lipstick Lacerators'. This group hunts and fights against transphobes and violent Johns, avenging the deaths of murdered trans-women everywhere.
When out for an attack one night, things go terribly wrong and our heroine must find the truth within herself to stop the violence, to protect her new family and to allow herself to grow and develop as the femme she desires to be.
This was absolutely incredible and genre-bending. A fictionalised memoir blending poetry, storytelling, myth and magic. It held absolutely beautiful prose that was dreamlike and surreal in sequence. It was a fairy tale needed to explore dangerous girls, especially transwomen of colour, sisterhood, sex workers and lovers. While the writing had me completely captured with the descriptive lyrical prose, transformations and magic of mermaids, zombies and old witches, this memoir highlights the very real, and tragic, reality of a lot of trans-women. This includes the common occurrences of transphobia, transmisogyny, police brutality, sexual exploitation, abuse, racism and self-harm.
This book challenged the traditional transgender memoir to build into another world full of magical elements. Also the cover to this book is absolutely enticing! I will definitely have to re-read this in future.
You can't only be dangerous. You have to keep room for softness in your heart, and for sweetness too...You can only stop hurting when you stop hurting yourself.
I don’t believe in safe spaces. They don’t exist. I do, however, believe in dangerous stories.
The perfect book to read over World Book Day and International Women’s Day 🌷💃🏻
Read as part of the Our Shared Shelf March pick.
Their greatest hopes rested on me, because I was a boy.... Except for two things that threw a monkey wrench into my parents carefully devised plans: I was wild at heart, and I wanted to be a girl..
This is a coming of age story of a young Asian trans-woman, self-describing as the greatest escape artist, Kung-fu expert and pathological liar, who makes the decision to run away from her parents abusive home in the downcast place of Gloom. She embarks on her own journey and finds her true friends and family with a group of completely fascinating femmes who live and work in a mysterious pleasure district know as the Street of Miracles.
While enveloped into the group, the protagonist is able to expand and transform into her own identity and become the woman she has always dreamed of becoming. When the murder of a fellow femme happens again on the Street of Miracles, our protagonist joins her femme sisters to form a vigilante gang of vicious, strong femme warriors: the 'Lipstick Lacerators'. This group hunts and fights against transphobes and violent Johns, avenging the deaths of murdered trans-women everywhere.
When out for an attack one night, things go terribly wrong and our heroine must find the truth within herself to stop the violence, to protect her new family and to allow herself to grow and develop as the femme she desires to be.
This was absolutely incredible and genre-bending. A fictionalised memoir blending poetry, storytelling, myth and magic. It held absolutely beautiful prose that was dreamlike and surreal in sequence. It was a fairy tale needed to explore dangerous girls, especially transwomen of colour, sisterhood, sex workers and lovers. While the writing had me completely captured with the descriptive lyrical prose, transformations and magic of mermaids, zombies and old witches, this memoir highlights the very real, and tragic, reality of a lot of trans-women. This includes the common occurrences of transphobia, transmisogyny, police brutality, sexual exploitation, abuse, racism and self-harm.
This book challenged the traditional transgender memoir to build into another world full of magical elements. Also the cover to this book is absolutely enticing! I will definitely have to re-read this in future.
You can't only be dangerous. You have to keep room for softness in your heart, and for sweetness too...You can only stop hurting when you stop hurting yourself.
Read
December 25, 2023Source of book: KU
Relevant disclaimers: None
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.
And remember: I am not here to judge your drag, I mean your book. Books are art and art is subjective. These are just my personal thoughts. They are not meant to be taken as broader commentary on the general quality of the work. Believe me, I have not enjoyed many an excellent book, and my individual lack of enjoyment has not made any of those books less excellent or (more relevantly) less successful.
*******************************************
This is a trans memoir that exists as deconstruction of memoirs and trans memoirs in particular, spinning experiences of transfemme identity, race, found family, intergenerational trauma, love, sex and violence into … I think the term—originally coined by Audre Lorde—is biomythography?
All of which is to say, Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars is a piece of writing that feels true in every sense but the actual. And that is, y’know, very much the point. Let me just quote the opening wholesale to show you what I mean:
The book opens with the heroine, the eldest child of Chinese immigrants, leaving her family’s crooked house in the town of Gloom in order to make for the City of Smoke and Lights. Once there, she finds something like a home on Street of Miracles, where other dangerous femmes have created a community in defiance of a world a world that does not always treat them kindly or understand who they are.
Honestly, it's kind of impossible to talk about the plot of Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars because it's not important. This is not a book about what happens. It's a book about what things mean. Whether that's a group of vigilante femmes seeking retribution for the murder of one of their own, dealing with a body full of killer bees, watching mermaids dying on a beach, or receiving an orgasm from a ghost. It's all woven together from stories--ones that speak to the heroine's experiences, one that speak of the experiences of the people around her--from poems, and from letters home to her sister. The effect is dizzying but in the best possible way. Profoundly moving. And as blissfully freeing as one would expect from the greatest escape artist in the world.
Confabulous as it is, this is not a story that shies away from violence, cruelty, and exploitation, nor the impact of those things on deeply vulnerable people. But it's also about learning from hurt and finding in hope in the power to make choices. Even if--especially if--those choices run contrary to what it's assumed you should want or what your story has to look like.
In case it isn't obvious, I am passionately in love with Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars. It's this gorgeous, unapologetic act of pure exhilarating defiance, even to the form it takes, challenging almost every assumption a reader might have about what a book is or should be. Y'know, just as the heroine challenges the expectations and limitations the world brings to...yes, yes, you get it. In any case, I don't think I've ever read anything quite like it. And, while I'm not a big re-visitor of texts in general, I'm pretty sure I'll spend the rest of my life coming back here to drown in the exquisite fury of the prose:
Relevant disclaimers: None
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.
And remember: I am not here to judge your drag, I mean your book. Books are art and art is subjective. These are just my personal thoughts. They are not meant to be taken as broader commentary on the general quality of the work. Believe me, I have not enjoyed many an excellent book, and my individual lack of enjoyment has not made any of those books less excellent or (more relevantly) less successful.
*******************************************
This is a trans memoir that exists as deconstruction of memoirs and trans memoirs in particular, spinning experiences of transfemme identity, race, found family, intergenerational trauma, love, sex and violence into … I think the term—originally coined by Audre Lorde—is biomythography?
All of which is to say, Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars is a piece of writing that feels true in every sense but the actual. And that is, y’know, very much the point. Let me just quote the opening wholesale to show you what I mean:
I don’t believe in safe spaces. They don’t exist. I do, however, believe in dangerous stories: The kind that swirl up from inside you when you least expect it, like the voice of a mad angel whispering of the revolution you are about to unleash. Stories that bend and twist the air as they crackle off your tongue, making you shimmer with glamour, so that everyone around you hangs on to your every intoxicating word. The kind of stories that quiet mad girls dream of to bring themselves comfort after crying themselves to sleep at night, that made your poor starving grandfather cross an entire ocean in search of the unbelievable riches someone once told him were waiting on the other side.
The book opens with the heroine, the eldest child of Chinese immigrants, leaving her family’s crooked house in the town of Gloom in order to make for the City of Smoke and Lights. Once there, she finds something like a home on Street of Miracles, where other dangerous femmes have created a community in defiance of a world a world that does not always treat them kindly or understand who they are.
Honestly, it's kind of impossible to talk about the plot of Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars because it's not important. This is not a book about what happens. It's a book about what things mean. Whether that's a group of vigilante femmes seeking retribution for the murder of one of their own, dealing with a body full of killer bees, watching mermaids dying on a beach, or receiving an orgasm from a ghost. It's all woven together from stories--ones that speak to the heroine's experiences, one that speak of the experiences of the people around her--from poems, and from letters home to her sister. The effect is dizzying but in the best possible way. Profoundly moving. And as blissfully freeing as one would expect from the greatest escape artist in the world.
Confabulous as it is, this is not a story that shies away from violence, cruelty, and exploitation, nor the impact of those things on deeply vulnerable people. But it's also about learning from hurt and finding in hope in the power to make choices. Even if--especially if--those choices run contrary to what it's assumed you should want or what your story has to look like.
In case it isn't obvious, I am passionately in love with Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars. It's this gorgeous, unapologetic act of pure exhilarating defiance, even to the form it takes, challenging almost every assumption a reader might have about what a book is or should be. Y'know, just as the heroine challenges the expectations and limitations the world brings to...yes, yes, you get it. In any case, I don't think I've ever read anything quite like it. And, while I'm not a big re-visitor of texts in general, I'm pretty sure I'll spend the rest of my life coming back here to drown in the exquisite fury of the prose:
And then she kisses me, a kiss that is deep and ferocious. A kiss about the shock of the impact of bodies, slamming together. A kiss about warrior femmes, bodies painted bright for combat, about writhing snakelike on the dance floor of the battleground. About catching the fist before it hits your face and twisting back the arm that tried to hurt you till it breaks. About refusing ever, ever to forget all the femmes that fought and died before us, about screaming their names to the distant stars.
January 3, 2019
This book is a work of genius! A funny, dark, innovative story that completely takes apart the genre of the trans memoir. Kai Cheng Thom's writing is beautiful and powerful and poetic. It reminds me a lot of Amber Dawn's Sub Rosa but it's also very much its own thing. An ode to trans sisterhood. Highly recommended! Full review on my blog.
Read
October 24, 2017I’ve never understood the idea of a fictionalized memoir until I read this book. Amongst the beached mermaids and fairy tale elements of this story is sharp, unapologetic truth. I fell in love with the dreamlike, poetic prose that encompasses this narrative of transmisogyny, racism, police brutality, and self harm. Kai Cheng Thom doesn’t shrink from this, but she also reworks the idea of the trans memoir, allowing for more space, and more magic, in this often constrictive genre. This is a beautiful read that grabbed me from the first page.
–Danika Ellis
from The Best Books We Read In June 2017: https://bookriot.com/2017/07/03/riot-...
–Danika Ellis
from The Best Books We Read In June 2017: https://bookriot.com/2017/07/03/riot-...
March 24, 2019
Overall: Fierce Femmes is a funny, dark, innovative story about a trans girl and her journey in finding herself. Incredible writing, unique story that definitely pushes the limits and bends typical "genres." A fun and engaging read but had been hoping for more. 6.5/10
The Good: The best part of this book for me was the writing. From the very first page, the author grabs you and holds onto you until the very end. As an example, this is from page one:
"I don’t believe in safe spaces. They don’t exist. I do, however, believe in dangerous stories: the kind that swirl up from inside you when you least expect it, like the voice of a mad angel whispering of the revolution you are about to unleash. Stories that bend and twist the air as they crackle off your tongue, making you shimmer with glamour, so that everyone around you hangs on your every intoxicating word… The kind of story that doesn’t wait for you to invite it to enter, but bursts through the doors of your rat-infested house like a glittering wind, hungry, hungry, to snatch up the carpet and scatter your papers and smash every single plate in the kitchen…Where are those kinds of stories about trans girls like you and me?"
See what I mean? Incredible writing throughout the entire story. I enjoyed the overall structure of the book; it is fast paced and every chapter title gives you some clues as to what is about to unfold- I felt this helped to hold my attention. I liked the characters for the most part and I really enjoyed that this story pushes you. It makes you think and question and will stay with you after you finish reading it.
The Bad: This book is getting amazing reviews all around and I do not completely understand it. Yes, the writing is absolutely incredible and this is the best part of the book for me, but there were some issues. Though the story pushes the limits and makes you think, I expected it to do much more... Though it stayed with me after, it only lasted for about a day or so.. It was a fun and enjoyable book but I felt it could have been more, a lot more. I think I felt that way because there was just too much going on. For a 190 page book, A LOT happens; from femme tribe gone bad, to running away from home, mermaids, murder, killer bees, sex, ghost orgasms, etc. It is just a lot, and I think there was just a bit too much for me going on that it took away from some of the fundamental components of this book. And I never understood the killer bees..
Favorite Quotes:
"I'm starting to think that the best thing you can do for people is teach them how to protect themselves. Every girl needs to be at least a little dangerous.”
“Books are like this magical window that you can open no matter where you are and you fall into a different place that´s better than the one you're trapped in.”
The Good: The best part of this book for me was the writing. From the very first page, the author grabs you and holds onto you until the very end. As an example, this is from page one:
"I don’t believe in safe spaces. They don’t exist. I do, however, believe in dangerous stories: the kind that swirl up from inside you when you least expect it, like the voice of a mad angel whispering of the revolution you are about to unleash. Stories that bend and twist the air as they crackle off your tongue, making you shimmer with glamour, so that everyone around you hangs on your every intoxicating word… The kind of story that doesn’t wait for you to invite it to enter, but bursts through the doors of your rat-infested house like a glittering wind, hungry, hungry, to snatch up the carpet and scatter your papers and smash every single plate in the kitchen…Where are those kinds of stories about trans girls like you and me?"
See what I mean? Incredible writing throughout the entire story. I enjoyed the overall structure of the book; it is fast paced and every chapter title gives you some clues as to what is about to unfold- I felt this helped to hold my attention. I liked the characters for the most part and I really enjoyed that this story pushes you. It makes you think and question and will stay with you after you finish reading it.
The Bad: This book is getting amazing reviews all around and I do not completely understand it. Yes, the writing is absolutely incredible and this is the best part of the book for me, but there were some issues. Though the story pushes the limits and makes you think, I expected it to do much more... Though it stayed with me after, it only lasted for about a day or so.. It was a fun and enjoyable book but I felt it could have been more, a lot more. I think I felt that way because there was just too much going on. For a 190 page book, A LOT happens; from femme tribe gone bad, to running away from home, mermaids, murder, killer bees, sex, ghost orgasms, etc. It is just a lot, and I think there was just a bit too much for me going on that it took away from some of the fundamental components of this book. And I never understood the killer bees..
Favorite Quotes:
"I'm starting to think that the best thing you can do for people is teach them how to protect themselves. Every girl needs to be at least a little dangerous.”
“Books are like this magical window that you can open no matter where you are and you fall into a different place that´s better than the one you're trapped in.”
June 12, 2017
Wow.
The writing is incredible. I can't really articulate right now, but: wow.
Trigger warnings for transmisogyny, violence, self harm (cutting)
The writing is incredible. I can't really articulate right now, but: wow.
Trigger warnings for transmisogyny, violence, self harm (cutting)
May 5, 2019
I want to expand on the star rating, because lord knows that's not the whole conversation. This book to me exemplifies a question I've been working through for the past two years: when does the value of the content outweigh the appraisal of the execution? To me, Fierce Femmes & Notorious Liars is telling all kinds of important stories, in a new and accessible way. At the same time (and I don't want to be mean) it does read like somebody's debut novel! I had a hard time getting through it. For me, in this case, the package was clunky even if the treasure inside was awesome.
April 30, 2021
A beautiful fairy-tale like story of a trans runaway finding friends, enemies, and strange magic in a big city. She leaves her hometown, her younger sister, and her strict Chinese immigrant parents behind on the day the mermaids beach themselves on the shore and fade away. She finds herself on the Street of Miracles and in the fabulous but fractured community of trans women for the first time. Then a trans woman is murdered, and the others must decide how they want to respond: activism or violence? Infused with ghosts, spells, fights, and forgiveness, this short novel hits hard. I was reminded of Kelly Link's stories, and the Bordertown books by Will Shetterly and Emma Bull. I definitely want to read more from Kai Cheng Thom, who I've heard interviewed on Gender Reveal (episode 81) as well as other podcasts.
November 11, 2018
This book grabbed me by the throat and didn't let go until the very last page. I wrote about it here: http://mtlreviewofbooks.ca/reviews/fi...
June 17, 2021
the use of fabulism in this memoir was so well done! I loved the emphasis on found family and learning to love and fight for yourself!
June 25, 2019
I love this book! Like Anna Joy Springer's The Vicious Red Relic, Love, it stretches the genre of memoir in super exciting ways -- specifically, and explicitly, the genre of the trans memoir.
And! Like Amber Dawn's Sub Rosa, FFANL uses magic and fantasy in new and idiosyncratic ways. Was really interested in how Kai Cheng mobilizes magic to various ends, while emphasizing its limitations, too--there are multiple layers of realism, and she pulls back the magical overlay periodically; magic might get rid of the dead cop but not the anxiety and paranoia the characters are left with.
AND! This book deconstructs both girl gang and princess narratives while recentering them around transfemme experience.
Plus!! So much amazing imagery. Throughout, the writing is gorgeous.
This will be one of my favorites in life, I think.
EDIT June 2019: Having reread this novel now three times, I remain very enthusiastic about it! Perhaps above I overstate the book's relationship to memoir -- it is a "confabulous memoir" after all, and reinvents the memoir in the form of (fantastic) fiction. Continues to be one of my favorites, best ever.
And! Like Amber Dawn's Sub Rosa, FFANL uses magic and fantasy in new and idiosyncratic ways. Was really interested in how Kai Cheng mobilizes magic to various ends, while emphasizing its limitations, too--there are multiple layers of realism, and she pulls back the magical overlay periodically; magic might get rid of the dead cop but not the anxiety and paranoia the characters are left with.
AND! This book deconstructs both girl gang and princess narratives while recentering them around transfemme experience.
Plus!! So much amazing imagery. Throughout, the writing is gorgeous.
This will be one of my favorites in life, I think.
EDIT June 2019: Having reread this novel now three times, I remain very enthusiastic about it! Perhaps above I overstate the book's relationship to memoir -- it is a "confabulous memoir" after all, and reinvents the memoir in the form of (fantastic) fiction. Continues to be one of my favorites, best ever.
July 16, 2021
What an entrancing memoir, unlike anything I’ve ever read. Dark, imaginative, fast paced, thoughtful, and, in equal measure, harrowing and joyful, Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars explores the experience of a young Asian trans girl stepping into womanhood through a fantastical lens of colourful metaphor. A story of sisterhood and transformation.
Kai Cheng Thom has found a unique literary voice through which to share her lived experience, and I am endlessly grateful that she has chosen to share it with the world. Thom’s work is poetic yet blunt, dreamlike yet firmly rooted in reality.
“Little cocoon apartment, I love how you rattle and shake in the wind. You are mine like nothing has ever been before. Someday you'll tear open, and I'll fly out with the wings I have grown inside you. Still shimmering. Still wet.”
I highly recommend!
Trigger Warnings: self-harm, violence, sexual assault, attempted assault, murder, medical malpractice
VIDEO REVIEW: https://youtu.be/y5sRzlqgopM
You can find me on...
Youtube | Instagram | Twitter
Kai Cheng Thom has found a unique literary voice through which to share her lived experience, and I am endlessly grateful that she has chosen to share it with the world. Thom’s work is poetic yet blunt, dreamlike yet firmly rooted in reality.
“Little cocoon apartment, I love how you rattle and shake in the wind. You are mine like nothing has ever been before. Someday you'll tear open, and I'll fly out with the wings I have grown inside you. Still shimmering. Still wet.”
I highly recommend!
Trigger Warnings: self-harm, violence, sexual assault, attempted assault, murder, medical malpractice
VIDEO REVIEW: https://youtu.be/y5sRzlqgopM
You can find me on...
Youtube | Instagram | Twitter
December 26, 2016
this is a very very real magical realist fairytale that i place in the lineages of francesca lia block and zoe whittall and amber dawn and also the oral & performance storytelling lineage of kai cheng thom herself, which is distinctive and swiftly recognizable. it has bitter and sharp and dark and it also has sweet and raucous and celebratory. my most favourite thing about this book is that it is the most strongly femme4femme thing i have ever read. my other most favourite thing about this book is that it holds violence with the reverence and delicacy it truly deserves and places it squarely within our safest and most-loved people and places. queers need this perspective.
reading this started to answer some of the questions i've been trying to figure out for myself as a writer about how you take life and make it fiction, how you make things a fairytale, how you move between there/here and other polarities, and how you show the way without bashing people over the head with blunt exhortations of how a person should be.
reading this started to answer some of the questions i've been trying to figure out for myself as a writer about how you take life and make it fiction, how you make things a fairytale, how you move between there/here and other polarities, and how you show the way without bashing people over the head with blunt exhortations of how a person should be.
October 28, 2019
This book revolves around our fierce Asian trans-woman protagonist trying to find her way in the world & while doing so discover some ‘mystical & magical creatures’. As she leaves her house where she faces constant abuse to start her new life, she comes across several friends & people who became her family. While being with her new family she eventually finds her true self and evolves to attain her actual identity. But as another fellow femme friend gets murder in a hate crime, our protagonist along with her friends decide to fight the hate by themselves & form their own little vigilante group named the ‘Lipstick Lacerators’. But as it happens, things go wrong & our protagonist need to now introspect how should they mend their ways while also protect themselves.
Read full review on Just Another Bookaholic
Read full review on Just Another Bookaholic
November 6, 2020
The world would be a better place if it had more books like this in.
A goddamn delicious razor blade buried deep in Halloween candy
A goddamn delicious razor blade buried deep in Halloween candy
June 27, 2025
After a few days of being a very inactive reader, I'm baaack!
I fully expect to crush a few books this weekend because it's rainy and gross in Vancouver so... sorry in advance I guess?
Turning first to Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars - this wild, heartrending book certainly delivers on that premise. The decision to call this a memoir is an interesting one for me, for as much as we are taken onto the Street of Miracles and follow the fierce femmes as they fight back against transphobic bigots in bloody, cathartic fashion... the story holds the reader at arms length, using magical realism to create distance rather than pull the reader in. It's the kind of choice that leaves this reader with a lot of questions and not many answers, as I never really get to know the author beneath this fictionalized facade of bombastic violence, killer bees and lipstick wearing street gangs. What does shine through however, is the strong sense of found family, and the enduring strength of a sibling bond, between a younger sibling left behind, and the older sibling who sets off into the world on a journey of self-discovery. I also really loved the interludes of poetry labeled as "from my notebook". A particular piece about her hair growing out and getting longer was a gorgeous snapshot of gender euphoria, a tangible and measurable documentation along a journey of transitioning and becoming who she knew she was all along. Gorgeous.
I fully expect to crush a few books this weekend because it's rainy and gross in Vancouver so... sorry in advance I guess?
Turning first to Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars - this wild, heartrending book certainly delivers on that premise. The decision to call this a memoir is an interesting one for me, for as much as we are taken onto the Street of Miracles and follow the fierce femmes as they fight back against transphobic bigots in bloody, cathartic fashion... the story holds the reader at arms length, using magical realism to create distance rather than pull the reader in. It's the kind of choice that leaves this reader with a lot of questions and not many answers, as I never really get to know the author beneath this fictionalized facade of bombastic violence, killer bees and lipstick wearing street gangs. What does shine through however, is the strong sense of found family, and the enduring strength of a sibling bond, between a younger sibling left behind, and the older sibling who sets off into the world on a journey of self-discovery. I also really loved the interludes of poetry labeled as "from my notebook". A particular piece about her hair growing out and getting longer was a gorgeous snapshot of gender euphoria, a tangible and measurable documentation along a journey of transitioning and becoming who she knew she was all along. Gorgeous.
May 5, 2017
If you like magical realism, even a little bit, RUN DON'T WALK to get your hands on this book. Every page had a fresh delight. Kai Cheng Thom is changing the game for fictionalized memoirs. This book healed something in me.
August 12, 2020
um if you're even remotely interested in magical realism and dangerous trans girls fighting back fiercely and loving each other ferociously, pls do yourself a favor and read this book.
May 7, 2018
Ok -- writing this two months after reading, so bear with me as I try and recall my thoughts.
This was an exciting story to read, super imaginative and engaging. Definitely a recommended read. Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars follows a young trans girl who comes into her power as part of a grrrl gang and along the way figures out how to fit into the world, find love, and build chosen family.
Kai Cheng Thom's novel takes readers to a whole new world as the protagonist comes into her own trans womenhood on the streets of a city akin to Montreal, Qc. The way this writing was woven together felt incredibly poetic, from a crooked home in Gloom (reminding me of Victoria, B.C.) with crying mermaids on its shores, to knife-wielding greyhouse bus rides, to an arrival in a far far away place that offers a fresh start and new possibilities. Along the way, the protagonist faces various barriers and challenges as a young East Asian trans girl who is running away from home, trying to survive and learning how to trust others. This story touches on the nuances of East Asian privilege in POC communities, transphobia, intergenerational trauma, and trans women's liberation, all while embedding it into a narrative that doesn't feel didactic or moralistic.
I really liked the way the book's chapters were peppered with poetry and letters to a sister back home. In some ways, this gave it a journal-like quality, which felt very intimate to read. Thank you, Kai Cheng Thom for this generous gift.
This was an exciting story to read, super imaginative and engaging. Definitely a recommended read. Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars follows a young trans girl who comes into her power as part of a grrrl gang and along the way figures out how to fit into the world, find love, and build chosen family.
Kai Cheng Thom's novel takes readers to a whole new world as the protagonist comes into her own trans womenhood on the streets of a city akin to Montreal, Qc. The way this writing was woven together felt incredibly poetic, from a crooked home in Gloom (reminding me of Victoria, B.C.) with crying mermaids on its shores, to knife-wielding greyhouse bus rides, to an arrival in a far far away place that offers a fresh start and new possibilities. Along the way, the protagonist faces various barriers and challenges as a young East Asian trans girl who is running away from home, trying to survive and learning how to trust others. This story touches on the nuances of East Asian privilege in POC communities, transphobia, intergenerational trauma, and trans women's liberation, all while embedding it into a narrative that doesn't feel didactic or moralistic.
I really liked the way the book's chapters were peppered with poetry and letters to a sister back home. In some ways, this gave it a journal-like quality, which felt very intimate to read. Thank you, Kai Cheng Thom for this generous gift.
December 9, 2020
4.5 / 5
this was beautifully written. i loved the prose so much, as well as the poems. it’s dark but there’s a sense of magic on every page. we follow a young trans asian girl who runs away from home and joins a group of femmes. she also knows kung fu, and she’s kind of violent, which made her even more fun to follow. she learns things and accepts things—about love, about family, about pain, about fear, about self. i loved her a lot 🥺
this was beautifully written. i loved the prose so much, as well as the poems. it’s dark but there’s a sense of magic on every page. we follow a young trans asian girl who runs away from home and joins a group of femmes. she also knows kung fu, and she’s kind of violent, which made her even more fun to follow. she learns things and accepts things—about love, about family, about pain, about fear, about self. i loved her a lot 🥺
July 11, 2024
ugh this was incredible i loveeee angry magical(ish) trans girls who fight back. literally obsessed with this genre of queer fiction. i keep consuming things that make me feel like a dog whose owner is saying all of their favorite words to make them really excited which is super awesome. so beautiful immediate fav
October 21, 2020
This is such a unique book and I loved the reading experience. It's a fantastical twist on a memoir. I have no idea how much of it was inspired by the author's real life - assuming it was at all. Some of it read as poetry which I normally don't like, but it worked here. It was a wild ride.
November 2, 2021
An astoundingly good and refreshingly Mad book. Truly, truly outstanding, and unique in its blend of myth and memoir –– creating, in the process, myths anew. Thom's uncompromising support of survival over normative "recovery," her subtle, intense critiques of the medical, scholarly, and nonprofit industries, and her intimate, everyday practices of transfem countercommunity manifest the transMad futures I've been dreaming of: far from perfect, unrecovering, and big enough to hold all of us.
February 18, 2021
A delicious and fun read, I zipped right through this little lady. A weirdo queering of the memoir injected with magical realism and snappy one liners. A book written by a trans girl, about trans girls, for trans girls. Chock full of fantastic and fabulous vigilante trans freaks trying to build community.
Read
August 5, 2017"Taller in my heels, I am closer to some dangerous heaven."
This book is beautiful and impossible to put down! I came looking for something to take me somewhere, and this was so enchanting that I wondered if it was really in my hands.
This book is beautiful and impossible to put down! I came looking for something to take me somewhere, and this was so enchanting that I wondered if it was really in my hands.
Read
December 2, 2018Striking and beautiful, I love how it subverts the "trans memoir" framing too. I want to write more about it later!
Source of the book: Lawrence Public Library
Source of the book: Lawrence Public Library
May 12, 2022
I genuinely cannot put into words how much I loved this book! It's like nothing I've ever read before and yet will spend the rest of my life yearning for something that will match up to it. Genuinely a book that everyone should read!
July 3, 2021
Book 168 of 2021
3.5 ✨
This book was one hell of a ride. At the beginning, the author clearly stated the drive behind the book - she was tired of trans women in media only being celebrated when they did exceptional stuff or perfectly fit a demure and femme mold. So, she set out to tell a story of a fierce femme dangerous trans girl.
This book is a work of fiction - don't be fooled by the memoir in the title like I was lol. I did not know that throughout my read and I kept thinking it was her real life story and I was like omg why is she confessing to so many crimes in her memoir 😂😂😂
Anyway, this was so so good and it was such a fun read. It's pretty short too and it was really interesting. I enjoyed it and I loved loved loved the found family trope. It was so rich and full of queerness.
Told in the first person perspective to really fit the memoir tag, the MC takes us on her journey. She ran away from home after realizing that her birth family will never accept her as a girl since they've always wanted a son. She finds herself in the fold of a small queer community and things really take off from there.
Romance is also a minor part of this book but the dangerous trans girl is what you should be on the lookout for.
I definitely definitely recommend this one. The audiobook is available on scribd.
3.5 ✨
This book was one hell of a ride. At the beginning, the author clearly stated the drive behind the book - she was tired of trans women in media only being celebrated when they did exceptional stuff or perfectly fit a demure and femme mold. So, she set out to tell a story of a fierce femme dangerous trans girl.
This book is a work of fiction - don't be fooled by the memoir in the title like I was lol. I did not know that throughout my read and I kept thinking it was her real life story and I was like omg why is she confessing to so many crimes in her memoir 😂😂😂
Anyway, this was so so good and it was such a fun read. It's pretty short too and it was really interesting. I enjoyed it and I loved loved loved the found family trope. It was so rich and full of queerness.
Told in the first person perspective to really fit the memoir tag, the MC takes us on her journey. She ran away from home after realizing that her birth family will never accept her as a girl since they've always wanted a son. She finds herself in the fold of a small queer community and things really take off from there.
Romance is also a minor part of this book but the dangerous trans girl is what you should be on the lookout for.
I definitely definitely recommend this one. The audiobook is available on scribd.
Read
December 15, 2016This book is a nice little dose of magic, which is especially welcome in times like these. What I liked most: Ghost Friend and, "What do you think the difference is between hunger and love?"
July 8, 2020
A magical trans girl memoir fairytale <3
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,026 reviews