Leslie Feinberg - Biography

Leslie Feinberg (b. September 1, 1949, in Kansas City, Missouri) is a transgender queer and communist activist, speaker, and author. Feinberg's first novel Stone Butch Blues is widely considered a groundbreaking work about gender.

Career

Feinberg's 1993 first novel Stone Butch Blues, which won the Lambda Literary Award, is a novel based around Jess Goldberg, a transgender individual growing up in a conservative town in New York and discovering the nascent gay community in Buffalo during the 1970s and 80s. Despite popular belief, the fictional work is not autobiographical. This book is frequently taught at colleges, universities and some high schools.

In addition to Stone Butch Blues, Feinberg has authored two non-fiction books, Transliberation: Beyond Pink or Blue and Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman, the novel Drag King Dreams, and Rainbow Solidarity in Defense of Cuba, a compilation of 25 journalistic articles. Feinberg is also a high-ranking member of the Workers World Party and a managing editor of Workers World newspaper.

Feinberg's writings on LGBT history, "Lavender & Red," frequently appear in the Workers World newspaper. Feinberg has also been involved in Camp Trans and has been awarded an honorary doctorate from Starr King School for the Ministry for transgender and social justice work.

Feinberg began taking photographs in late 2008 after illness and resulting disability made writing difficult.

Personal life and health

Leslie Feinberg is a secular Jew, and was assigned female at birth. Feinberg explains: "I was born in Kansas City, Missouri--not Buffalo, N.Y.--into a blue-collar, factory-working family." Feinberg prefers the gender-neutral pronouns "hir" and "ze", as well as s/he.

Feinberg's partner is the prominent lesbian poet-activist Minnie Bruce Pratt.

Feinberg has been battling the effects of Lyme Disease, Babesiosis, Bartonella and other co-infections caught from a tick bite in the 1970s.

Feinberg has carried legal documents for 40 years that state clearly who is, and is not, part of Feinberg's family. Irving David Feinberg, Betty Vance Hyde and Catherine Ryan Hyde, though biologically related to Feinberg, are legally defined as not part of Feinberg's family. These documents also define Feinberg's partner Pratt to be family; Feinberg also refers to certain other chosen people as family.

Books by Leslie Feinberg

• Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come, World View Forum, 1992. ISBN 0-89567-105-0
• Stone Butch Blues, San Francisco: Firebrand Books, 1993. ISBN 1-55583-853-7

• Träume in den erwachenden Morgen: Stone Butch Blues, Berlin: Verlag Krug & Schadenberg, 2008. ISBN 978-3-930041-35-0

• Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996. ISBN 0-8070-7941-3
• Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue. Beacon Press, 1999. ISBN 0-8070-7951-0
• Drag King Dreams. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2006. ISBN 0-7867-1763-7
• Rainbow Solidarity in Defense of Cuba. New York: World View Forum. ISBN 0895671506

External links

• Leslie Feinberg's homepage
• Lavender & Red, Feinberg's columns in Worker's World
• Feinberg's photostream
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