Bordered Lives: Transgender Portraits from Mexico

(Paperback)

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Description

A richly evocative collection of photographs by internationally renowned photographer Kike Arnal, Bordered Lives seeks to push back against the transphobic caricatures that have perpetuated discrimination against the transgender community in Mexico. In the highly personal profiles that make up Bordered Lives, including the first transgender couple to be married in Mexico and one of the country's most high-profile transgender entertainers, Arnal looks at seven individuals in and around Mexico City. Moving in its honesty, this book challenges many notions of sexuality.

Reviews

"A record of the lives of courageous Mexicans who have taken nontraditional gender out of the category of the freakish and into the realm of the humanly possible. Breathtaking."
Alma Guillermoprieto, author of Looking for History and The Heart That Bleeds

"Photography can make a powerful contribution to the spread of tolerance simply by making people visible to each other. That is just what Bordered Lives does, without fuss or frills."
Peter Galassi, former chief curator of photography, The Museum of Modern Art

"Too often the faces around us are lost and their stories are ignored. The photographs in Bordered Lives allow us to linger and discover new worlds."
David Mixner, author of Stranger Among Friends

"Devastating."
San Francisco Chronicle on Kike Arnal's In the Shadow of Power

Author Bio

Originally from Venezuela and now based in the San Francisco Bay area, Kike Arnal has covered stories in the Americas, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe. His photographs have been featured in the New York Times, Life, and Mother Jones, among other leading publications. Arnals photographs of Washington, D.C., have been collected in In the Shadow of Power, with an introduction by Ralph Nader. Susan Stryker (San Francisco, CA) is director of the Institute for LGBT Studies and associate professor of gender and women's studies at the University of Arizona.