CHENNAI: It's a crowded affair at the Chennai Book Fair, with readers of all ages strolling through the stalls, flipping books and recollecting which authors they belong to.
Amid the steady movement and the low hum of conversations between stalls, a small crowd gathered at the stall of Thirunangai Press, working with transgender writers and dedicated to telling their stories.
Books of writers Olga B Aaron and Sri Akshaya are also placed in their racks inviting one to read them.
Aaron’s Kaalidukkil Oppanthangal, and Akshaya’s Kovilpatti to Chennai Vazhi Thadangal scheduled for release on the January 18, draw from their lived experiences of family, education, labour, and social exclusion.
Born in 1958, Aaron grew up with acceptance in her family at a time when transgender identities had neither language nor legal recognition, a time she refers to as social invisibility. “I did not have to leave my home as I was fortunate enough for my mother and my brother to accept me for who I am,” she starts. “That acceptance decided how my life moved forward.” She transitioned in the 1990s. “Transgender, wasn't even a term then. Also, there were hardly any laws or welfare boards,” she says.
Her writing emerges from decades of her time as a counsellor and social worker, working with women, children, persons with disabilities, and persons from her own community. These helped her understand the situation and shape, ‘Kaalidukkil Oppanthangal’, her poetry collection. The book, translated to English as ‘With Thy Femme’, has poems that move through caste, gender, and everyday violence, recording silences inside families and social spaces rather than focusing only on visible suffering.
Sri Akshaya’s writings record a similar trajectory from another generation and background. Raised in Kovilpatti town in Thoothukudi district, she said her awareness of the difference began early. “By the time I was 12 or 13, I knew I was not like the others. But I did not have words for it,” she says.
Her memoir, Kovilpatti to Chennai Vazhi Thadangal, traces movement from village to city and from childhood silence to self-recognition. "Structured around everyday experiences, the book examines how family expectations and social norms narrow the possibilities available to trans children.
Transgender persons are pushed out of their homes and end up taking alms as a means of survival. She added that responsibility lies with both families and society," elaborates the writer. “Parents expect a son as an heir and a daughter to take care of them in old age. If these two children are born, is it a treasure for you? If both are born as one child, a hybrid, is it a burden for you? Aren’t we also alive like those two children?” she comments.
For both writers, writing is a means to make themselves heard, and for others to feel seen. “Most books speak about us. Very few speak from within us,” says Akshaya. For Olga, it functions as a record rather than mere representation. “We have lived our whole lives without documentation. If we don’t write, it is as if we were never here. When a trans person writes, it is never just one story. It becomes evidence of how society works,” Olga states.