Fierce, Fabulous, and Fluid: How Trans High School Students Work at Gender Nonconformityby LJ SlovinPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$32.95 ISBN 9781779400505 To write the academic text Fierce, Fabulous, and Fluid: How Trans High School Students Work at Gender Nonconformity LJ Slovin (the Martha LA McCain Postdoctoral Fellow at the Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto) undertook a year-long ethnographical study in a Vancouver high school to explore the experiences of gender-nonconforming youth, who, Slovin found, were “often overlooked in discussions about trans issues, in part due to policies created by well-meaning educators that inadvertently perpetuated a narrow definition of trans identity.” Ethnography is the study of people in their own environment through methods including participant observation and face-to-face interviewing. Slovin, a non-binary researcher and Vanier Scholar, writes that in witnessing how six “gender-nonconforming youth navigated their genders … through different spaces and relationships at school,” they attended their grades 9-12 classes, “joined in during their extracurricular activities and clubs, ate lunch with them, attended their performances, and hung out” inside school and out, ie: in cafés. Slovin’s work focused on “youth who were not regularly recognized by others as trans,” and these…

Women Who Dig: Farming, Feminism, and the Fight to Feed the Worldby Trina MoylesPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Kris Brandhagen$34.95 ISBN 9780889775275 Trina Moyles traveled for three years to eight countries to conduct research for her book Women Who Dig: Farming, Feminism, and the Fight to Feed the World, upon learning that her great grandmother farmed singlehandedly in Saskatchewan while her husband and sons fought in WWI. Moyles thought that the stories of other female farmers might also be hidden, and felt passionate about bringing them to light. Moyles limited her research to specific areas and conditions, such as the Maya-Mam in the Comitancillo province in Guatemala, whose farms are threatened by the presence of a Canadian gold mine, and undocumented Mexican women in Sonoma County California who pick grapes all night long, facing possibilities of abuse, violence, rape, illness and injury. A goat farmer in Salt Spring Island BC uses loopholes to provide raw milk to her community; a woman in Peace County Alberta has started a community supported farm, where members pay for the product in advance; and an Edmonton urban farmer plants on vacant lots in exchange for produce. Farmers in the Rio San Juan…

“The Trans Generation: How Trans Kids (and Their Parents) Are Creating a Gender Revolution”by Ann TraversPublished by University of Regina PressReviewed by Ben Charles$24.95 ISBN 9780889775787 The Trans Generation: How Trans Kids (and Their Parents) Are Creating a Gender Revolution, written by Ann Travers and published by the University of Regina Press is an honest and enlightening review of the trials and struggles of growing up transgender in North America. The experiences contained in this book were gathered by a series of interviews with transgender kids and youth (individuals from a wide variety of ages, from 4 to 18) and the parents of trans kids in Canada and the United States between the years of 2012 to 2017. As someone who is not transgender and knows relatively little about experiences of transgender people, I found this book to be an incredibly informative experience. This was in no small part due to Travers’ incredibly close attention to detail and the obvious meticulousness that they poured into their research. Literature that is academic in nature has a tendency to be a little dry, somewhat hard to follow, and littered with jargon. However, I did not find this to be the case with…