 Front cover, with art by Samantha Garritano | |
| Author | Kai Cheng Thom |
|---|---|
| Genre | Transgender fiction |
| Publisher | Metonymy Press |
Publication date | 15 November 2016 |
| Pages | 200[1] |
| ISBN | 978-0-9940471-3-7 |
Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir is a 2016 Canadian book by Kai Cheng Thom. A surrealist novel, it follows an unnamed transgender woman protagonist who leaves home at a young age to live on the Street of Miracles—where various sex work takes place—with other "femmes" (trans women). After one of them is killed, others form a gang and begin to attack men on the street.
Thom aimed not to write a traditional transgender memoir targeted at explaining transgender issues to cisgender people, but to write the book that would have helped her as a transgender teenager. Characters are based on people from her life, as are plot points, but they are exaggerated and made surrealist. Two metaphors, those of killer bees living inside her and a Ghost Friend which can make her orgasm, represent after-effects of traumatic abuse.
The novel garnered critical praise and was a finalist for Transgender Fiction at the 29th Lambda Literary Awards. It experienced a resurgence of attention when Emma Watson chose it for her feminist book club, Our Shared Shelf, in 2019.