Before Gender
Discover the trailblazing lives of thirty trans people who will radically change everything you've been told about transgender history. Highlighting influential individuals from 1850 to 1950 who are all but unknown today, Eli Erlick shares thirty remarkable stories from romance to rebellion and mystery to murder. These narratives chronicle the grit, joy and survival of trans people long before gender became an everyday term. Organised into four parts, paralleling today's controversies over gender identity - kids, activists, workers and athletes - Before Gender introduces figures whose forgotten stories transform the discussion. These ground-breaking histories include two of the first teens to access gender-affirming medical treatment, a countess who instigated an LGBTQ+ riot forty years before Stonewall and the greatest female billiards player of the 1910s. Bold and visionary, Erlick's debut uncovers these lost stories from the depths of the archives to narrate trans lives in a way that has never been attempted before.
Eli Erlick
Eli Erlick is the director of Trans Student Educational Resources, a national youth-led organization dedicated to transforming the educational environment for trans students, where her work emphasizes transgender youth activism, education, and media. Erlick co-founded the organization at the age of sixteen in 2011 while attending high school in rural Northern California. It has since grown to a national scale and has dozens of members, hosts the only countrywide fellowship program for transgender youth, and has resources in thousands of colleges and universities around the world.
She is a Westly Foundation, Peace First, and Red Bull Amaphiko fellow and has been recognized internationally by Glamour Magazine, NPR, and Teen Vogue alongside numerous other publications. Her work and writing have been featured in The New York Times, Time Magazine, and The Los Angeles Times among dozens of additional outlets.
