by Mirha-Soleil Ross
Littlepuss Press
11/4/2025, paperback
SKU: 9781964322087
A long-lost zine reveals the secret history of contemporary transgender culture
In 1993, Mirha Soleil-Ross and Xanthra Phillippa MacKay, fed up with a gay scene that rejected trans people and a trans scene that saw no alternative to going "stealth," began to publish the zine Gendertrash From Hell. Over four issues, they interviewed sex workers and prisoners; they printed collages, soap operas and polemics; they ran regular sections with titles like "Trannies Speak Out" and "Hooker of the Month". They redefined transsexual culture forever, and their explosive ideas resonate deeply today.
Remastered from the original layouts, this foundational work is now available in book form for the first time, including previously-unseen drafts from the unfinished fifth issue and essays by Trish Salah and Leah Tigers. Irreverent, furious, reckless, sexy, hilarious and incisive, Gendertrash from Hell is here to set all your presuppositions on fire.
Reviews:
"There is an alternate history of what we now call trans studies, trans culture, trans literature, one that is not USian and monolingual in its origin stories and normative framework, one that begins rooted in sex worker, racialized, Indigenous and street active transsexual and transgender peoples communities, one that is not "queer paradigmed" in its frame, or oriented towards respectability or institutional legitimation."--Trish Salah, Lambda Award-winning author of Wanting in Arabic and Lyric Sexology, Vol. 1
"A breathtaking archive of our community and our struggle for connection, acceptance and liberation. Within these pages I can recollect the path of my own forming, reflections and refractions of the zines and message boards and chatrooms of my past, laid out like stepping stones to my current self. An absolute vital work for a precipitous time!"--Lilly Wachowski, co-director of The Matrix
"Riotous ... fascinating ... The most powerful aspect of this compendium is witnessing the zine grow its readership and outreach via its expanding personals section, letters to the editor, and cross-advertising from other trans publications. It's a remarkable and inspiring record of community-building."--Publishers Weekly
"Thank the Goddexx for Gendertrash and its far-reaching vision, uncompromised ethos, its lust for sharing and also for lust, its wildness and its crucial, lived knowledge. A perfect, angry, art community in a zine; a deeply necessary collection, then and now and always."--Michelle Tea, Lambda Award-winning author of Valencia and Black Wave
About the Editor:
Mirha-Soleil Ross is a legendary trans activist and performer. She was the editor of Gendertrash From Hell, the organizer of the first ever trans film festival Counting Past Two, and the creator of multiple one-woman performances including "Yapping Out Loud: Confessions of an Unrepentant Whore". Her work since the early 1990s in Montreal and Toronto has focused on transsexual rights, access to resources, advocacy for sex workers and animal rights.