Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars

A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir

By: Kai Cheng Thom

Narrated by: Adri Almeida

Length: 4 hrs and 13 mins

Publisher's summary

At once a love letter and challenge to the traditional transgender memoir, Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars is a playful, surrealist dance through queer coming of age.

A haunted young girl (who happens to be a kung-fu expert and pathological liar) runs away from an oppressive city, where the sky is always grey, in search of love and sisterhood - and finds herself in a magical place known only as the Street of Miracles. There, she is quickly adopted into a vigilante gang of glamorous warrior femmes called the Lipstick Lacerators, whose mission is to scour the Street of violent men and avenge murdered trans women everywhere. But when disaster strikes, can our intrepid heroine find the truth within herself in order to protect her new family and heal her broken heart?

Bespeak Audio Editions brings Canadian voices to the world with audiobook editions of some of the country’s greatest works of literature, performed by Canadian actors.

©2016 Kai Cheng Thom (P)2019 Bespeak Audio Editions

Touching

… and humane work. A tale told with compassion and gentle ferocity. In an odd way the style is somewhat Faulkner-esque.

Wow.

This novel memoir is in my top 5. Incredible work, story, characters, and imagery. Read it. Buy it. Gift it.

Everything I’ve been looking for

This is an exception piece of literature, amongst my top 10 favorite books of all time, nestled right above 100 Years of Solitude. It’s been everything I’ve ever been longing for from any work, written or otherwise.

Full of deeper meanings

I enjoyed this book a lot. But I really wish the author would’ve been the reader for this audible. I think that detracts from the content a little bit but overall good stories with a lot of deeper meanings. Give me a different perspective and I never got bored.

Birds of Prey with Transsexuals

A fast, furious collision of darkness and whimsy. Birds of Prey with transsexuals. Could be more energetically read, but the narration does the job.

A lot is made of how this novel abrasively skewers the conventions of transgender autobiographical storytelling, but it has a great deal of affection for the tradition as well. Would recommended reading alongside Janet Mock’s Redefining Realness.

really great !!

this book is beautifully well written and balances comfort with deeply personal collective and individual trauma.
A little bit resonantof Akwaeke Emezi, but if Emezi is warm and blooming vibe, Thom is breeze, movement vibes??

Truth is Beauty and Beauty Truth

This is a a wonderful, inspiring, and immersive novel. The narrator was really good, but pronounces 't's like they are 'd's, which drives me nuts. Even so, I highly recommend this book.

captivating, exquisite, raw, life changing

I couldn't stop listening. The imagery, metaphor, and tactile descriptions blew me into another world. I've never heard Fems described in such an empowering, strong and sensitive way. thank you thank you for this story.

I get the lisp

Yeah, the narrorator has a lisp. you piece together why in the book. The author is telling this story when she was a teen (and probably a young, Canadian teen), you need someone who sounds younger. A lisp can do that. Adults with money fix their lisp, but an immigrated family who doesn't have enough money to even have a flat floor or straight walls? They can't fix a lisp.

It works for the story.

Tough to listen to

It was definitely a struggle to finish this book because the person's voice definitely has some sort of a lisp or perhaps just puts a strong emphasis on the letter "s". With that, this book is rich in descriptive language, but you do get a mix of real life trans stories in a pot of fiction. The fiction doesn't really have guidelines like these "certain people have powers, but others don't" kind of thing which makes certain parts of the story hard to understand.