Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir

Written by Kai Cheng Thom

Narrated by Adri Almeida

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ECW
• Release date: Jul 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9781773054520

Reviews for Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars

[sashastorylover · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Utterly brilliant novel in verse!

It’s a memoir by Chinese-Canadian femme Kai Cheng Thom. A memoir of her early life, leaving the town of Gloom to runaway to the Street of Miracles, a memoir featuring whimsical elements such as mermaids, bees inside a body, ghosts and spells. The merge of fabulism and memoir is amazing, and who am I to tell that those things haven’t happened?

Highly recommend to read the book for
• Brilliant poetry
• Kickass gang of femmes
• All trans girls cast, majority woc
• Beautiful sister sibling relationship
• Multifaceted relationships
• Beautiful coming of age/growth
• Amazing audio book narration by Adri Almeida
• For fierce femmes and notorious liars.

This novel has become one of my favorites. I’m looking forward to experiencing this story again, I know I will reread it.

CW: violence, depiction of transphobia

[Emine Beasley · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wowowow. 5✨ & it might be my favourite book of the year so far or maybe even up there in top books. I felt so loved and magical listening to this book. It’s a memoir with fantastical elements and completely unique to anything I’ve read or could imagine reading ever.
The memoir follows the coming of age years of a trans girl as they save mermaids, move to the city and commit crimes with vines. It was magical. It was emotional. It was everything.
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The book has a very conversational writing style dotted with letters and whimsical poetry, my favourite being about their growing hair which traverses what I thought poetry could be.
I just cannot express how much I loved this read and I might even need to get a physical copy!

[Manuel Ronquillo · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I would love to see a movie version of the book. Realistic and mythical. Action suspense, pain and sisterhood. A great coming of age story. Narrator has a unique voice and matches perfectly with this unique and confabulous "memoir". - Cis Ecuadorian dude who wants more audiobooks from Kai Cheng Thom

[TM Burkett · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was an intense and magical story about the transformative power of belonging. There is witchery, superpowers, fairies, ghosts, and violence and love. I did need to speed the narration up to 1.2 X as the regular speed was painful for me. Otherwise, I love this story for young adults and Kai is a beautiful Writer.

[Nicole Fong · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Loved it! So magical and painful and sad. Thank you for writing this