3 Writers On The Books That Shaped & Saved Them

Great writing is often a by-product of great reading. The right book at the right moment can rewrite what a person believes is possible for themselves. It’s something that Dua and Kae Tempest discuss in their recent conversation for the Service95 Book Club. Alongside discussing the inspirations behind his novel, Having Spent Life Seeking, Kae also shares a story about a woman who saved him, through the book she shared with him: 

“There’s a book called Stone Butch Blues, written by someone called Leslie Fineberg. When I was younger, I had no connection to queer community at all … I got to my late twenties and I started to have this pain in my heart of not knowing myself; not feeling seen. I went to this queer party … I met this person [who] said, “Meet me here tomorrow.” I came back the next day and she had printed out the manuscript of this novel, Stone Butch Blues, which she’d bound herself. She put it in my hand and that’s the first time I’d ever read anything about myself … She saved my life. That moment was the first step towards me encountering myself – the guts to become myself. Maybe it was the first step towards trying to write this novel. It was the first step towards a lot.”

Without Stone Butch Blues, there would be no Having Spent Life Seeking. There may also not be the Kae we know today. We turned to three more writers and creatives, whose work is rooted in the culture they consume and whose identities were shaped by the stories that found them exactly at the right moment.

“A good book feels like a portal and, even when the book ends, that portal stays open forever,” says Zoe Terakes, actor, playwright and author of Eros: Queer Myths For Lovers. “I feel so lucky to know so many worlds through so many books.” Here, the Sydney-based creative shares three books that opened his mind to new possibilities – and then welcomed him home.

This book was my introduction to Villada, who then became my favourite living author. She is a trans Argentine woman and you can feel her heat, sweat and blood on the page. So often as trans artists, we are made to feel like our work has to be moralistic and easily translated for cis readers. I love that Villada could not give a fuck. The worlds she builds are enormous and specific and weird and magical and freaky. Villada feels no need to provide an explanation. It inspires me and energises me. I am a braver writer for reading her words. I see more magic in the world because of her, too.  

I read this on a solo camping trip. I had just started testosterone and was feeling closer to myself than I ever had, but also scared and full of shame. I felt like a little kid, and this book felt like someone took my hand and walked me home. Lou – a gay trans man who transitioned in the 1980s, during the Aids epidemic – kept diaries from when he was 10 up until he died of Aids at 39. The miracle of this book is Lou’s total pursuit of joy. He writes about his expansive sex encounters, his changing body and even his illness with such vitality. I sobbed into the campfire and, for that night, felt truly blessed to be trans.    

I read this book in a pub on Boundary Street in Magandjin. I learnt from Professor Watego, a Munanjahli and South Sea Islander woman, that this street takes its name from the 19th-20th century, when curfews and boundaries were enforced on Aboriginal people by mounted police with bull whips. There is a sick tendency in this country [Australia] to view colonial violence as a thing of the past. This colony has a calculated and convenient collective memory that delineates between what happened “then” and what is happening “now”. Professor Watego unpicks the threads that hold the bullshit tapestry of this colony together – one we are told not to question.  

“Good books open up your mind and heart to the world. They allow you to inhabit lives and perspectives outside of your own,” says William Rayfet Hunter, the London-based writer and author of Sunstruck. “I think the reason I became a writer is an extension of that same desire: to comprehend the world around me.” It’s also why he started COMMONPLACE, a monthly literary supper club in London that brings readers and writers together to share ideas, food and conversation. “Everything I write is ultimately a question I’m asking of the world. Reading is where I go looking for answers.” Here are three books where he found some of them.

I read this when I was on the precipice of a major breakup. Though “on the precipice” might be generous – I was essentially hanging off the edge by my fingertips. Faye’s scalpel-sharp dissection of love, intimacy and the stories we tell ourselves about relationships cut right through the illusion I’d been creating for myself. The book helped me recognise that staying in a relationship out of fear wasn’t the same as choosing love, and it gave me the courage to let go.

I read this while I was still in the closet and it was probably the first in a series of realisations that led to me accepting who I was. Baldwin’s portrayal of desire, shame and longing felt revelatory both because of its explicit queerness but also its emotional honesty. I wanted to be both: more queer and more honest. Reading an openly gay Black writer helped me imagine a future for myself and showed me that queer lives could be treated with complexity, seriousness and beauty. It is a forever favourite of mine.

I picked this up by accident at a queer library pop-up just as I was beginning to question my gender. Its transgressive, funny, shape-shifting approach to identity gave me permission to think beyond fixed categories and embrace uncertainty. I have a complicated relationship to gender and, looking back, this was one of the first books that made me feel excited rather than afraid of what self-discovery might reveal. It allowed me to recognise that my experience of gender is a changeable, personal, messy, incomprehensible thing. I still have the copy, so I owe the library an apology.

“I was so very shy growing up. Written words became my first medium, and I’ve had stories rolling around inside my head for as long as I can remember,” says Rraine Hanson. The Jamaican transdisciplinary artist is now channelling stories through film: last year, he was made a Sundance Institute Trans Possibilities Intensive fellow for his short film Transcend. “I make sure to have a fiction book close at all times, for when I want to escape into a different universe.” These are the books that took him to new realms.

I’m convinced this book chose me. There I was, killing time in a bookstore while in the queue for the brunch spot next door, when the bright, warm colours of the cover beckoned my fingers. When I saw the title, I could only laugh – I’m a fire sign, so it felt on the nose. The way her words felt like live music on a page, transporting me to 1980s London, was exhilarating. The main character navigates love, loss and spirituality until she finds herself back in her ancestral homeland. The story hit deep; like the bass of the soundsystem echoes inside your body.  

I think any bell hooks title has the potential to change your life and expand your worldview. I would go as far as to say it should be required reading for everyone, across race and gender, and the younger they get to it, the better. I was recommended this book by a partner who witnessed me at the beginning of my transition from a man-hating-lesbian to a trans man. She does such a good job of holding the mirror up to our patriarchal society, encouraging us to divest from it. This book helped me process and grieve as my relationship to masculinity drastically shifted. Anyone who suffers under the weight of cisheteronormative patriarchy (all of us) will find healing from the insight of this Black feminist perspective.

I was gifted this book when I was refining the script for my upcoming short film Transcend and it was such a blessing. Lesser has given us an incredible archive of the influential music scene, with photos and interviews that are hard to find anywhere else. Music is a special love of mine and I was able to channel those references into one of the main characters in the movie. Many enjoy Jamaica’s influence globally but few know the history; the who, the why and the how behind the island’s ability to produce some of the most music per capita in the world. You’ll be sure to walk away with some new favourite musicians.