Agroundbreakingglobal history of gender nonconformity . Today’s narratives about trans people tend to feature individuals with stable gender identities that fit neatly into the categories of male or female. Those stories, while important, fail to account for the complex realities of many trans people’s lives.   Before We Were Transilluminates the stories of people across the globe, from antiquity to the present,whose experiencesof gender havedefiedbinary categories. Blendinghistorical analysiswith sharp cultural criticism, trans historian and activist Kit Heyam offers a new, radically inclusivetrans history, chronicling expressions of trans experience that are often overlooked, like gender-nonconforming fashion and wartime stage performance. Before We Were Transtransports usfrom Renaissance Venice toseventeenth-centuryAngola, from Edo Japan toearly America, and looksto the past to uncover new horizons forpossible trans futures.