Casa Susanna: The Story of the First Trans Network in the United States, 1959-1968

by Isabelle Bonnet and Sophie Hackett Thames & Hudson 5/28/2024, hardcover SKU: 9780500297902   In the 1950s and '60s, an underground network of transgender women, gender nonconforming people, and men who dressed as women found refuge at a modest house in the Catskills, New York. Known as Casa Susanna, the house provided a safe place to express their true selves and live for a few days as they had always dreamed--dressed as and living as women without fear of being incarcerated or institutionalized for their self-expression. Casa Susanna opens up that now-lost world. The photographs--mostly discovered by chance in a New York flea market in 2004--chronicle the experiences of these women in states of relaxation, experimentation, connection, and joy. All of this was made possible by Susanna Valenti who--on her own journey toward womanhood--created Casa Susanna, a protected space where others could do the same. Supplementing the images, excerpts from the magazine Transvestia record a d