The book „Courage to speak, passion to live” – this is the result of a collective , united work of different generations of women. Idea to release a book based on authentic stories of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender ( LBT) women was born few years ago. Yet this implementation was not easy – it was hard to find the project sponsors, and took the interview process for the collection , because it was not easy to speak of those who forced to hide their experience .

Book contains twenty- five living in Lithuania LBT women’s stories . It is a different age, education , social status of women , which , in spite of all the vicissitudes of fortune , share one common experience – how to be , to love and to remain self in homophobic society.

The book cites women’s names are fictional , but the age – is real. While reading you will find stories and happiness . This transsexual identity cards – open and painful identity deconstruction primitive concepts – like the other heroes here superimposed thoughts about life lessons and survival strategies.

While writing the book it was not intended to provide a seamless narrative  to tell the original of his / her story. Project participants’ thoughts and comments are grouped into separate sections , which deal with different aspects of life , beginning with childhood reminiscences and ending with reflections of the current situation . Such a structure of the book , on the one hand , makes you feel societal stigma marked commonality of experiences , but at the same time brings out each personality differences , which caused so much psychological individuality and peculiarities of the social environment .

This is the first time in Lithuania to try to provide a space for authentic lesbian, bisexual and trans -person narratives . Hopefully, one part of the story readers will better understand those who are alienated in the society . Another part would gain more courage to talk about themselves and more determined to defend their human rights. It would be great if this book light a spreading desire to live in a society free from homophobic prejudices .

Publication of the book and putting thes Mama Cash ( Netherlands ) , the Open Society Institute ( New York ) and the Women’s Network East -West Women network .