And the research begins!

I have spent most of my day looking up, taking notes on, and sorting my list of 125 books. I deleted a few on realizing they were sequels (I can always find them again if I like the prequels), and then did a couple searches. 'Puerto Rico' and 'culture clash' came up with a group that specifically examines culture clash between cities, whose book I added to background reading, and 'Puerto Rico' and 'transgender' came up with news articles and a movie, which I hope to research more later. Not now, though, it's time for bed after I finish this post. Also, my mother send me a list of links about Puerto Rican gay culture, which I'll read through tomorrow.
I also found a list of books about Puerto Rican gay culture, and added some of those to my list.
Finally, I requested all the books on my Highest and High priority lists that the library actually had, which wasn't many. I have determined someone needs to make a gift of a large amount of books on being trans to my local library system. Me, perhaps?
So, the books headed my way include:

• Beautiful Music for Ugly Children by Kirstin Cronn-Mills, an FTM coming-of-age story describing Gabe's struggle with family, friends, and bullies, while running a local radio show. 
• Transgender 101: A Simple Guide to a Complex Issue by Nicholas M. Teich, about various processes involved in being transgender, including MTF, FTM, and people not on the binary. 
• Sirena Selena vestida de pena by Mayra Santos-Febres, about Puerto Rican drag culture. Literally the closest I could find to Puerto Rican trans* culture. I was hoping to read it in English, but the library only has it in Spanish. It'll probably be the last I read, just because it takes me so much longer to read in Spanish, which is frustrating. But I can at least look at it while I try to get my hands on a copy in English.
• Transition: The Story of How I Became a Man by Chaz Bono, an audiobook memoir of the famous child of Sonny and Cher and his transition in full public view. 

The rest I'll have to get by inter-library loan and/or purchasing--thankfully most of them come in Kindle version, which are much cheaper.
Next steps, in no particular order because these don't depend on each other:

• Go back to my original notes on this book, review, and post
• Research best ways to acquire the other books at the top of my list
• Start thinking about which books I'll choose to put in that paragraph for the conference
• Read those links from my mother, newspaper articles, and movie, and post

And I have to do real-life stuff like clean tomorrow, too...best go to bed so I can wake up at a reasonable hour and get started.