She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders
by Jennifer Finney Boylan
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jennifer Finney BoylanEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-08-10
ISBN: 0767914295
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Broadway
Book Reviews of She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders
Book Review: "Can't Not"
Summary: 5 Stars
From his earliest memories as a three-year old, James Finney was never without the awareness that he was "in the wrong body, living the wrong life." As a youngster, a teenager, a college student, a husband deeply in love with his wife and two children, and a professor of English at Colby College in Maine, Boylan countered that unsettling consciousness for several long decades with "an exasperated companion thought, namely, 'Don't be an idiot, You're not a girl. Get over it.'" This deeply human memoir tells how James never "got over it" and how at the age of forty-three he finally had sex reassignment surgery that completed his transgendering to Jennifer.
Boylan says that her journey caused her "an almost inexpressible degree of private grief." She discovered that gender identity was far more complex than sexual attraction, cultural expectations, cross dressing, extended therapy, biology, or even genetics. It was not a choice for a certain lifestyle. She tried mightily to "accept who I wasn't," knowing that transgendering from male to female would "mean only loss and grief" for many people. In that herculean but ultimately futile quest she was aided by having inherited her mother's "boundless optimism." She counted her blessings, and especially the "greatest years of her life" in marriage to Carol and their two children. James knew full well that finally transitioning to a female would cause his beloved Carol untold grief, loss, and a sense of betrayal, and that he would bear his own grief and guilt as a result.
In the end, Boylan describes her transgendering from James to Jennifer as more like an "erosion" or "forced conscription" than a decision. This story is a powerful one because of its transparency. Most people supported her; her sister has never spoken to her since she transitioned. As you would expect, her memoir is partly a plea for understanding, but even that is not compromised by polemical or partisan zeal. James transgendered to Jennifer "because I can't not." After all the explanations and anguish, she concludes, "What I have come to realize is that no matter how much light one attempts to throw on this condition, it remains a mystery" (248). At the end of the book Boylan offers thirteen questions for discussion and eight books for further reading. Her sequel memoir called I'm Looking Through You was published in 2008.
Summary of She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders
The provocative bestseller She?s Not There is the winning, utterly surprising story of a person changing genders. By turns hilarious and deeply moving, Jennifer Finney Boylan explores the territory that lies between men and women, examines changing friendships, and rejoices in the redeeming power of family. Told in Boylan?s fresh voice, She?s Not There is about a person bearing and finally revealing a complex secret. Through her clear eyes, She?s Not There provides a new window on the confounding process of accepting our true selves.
?Probably no book I?ve read in recent years has made me so question my basic assumptions about both the centrality and the permeability of gender, and made me recognize myself in a situation I?ve never known and have never faced . . . The universality of the astonishingly uncommon: that?s the trick of She?s Not There. And with laughs, too. What a good book.? ?Anna Quindlen, from the Introduction to the Book-of-the-Month-Club edition.
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