She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders by Jennifer Finney Boylan
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Book Reviews of She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders
Book Review: Took me a while to get into it...
Summary: 4 Stars
This book to a bit of time before I really got into it, but it is really a great book about a college professor who is transgendered (born in the wrong body - genetically a male, but emotionally and mentally a female). The book chronicles his struggle to come to terms with his gender and his hopes that doing certain things would make it go away. He married a woman in hopes that it would cure him. Of course, it didn't, and eventually he went through the sexual reassignment surgury. She is now a woman, still teaching at the same college, still married to her wife - though they are not intimate. It's a really sweet story when you read how supportive Jenny (the author's) kids and wife were, even though they had difficulties with the situation themselves.
I DEFINITELY recommend reading this if you have someone in your family who is transgendered or transsexual. It helps in the understanding of who they are.
Book Review: Being True To Oneself
Summary: 4 Stars
There's a lot to like in this book. The writing, of course, is exquisite and displays the author's professional skill. But, more important, the candor of the author's difficult journey is breath-taking. The decision to transition was unexpected and unwelcomed by the author's wife Grace, who perceived it, not unfairly, as taking away her husband. The poignance and pain of that reaction is honestly described in verbatim accounts. Those intimate scenes show the extraordinary hardships transsexuals face when trying to steer their ship toward the life they know to be true for them. This book is rare in its confrontation of social arrangements and its illustration of the high price often charged for deviance.Book Review: Overall a pleasant book
Summary: 4 Stars
It is very interesting the past people that she did run into from her previous life as a male. However, one thing that sort of threw me off about the book was how it seemed to be disjointed and went from one time to a totally different time. I am still grateful for her courage in writing on it and have not been able to progress too far into the book so it may change my ideas, but I am just grateful that there are books dealing specifically with transitioning.Book Review: I read this book some time ago
Summary: 4 Stars
I was amazed how this book just took me into it. I read it very fast and before you knew it I was done. It is written in a very comfortable reading style. I have the other book that he has written so I will be interested to see if I feel the same about that one.Book Review: 3.5 Stars ... A Moving and Amazing Story
Summary: 3 Stars
This is the story of Jenny Boylan born James Boylan and her journey to become the woman she always believed she was.
Jenny Boylan undergoes a sex change operation so she can live out the rest of her life as a woman. This book tells us some of that story and what it was like for Jenny to be trapped inside the wrong body her whole life.
A thoughtful story...This book makes you question how much of who we are is unchangeable and how much is malleable? What does it mean to truly love someone? Why is it so hard for some to accept people who are different? Especially when we are really so much more alike than not?
I really enjoyed the Afterword by Richard Russo he offers a different perspective to the transformation of Jim to Jenny and shares insights to her story that she can't offer.
The sense of humor throughout this book was great. What an amazing, brave and difficult journey. She might not be an astronaut but she's pretty courageous none the less.
I find the topic of gender studies interesting and I have recently read two other books dealing with gender issues. If you enjoyed this book you might also want to read Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about the Emerging Science of Sex Differences and Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey into Manhood and Back I thought they were both very interesting and insightful.