"She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders" Review

I enjoy reading autobiographies and memoirs, so this book was a great fit for me. The author tells the story of her life as a female being stuck in the body of a male. She talks about her childhood, her family, even the gender reassignment surgery,

 I’ve met a handful of transgendered people in my life which I felt helped me to better understand the condition that the author, Jennifer Finney Boylan has. So the hardest part for me wasn’t relating to the main character as it may be for others. The hardest part for me was keeping track of what was going on in the story. In this book, it switches a handful of times from the present to the past and sometimes I got a little confused on what time the author was writing about.

The only book I’ve read that I can really compare She’s Not There to is Luna by Julie Anne Peters. Luna also tells the story of a transgendered male wanting to be female, although it is fiction. Luna is told from the point of view of the transgendered males sisters perspective. The sisters name is Reagan. Reagan is very protective of her transgendered brother in the book the point where she’s so busy taking care of him that she’s not even sure of her own identity.

Although the books chronicle the same condition, they are very different. Luna is seventeen in the book and at the end she leaves for her sexual reassignment surgery. Jennifer Finney Boylan is in her forties when she gets her sexual reassignment surgery. There is also the obvious difference that, She’s Not There is a first person narrative and Luna is told from the sisters point of view, although I’d love to read a nonfiction book about living with a transgendered person and watching their transformation, for example, a book from Jennifer Finney Boylan’s wife’s perspective or a book from one of his children’s perspective.  Boylan writes about his family in the book (he has a wife and two sons) but it would be interesting to really see his transition through their eyes.

I really enjoyed reading this book and I recommend it to anyone who is curious about being transgendered, any transgendered persons or anyone involved in the LGBT community. Being the president of my schools gay-straight alliance I’ve heard a lot about Transexuality and this taught me a lot more about it. I’d also recommend this book to anyone who enjoys autobiographies. It was very interesting.