Normal: Transsexual Ceos, Crossdressing Cops, and Hermaphrodites With Attitude - Hardcover

Bloom, Amy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 067945652X ISBN 13: 9780679456520

Publisher: Random House Inc, 2002

Synopsis

Bloom takes us on a provocative, intimate journey into the lives of "people who reveal, or announce, that their gender is variegated rather than monochromatic" - female-to-male transsexuals, heterosexual crossdressers, and the intersexed. We meet Lyle Monelle and his mother, Jessie, who recognized early on that her little girl was in fact a boy and used her life savings to help Lyle make the transgender transition. On a Carnival cruise with a group of crossdressers and their spouses, we meet Peggy Rudd and her husband. "Melanie, "who devote themselves to the cause of "ordinary heterosexual men with an additional feminine dimension." And we meet Hale Hawbecker, "a regular, middle-of-the-road, white-bread guy" with a wife, kids, and a medical condition, the standard treatment for which would have changed his life and his gender.
Bloom shows the essential humanity in this infinite variety, allowing us to appreciate these people as they really are - both like and unlike everyone else - and inviting us "to see into these particular worlds and back out to the larger one we all share." Casting light into the dusty corners of our assumptions about sex, gender, and identity, about what it means to be male or female. Bloom reveals new facets to ideas about happiness, personality, and character, even as she brilliantly illumines the very concept of "normal."

About this title

Review

‘A humane, liberal book’ -- Andrea Dworkin, New Statesman

‘Bloom asks what it is to be "normal" ands the result is a sensitive highly readable book.’ -- The Sunday Tribune 29th June 2003

‘Bloom is a trustworthy narrator, sorting through political artifice, societal prejudice and defensive rationalisation’ -- New York Times

‘Lucid, frank, and compassionate, Bloom succinctly recounts her illuminating conversations ... fascinating and enlightening’ -- Booklist

About the Author

Amy Bloom is the author of A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You, Come to Me, and a novel, Love Invents Us. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and Harper’s Bazaar, among other publications, and in many anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories; Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards; and The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction. A practicing psychotherapist, she lives in Connecticut and teaches at Yale University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Random House Inc
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 067945652X
• ISBN 13: 9780679456520
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 140