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.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Education
Comment: I picked this book up from the library as a throw out, but it ended up being an education. As a fan of Middlesex, this book gave another view into the transgender world. Really who does not want to know more about all types of alternatives. I love to read more about the more risque part of sex, such as BDSM, but this topic presented itself and really humanized the subject. I would recommend this for anyone wanting to know the real stuggles that a transgendered person goes through on their journey towards "transition".

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Customer Rating:
Summary: "Can't Not"
Comment: 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.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: The Courage to Change into One's True Self
Comment: This incredible narrative is a profile in moral courage, revealing a psychological odyssey across four decades. Colby professor James Boylan gradually emerges as Jennifer---the woman he always knew was trapped inside a male body. As an author Boylan was both literate and successful, happily married and the father of two young boys. This journey of transformation to release his secret, feminine self is presented with humor, pathos and heart-wrenching honesty. Readers cannot but be touched by this desperate cry for acceptance in her new role-- with the sacrifice and perils of gradual, as well as sudden, femininity.


Related in deliberately unchronological order, this intriguing narrative challenges readers' flexibility--skipping from Boylan's past to the present via seemingly unrelated flashbacks: a temporal roller coaster. Anecdotes range from outrageous incidents to excruciating emotional cruelty, but all are woven into the fabric of full disclosure with intentionality. Obviously her transformation into womanhood did not occur in a social vacuum, for her astonishing decision impacted many lives: her devoted wife, her accepting sons (from Daddy to Maddy), and her acceptance by the Colby faculty--most notably by her colleague and best buddy. Readers commiserates with the faithful wife who could only watch the gradual disappearance of her adored husband. This book, a must for any course on Gender Studies, emerges as an honest mirror into the soul of a tortured man, who became a proud woman ultimately at peace with herself. Her story challenges contemporary society, its views on gender and the individual's right to change--to achieve full emoitonal potential.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Being True To Oneself
Comment: 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.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Somewhat Engaging book on the hardships of a Transsexual
Comment: I read this book in order to learn more about transsexuality after reading True Selves because a friend of mine recently came out and I was totally blown away. Ms Boylan tries her best to sort out her pros and cons of accepting who she is throughout the book that represents her life. She suppresses and tries to accept her identity as a Male from childhood to adulthood without much success. Even though she tells side stories of others she has met along the way I do not think Ms Boylan truly recognizes that she has a privilege over others like her because of the accepting community she lives in and her wealth. Since the book is also a little self obsessed at times I think is the reason I gave this product three stars.

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