She's Not There: A Life In Two Genders (2004) - Plot & Excerpts
There were a few things I loved about Jennifer Finney Boylan's memoir "She's Not There" - mostly the insights into the differences between male and female.But when I finished, I felt like SOMETHING definitely wasn't there.I wanted more from the memoir.I wanted to know why Boylan always identified with women, even though she was born male - the deep psychological reasons. Was her father not home enough? Not loving enough? Did she have an especially close relationship with her mother? Was there some kind of traumatic experience? Or did she always feel that way?I wanted to know how she dealt with those feelings as a child. How did they manifest? How did other kids react? How did Boylan-the-little-boy cope? The memoir seems to jump from Boylan being a 4-year-old boy to a 10-year-old to an 11th grader.I wanted to know why Boylan felt she had to become a woman. Sure, she tried living as a manly man and it never felt quite right. But why couldn't she just try not hiding that aspect of her personality and living as a man with a lot of feminine traits? Why didn't she try taking drugs to help her feel more masculine when she was a man? Or did she - and maybe not tell us about it?I wanted to know about the surgery. How much did it cost? Had she been saving up for it? Or did it create a financial strain for her family? (Boylan is a college professor and her wife is a social worker. I can't imagine that they're rolling in dough.) And if it created a financial strain, how did the family cope?In that aspect - Boylan's transition and surgery - the book seemed too unreal. Her kids took it well. Her wife, while upset, took it reasonably well. There was no yelling and screaming recorded in the memoir. It seemed like money wasn't really a problem. It just seemed too easy.And how does Boylan feel now that she's a woman? Good, presumably. Is there anything she misses about being a man? Does she find it easier or harder being a woman? If she could undo it, would she? Or would she go through her transition and GRS sooner? Or would she do everything the same?And...Would it have killed Boylan to provide some lyrics to the oft-mentioned song "She's Not There" so that we readers could understand why it's significant??And...Why is it that Boylan's friend, Richard Russo, provides the most meaningful insight in the book in his afterword?"She is not merely Grace, she is his grace - that gift from God that can never be earned, but must be rather freely and gratefully accepted."Why didn't Russo just write this book for Boylan?
This is an autobiography of a trans woman (someone born with male physiology, but who has always known they where cognitively, emotionally, and spiritually female). She is a Professor of English at Colby College in Maine and transitioned (changed the gender she presented to the outside world) about ten years ago at about age 45 while at Colby. She was and still is married and has two sons that she fathered with her non-trans female partner.This book was very literally life changing for me, but it is not likely to be so for the vast majority of readers. I read it in October 2008 a few months after I began to have a major crisis in my own life related to the fact that I am also a trans woman. At first, I read this book and some other biographies of trans women looking for good ways to explain to my own wife the feelings associated with the disconnect between who you know yourself to be and who everyone around you expects you to be. It turned out that Jenny was so good at describing these feelings and her situation so similar to my own (I am also a University Professor, am about 45 years old, and until recently was married to a non-trans woman) that I found myself learning a great deal about myself as I thought about the things she said. This book took several weeks for me to read since it often gave me a lot to think about before I moved on and on some occasions I had to put it down when parts hit too close to home and caused me to break down crying.There was a now-defunct message board at Jenny's web site (www.jenniferboylan.com) that particularly drew married middled-aged professional trans women (many with children) who were close to or had recently transitioned. I have become very close friends with many of these women even though I have only met a handful of them in person. It was Jenny's writing in this book (and the subsequent book "I'm Looking Through You") that brought us all together and allowed us to share very similar and emotionally intense situations that would be completely alien to almost anyone outside our tiny demographics. I went to Seattle with one of these friends to see Jenny speak and to take a writing workshop from her in March. It turns out that Jenny is also an incredibly good oral storyteller and a riveting teacher. I envy those who get to take her classes a Colby.
What do You think about She's Not There: A Life In Two Genders (2004)?
This book is poorly named. When is she not there? The author's presence and self-obsession are felt on every page. Everything is about her. I picked up this book because I wanted to know more about the transgendered/transsexual experience. The author makes a bad example because she is completely selfish and thinks the universe revolves around her. I want to have compassion and understanding for the people going through this, and being exposed to someone so amazingly arrogant is not the way to do
—Wistaria
I'm glad I read Jennifer Finney Boylan's account of life as a transsexual undergoing a male-to-female transition. A novelist and English professor at Colby College, Boylan writes with humor and eloquence. It is also an inspiring real-life lesson of how accepting a transgendered person's family and friends can be. Jenny is certainly a blessed person. However, I was disappointingly less engaged than I hoped. Boylan writes about the events in her life without great insight into how she felt at that time. Her earlier life was sketched out in such a pointillistic style it is hard to connect the dots to how this amounted to a crushing identity crisis. (Not to say it did not exist.) Boylan's best friend, Richard Russo (author of Empire Falls), thought Jenny as the real Boylan was "implausible" because she played the role of James so well – these pages do not offer much more of a glimpse at this behind-the-scenes inner self. I also think there was not much insight shared from the author's unique perspective of "being able to see into the worlds of both men and women with clear eyes." That said, I would still recommend the book as an uplifting story of how love and friendship prevail, even if it can not cure gender identity disorder as Jenny had hoped.
—Sophia
This book was interesting. I have seen men dressed as woman and I never thought it to be such a struggling process to go through. I would have never thought that wanting to be something you are not since birth would cause problems for you throughout your entire life and make you over analyze yourself when you shouldn't have to. But then again, it does make sense. You are born to be something that you don't want to be. I can understand why someone would go through such a hard time wondering what they should do and how they should execute such a problem.In the book, I found myself beginning to dislike Grace. Though it must be hard to watch your husband turn into a woman, and though it must be hard to lose the man you fell in love with and chose to spend the rest of your life with, I feel as if she was not supportive enough. Your husband has been trying on girls clothes and wondering what it would be like to be a girl and who he was born to be since he was a child. Why would you, the wife, want to make this situation about yourself? As a wife, you should support your husband through all his tough times and help guide him to his destined path. If you try to corrupt the situation and form it into a tragic moment in YOUR life, I think you're being selfish.This book helped me to realize that most likely, who you think you are meant to be when you come into the world is who your are destined to be. Though people may tell you negative things and try to stray you away from the right path, you should never give up. If the world keeps bringing you back to this tough situation/time in your life, that is a sign that you need to pursue and execute it! Don't give up! This book was so beautiful to me. It made me smile and I found myself thinking about all the tough times I go through and the paths that I need to re open. I love Jennifer Boylan.
—Marie
