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Telling transgender stories.

Article Excerpt
Crossing Sexual Boundaries: Transgender Journeys, Uncharted Paths. Edited by J. Ari Kane-DeMaios & Vern L. Bullough. Amherst NY: Prometheus Books, 2006, 365 pages. Softcover, $28.00.

Crossing Sexual Boundaries, a volume of 20 short autobiographies, recounts the contributors' lives through the lens of their varied forms of transgender experience. In addition to the autobiographies, the volume includes an editors' introduction and a set of appendices on genital reconstruction, models of gender diversity, and transgender categories.

The autobiographies at the heart of this volume cover topics including family, sexuality, religion, therapy, work, and other areas of life that intersect with the central focus on each writer's "transgender journey." Many of the writers chart what turns out to be a life-long struggle to find their respective place and make peace with themselves. Their stories typically pivot on the passage from shame, secrecy, and stigma to pride, disclosure, and acceptance found in the form of shared community.

Yet one of the volume's strengths is that not all of these paths "cross sexual boundaries" in the same ways. Authors identify variously as transgender, transsexual, bigendered, cross dressers, or none of the above. And some tell stories that are not unidirectional narratives of progress from shame, secrecy, and stigma to self-actualization and happiness. What emerges, then, in the end is a mosaic of life portrayals that strive to paint an honest...