14 Valentines, Day 2
Today's topic at 14valentines is transgender issues.
I have a couple of book recommendations for today.
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
This has got to be one of my all-time favorite books. (In fact, I've recced it before. *g*) The main character, Cal/Callie, is a hermaphrodite who is raised as a girl but realizes as a teenager that his assigned gender doesn't fit his identity.
Indeed, identity is a huge theme of the book -- not only as it relates to gender, but also in the context of nation and culture (Cal is descended from Greek immigrants). One question that emerges is how much control we have over our own identity, and how much of it is determined by circumstances and other people's decisions. This all perhaps makes the book sound a bit heavy, but it's not at all. The narrative is rich and accessible and funny as hell. Please, go, read! :-)
Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson
This book doesn't relate directly to transgender issues, but I'm including it in this post because of the intriguing way the author deals -- or deliberately doesn't deal -- with gender. The novel, which centers around a love affair with a woman named Louise, is told by a first-person narrator whose name and gender are never revealed. I studied this book in a gender class in college, and we had several discussions about whether we read the narrator as male or female -- which of course led us to question our assumptions about what it actually means to be male or female.
That said, it didn't take me long to stop worrying about the male/female question and simply fall into the lush language of the story, which explores love and desire and loss beyond the boundaries of gender. It's gorgeous.
I have a couple of book recommendations for today.
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
This has got to be one of my all-time favorite books. (In fact, I've recced it before. *g*) The main character, Cal/Callie, is a hermaphrodite who is raised as a girl but realizes as a teenager that his assigned gender doesn't fit his identity.
Indeed, identity is a huge theme of the book -- not only as it relates to gender, but also in the context of nation and culture (Cal is descended from Greek immigrants). One question that emerges is how much control we have over our own identity, and how much of it is determined by circumstances and other people's decisions. This all perhaps makes the book sound a bit heavy, but it's not at all. The narrative is rich and accessible and funny as hell. Please, go, read! :-)
Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson
This book doesn't relate directly to transgender issues, but I'm including it in this post because of the intriguing way the author deals -- or deliberately doesn't deal -- with gender. The novel, which centers around a love affair with a woman named Louise, is told by a first-person narrator whose name and gender are never revealed. I studied this book in a gender class in college, and we had several discussions about whether we read the narrator as male or female -- which of course led us to question our assumptions about what it actually means to be male or female.
That said, it didn't take me long to stop worrying about the male/female question and simply fall into the lush language of the story, which explores love and desire and loss beyond the boundaries of gender. It's gorgeous.