The Author (Cris Beam)

Cris Beam is an author and journalist, writing from a perspective of having been openly and publicly lesbian for most of her adult life. She also writes from a similarly open perspective of having been abandoned by her mother at a very young age, and having come to a degree of understanding about self and identity as defined by that particular experience. Finally, she writes from a place of relative open-ness, coming across as starting her experiences with the transgender life with a set of (somewhat limited) perspectives that, over time and as a result of those experiences, changed her perceptions of others and of herself.

On one level, this book is not only a portrait of transgender life, shaped through a collage of both anecdotal and researched material, it is also a memoir of personal growth and transformation. As the book and its...