"I have always wanted to be both man and woman, to incorporate the strongest and richest parts of my mother and father within/into me - to share valleys and mountains upon my body the way the earth does in hills and peaks." (7)

"I have often wondered why the farthest-out position always feels right to me." (15)

"If you can't change reality, change your perceptions of it." (18)

"I want to read." (23)

"I am a reflection of my mother's secret poetry as well as of her hidden angers." (32)

"Right then and there, before anybody else woke up, I decided to make up a story of my own." (48)

"I lie beside my sister in the darkness, who pass me in the street unacknowledged and unadmitted." (58)

"But in high school, my real sisters were strangers; my teachers were racists; and my friends were that color I was never supposed to trust." (81)

"It...