Help me identify this book (nonfiction, F2M memoir)

Cafe Society
1

Yeah, another “identify this book from vague description” thread. Google is not being my friend today, nor is Amazon.

I read it in 1984 so it obviously had a publication date prior to that. It was a personal account of what it’s like to be a female to male transsexual (that was the word in use back then, no one was saying “transgendered” yet). I seem to recall that the author was hispanic as per her own description of family of origin, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into having an hispanic sounding last name.

The book title was of the format SINGLEWORD: Subtitle after the Colon

I remember that part pretty clearly, because a different book by a M2F transsexual, Jan Morris, was titled Conundrum: From James to Jan and I remember thinking with amusement when I obtained the one I’m trying to remember, that that must be the expected pattern if you are writing a TS memoir.

It was in fact another long word such as Conundrum. I dunno, Transformation, or Exegesis or some such thing.

Ring a bell with anyone?

2

Moved to Cafe Society.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

3

You’re right, there seem to be a lot of TITLE: subtitle books in the field. We could have some interesting discussions about that alone. :smiley:

I found:

Dawn Langley - Man into Woman: A Transsexual Autobiography (ca. 1970)

These two are early 1990s:

Kate Bornstein - Gender Outlaw: On Men, Woman, and the Rest of Us

Jennifer Spry - Orlando’s Sleep: An Autobiography of Gender

4

Nope, the Title part of TITLE:Subtitle was a single word, a long noun of some sort.

5

This one?

Emergence: A transsexual autobiography, by Mario Martino

6

Here is the link to the same book, with the .fr replaced by .com to provide the text in English.

7

These two, via Worldcat (searched for Transsexuals as a subject, limited publication to 1970-1984, though it could be older than that)

Perry: A Transformed Transsexual (more recent printing via Amazon) ?

Canary: The Story of a transsexual (Amazon page)

Jennifer: Woman by choice (Amazon)
(I missed the F2M part of your OP, but having typed this in/made the links, I’m going to go ahead and post on the off chance one is your book, but I think that unlikely with the latter 2)

8

Yep. Don’t have to read the descrip, I recognize the title and author once I see 'em.

Thanks muchly.

9

You’re welcome!

There’s only a handful of FTM books (Like, 5 or so) before the explosion of the 2000’s and I have all the oldies.

10

Yeah, I know! I was trying to read books on the general subject in 1979 when I was attempting to come to terms with my own sexual and gender identity. After reading a handful of MTF accounts, it struck me as unusual that I had not read a single book from the inverse experience and this (Emergence) was the only one I could find listed in searches, and I had to get this one interlibrary loan.