From Publishers Weekly
In filling a gap in transgender memoirs, Khosla avoids the usual arc of transsexual memoirs, which start with childhood gender discomfort and the build up to the decision to transition, and instead employs a clever, if distracting, structure: he begins with his decision to become a man and weaves childhood memories and surreal dream sequences (in italics) with his story of testosterone injections and surgeries (there are plenty of these: mastectomy, hysterectomy and two kinds of genital reassignment surgeries). Khosla shares his emotional tumult when he hears "sir" from some people and "ma'am" from others. After one person addresses him as the wrong gender, he becomes so angry he punches his image in the mirror. He discovers the joys of being a regular guy at a strip club and transitioning at his high-powered legal job. Unfortunately, Khosla's prose feels too much like a legal brief. Narrating a breakup with a girlfriend, he writes: "The incompatibilities that lay between us when we first began dating had resurfaced." A major falling out with his mother late in the book is likewise flat. Also, Khosla's abrasive personality makes it hard for the reader to sympathize with him. However, he does a good job of letting the reader inside his inner landscape as he grows comfortable in his own skin.
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From Booklist
San Francisco attorney Khosla contends that there is a unique door to the unknown for each person. His quest for inner peace led to opening it up to a man trapped within a woman's body. Khosla was living as a lesbian when an ex-girlfriend shared a 1994
New Yorker article on female-to-male (FTM) sex changes, and it helped Khosla to arrange the pieces of a personal puzzle through a series of gender-reassignment surgeries. After attending FTM support meetings and undergoing continuing therapy, Khosla informed two female supervisors, who proved supportive; her European parents, who were accepting; and an uncle and an aunt, who felt only so-so about it. Hormone therapy brought mood changes and irritability, but Khosla enjoyed short hair and being called "sir" by strangers. Eventually, there were a full hysterectomy and multiple further surgical and emotional changes before Khosla arrived as the man in the dust-jacket photograph. Keen observation, warmth, and humor make Khosla's journey most readable.
Whitney ScottCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
