What Becomes You: (American Lives)

"Being a man, like being a woman, is something you have to learn," Aaron Raz Link remarks. Few would know this better than the co-author of What Becomes You, who began life as a girl named Sarah and twenty-nine years later began life anew as a gay man. As he transforms from female to male and from teaching scientist to theatre performer, Link documents the extraordinary medical, social, legal, and personal processes involved in a complete identity change. Hilda Raz, a well-known feminist writer and teacher, observes this process both as an "astonished" parent and as a professor who has studied gender issues. All these perspectives come into play in this collaborative memoir, which travels between women's experiences and men's lives, explores the art and science of changing sex, maps uncharted family values, and journeys through a world transformed by surgery, hormones, love, and ...clown school. Combining personal experience and critical analysis, the book is an unusual--and unusually fascinating--reflection on gender, sex, and the art of living. This Bison Books edition features a set of discussion questions.

Table of Contents:
PrefaceAcknowledgmentsAARON RAZ LINKThe SeaABCLove Gets StrangeRebel without a CauseBurying OpheliaNot Coming OutPsychological ConsiderationsSurgery IStill Life with HormonesA Wonderful LifeThe Sex ChangeSurgery IIFreaksTestosteroneMenService FlauntingThe Myth of FingerprintsTokenMy Mother's RingHILDA RAZThe Book and Its CoverFact/FictionThe LetterScarsSurgeryStockBiasPity and LaughterGirls Just Want to Have FunReading GarberLooking at AaronWatching Aaron TeachThree-Minute AutobiographyDiscussion Questions

About the Author :
Aaron Raz Link, a writer, performing artist, curator, and historian of science, is the director of the Museum of Nature in Portland, Oregon. Hilda Raz, a professor of English and women’s and gender studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, is the Glenna Luschei Endowed Editor of Prairie Schooner and author of the poetry collections, Trans and Divine Honors.

Review :
“This deeply personal collaborative memoir details the multiple layers of the journey Child and Mom take on the road to Sarah becoming Aaron. This book can’t help but challenge the readers to rethink what they know about gender, sex, family relationships, and themselves. A compelling narrative, this is the best book I’ve read this year.”—OutSmart “Scientist Link begins his fascinating account of gender reassignment by explaining scientific classification. . . . Raz writes of her child with rare and moving candor. . . . Mother and son’s poignant account becomes one of steadfast maternal love in the midst of changes only partly physical. Both knowingly return, always, to the terrain of the heart.”—Booklist “A blend of essay, memoir and intergenerational dialogue, this title is stranger—and smarter—than the average transsexual memoir. . . . [An] oddly moving, more illuminating and memorable than a straightforward memoir could have been.”—Publishers Weekly Web-Exclusive “Link tells the story with sharp emotion . . . [and] often startles with his acute observations. Raz writes in a clearer narrative style and her careful introspection adds to this already nuanced story. . . . [Link and Raz] continue to surprise and challenge us as they pull from their knowledge of biology and feminism, and fairy tales and psychiatry, to wrestle with understanding Link’s transsexuality. The memoir welcomes readers into a study of the struggles and complexity of relationships in any family.”—Bloomsbury Review “What Becomes You is the best memoir I’ve read in a decade. It is close to the bone, poetic without an ounce of sentimentality, full of humor and humanity, and excruciating in its self-examination. . . . This book is what happens when two extraordinary writers share intimate tales of self-discovery in prose that’s both exquisite and accessible.”—Glenn Scofield Williams, JustOut "What Becomes You is the best kind of book. And not just because it’s funny and poetic, honest, personal, carefully researched and detailed, and hugely informative on the subjects of gender and transsexualism. It’s the best kind of book because it challenges readers to grow in the most critical ways. . . . [It] opens the reader to the present moment, to considering and investigating what 'is' instead of what the reader thinks should be. It makes us think before responding in habitual ways to those who are different from us. And in this world, I can’t think of anything that’s much more important than that right now."—Ellen Santasiero, The Source (Bend, OR)