When Maggie Kay said that she was writing a book about her experiences growing up as a transsexual, I was a skeptical that it would be a book worth reading. After all, everyone of us has a story, and many of us have already written biographies about our trials in coming to terms with our "blessing inside a curse".
I was thinking that we didn't really need another transsexual biography.
I was wrong.
First off, this isn't a story about Maggie, it is a fictionalized account of a person named Kent. And while many of the events and motivations were inspired by the history of Maggie, it is not her story. Much of the book recounts the early childhood of Kent and the issues he had growing up as a transsexual. Oddly though, there is very little that talks directly about transsexualism or how Kent felt about himself as a woman-inside-man.
Much of the story revolves around the relationship between Kent and his close friend Benny. Their exploits and adventures are recounted in great detail.
But this isn't a Tom Sawyer story. What I was drawn to and identified so closely with was the terrible loneliness that Kent felt. He was isolated from his mother, family and community because he was an illegitimate child growing up in rural Pennsylvania in the fifties and sixties. His mother referred to him as a mistake and seemed to feel that he was responsible for preventing her from marrying a respectable man. The community thought of him a the red headed stepchild and would make him the butt of jokes and pranks.
While I didn't have the same history as Kent, I felt that I could have taken his place in his life and known everyone there and not felt out of place.
His friend Benny, is a typical rebellious child of the sixties with long hair, a Beatles record collection and a simmering hostility toward his evangelical father. The relationship between Benny and his father eventually boils over and Benny is forced to go to a Catholic boarding school where he discovers more rebellion and pot.
Their adventures together have an effect on Kent and Benny's jabs and pranks estranges the two of them.
Benny continues to rebel and ends up running away to get away from his father and the authorities. Benny returns in the conclusion of the book where there is a resolution of sorts.
Kent has relationship with others of his age and his awkwardness interferes with him having any meaningful relations with others his own age. He does have interaction with adults who help him develop his prowess in technical areas, but even this too has a dark outcome.
Kent's growing awareness of his gender confusion appears later in the book as he manifests as a late developing transsexual. While some of the events regarding Kent's transition to Kelly are somewhat glossed over, they are easily identifiable to those of us in the community, and provide the vehicle to resolving Kent/Kelly's emotional issues.
I was very engaged by the story and actually found myself responding emotionally to the plight of young Kent and relived many emotions that I thought were long dead.
This is a print-on-demand book from Amazon and was self edited. It suffers from a few point of view gaffes and sentence fragments that would have been resolved in the drafting process had it been put out by a publishing house, but that does not draw away from the worth of the book as a valid literary work.
The purpose of any art is to make you think. This book does that. And I feel that even those who do not suffer from transsexuality would feel this book is entertaining and insightful.
Get it, read it, enjoy it.
-Sandy
