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She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders, by Jennifer Finney Boylan. New York: Broadway Books, 2003, 300 pp., $24.95. ISBN 0-7679-1404-X
Teachers committed to diversity and equity envision a world where the appreciation of social and cultural differences is both a process and a product of sound educational experience. Accordingly, progressive educators have come to value pedagogies that honor and support differences in race, class, and gender. These identity markers -ones that offer teachers a glimpse into how students understand and are understood in their world -can be both empowering and limiting to those who carry them. One way to better understand students and colleagues (and potentially oneself) is to lean on the autobiographical writing of people whose life experiences and perspectives differ from one's own. In her book, She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders, Jennifer Finney Boylan offers a novelesque autobiography as transgendered.1 As educators concerned about social justice, the book reminds us to keep issues of gender and identity forefronted in our ongoing commitment to equity and diversity in classrooms.
The subject of this recent memoir is James Finney Boylan's transformation into Jennifer Finney Boylan. Boylan spent the first 40 years of her life as a male, living as a dutiful son, loving husband, and caring father. However, from her earliest memories she was aware that she "was in the wrong body, living the wrong life" (p. 19)....