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Greystone Books - Lorimer Shenher

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86 pages

English

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Description

Reviews in international literary publications

Major broadcast interview campaign

Excerpts and reviews in key LGBTQ outlets

Co-promotion with trans rights associations

Advance review copies

Book offers an engaging and inclusive look at the lived trans experience into middle age

A potential gateway text to greater public understanding and more discussion of this issue

Covers female-to-male transition, about which there has arguably been less media attention so far

Author's life story is unusually fascinating well beyond his gender transition.

Shenher’s story is positive and empowering, not a story of defeat or trauma.

Interest in transgender stories is growing, as evidenced by the popularity of movies like The Danish Girl, TV shows like Transparent, TV characters like Laverne Cox (Orange is the New Black) and Isis King (America's Next Top Model) , and outspoken transgender celebrities like Chaz Bono and Caitlin Jenner.

Sujets

Men's Studies

Gender Studies

Personal Memoirs

LGBTQ

Social Science

LGBTQ+

Sociologie, société et politique

LGBT

Informations

Publié par	Greystone Books
Date de parution	31 mars 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781771644495
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1348€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Copyright 2019 by Lorimer Shenher
19 20 21 22 23 5 4 3 2 1
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a license from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For a copyright license, visit accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.
Greystone Books Ltd.
greystonebooks.com
Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada
ISBN 978-1-77164-448-8 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-77164-449-5 (epub)
Editing by Jennifer Croll
Copyediting by Alex Kapitan
Proofreading by Stefania Alexandru
Jacket design by Will Brown
Text design by Nayeli Jimenez
Cover photograph courtesy of Lorimer Shenher
Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.
Greystone Books gratefully acknowledges the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples on whose land our office is located.
Greystone Books thanks the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council, the Province of British Columbia through the Book Publishing Tax Credit, and the Government of Canada for supporting our publishing activities.
For Dad.
CONTENTS

Introduction
1 Two Lineups (1964-1969)
2 This One Looks like a Boy (1969-1974)
3 Ren e (1975-1979)
4 The Polish Stuff (1979)
5 Shirley (1980-1982)
6 Getting a Flat (1982-1983)
7 Uneven (1984-1987)
8 A Guy Can Dream (1988-1989)
9 Cowboy Poetry (1989-1990)
10 The Trinity of Misunderstanding (1990-1991)
11 Fish Stories (1991-1997)
12 Woman Trouble (1997-2001)
13 Sitting on a Pin (2001-2003)
14 Expecting (2002-2007)
15 The Change (2008-2014)
16 Lorimer (2014-2015)
17 Child s Pose (2015)
18 This Is Who You Are Now (2016)
19 The Father, the Son (May 2016)
20 Life as a Man (2016-2018)
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
I have chosen to change my appearance, something many people do in many ways. From my perspective, my gender has not changed; I have simply made its message clear.
JAMISON GREEN, Becoming a Visible Man
INTRODUCTION

THERE IS A line in one of my all-time favorite films, Moonstruck , where Ronny Cammareri (Nicolas Cage) tells Loretta Castorini (Cher), Come upstairs! I don t care why you come! I feel the same way about you, dear reader. I don t care why you re here, I m just very glad that you are holding this book, and I thank you.
I am just one transgender man. I don t speak for everyone, nor are my experiences more universal than anyone else s. I can only speak for myself, although I m sure some stories in this book will resonate for others like me.
Perhaps you ve picked this up because you read my last book. You might be the parent of a child questioning their gender and you re looking for guidance. You could be an old fossil like me, wondering if it s too late in the game to find some happiness. Or you might think this gender transition stuff is just so much garbage, the product of an over-indulgent age.
Welcome, everyone. Sincerely. I mean it. We will never show ourselves if we don t talk to each other, even in our difference.
And if you re that kid reading these words underneath the covers with a flashlight, terrified of what you think you might be, this is for you.
There s hope for you.
Your journey won t be easy, but you will never know the heights you can reach if you don t stick around to find out.
I wrote this for you. I was you, once.
No one but you can know your inner world or your sense of self. No one can take that discovery from you. Some may try-out of a misguided notion of love, out of fear for you or themselves, in the name of whatever God they think they know the will of, or in the name of what they like to think is normal in this world. Let them try. Give them an honest hearing, but never let them kill your spirit.
Be strong.
If I made it here you can, too. I lived to tell my tale. And so will you.
LORIMER
1
TWO LINEUPS
(1964-1969)

MY EARLIEST MEMORY is of the first day of kindergarten. We were told to get into two lines: one for boys and the other for girls. This was the first time in my young life I d been presented with such a choice, so I walked to the boys line and quietly took my place. Our teacher, Miss Olson, stepped to the front of our two lines and surveyed us, counting to herself. She rested her kind gaze on me as she instructed all of us to get our coats on for some outside playtime.
As I fumbled with the buttons on my coat, she knelt down beside me and spoke softly, her words burning into my memory.
Lorraine, is there a reason you didn t stand in the girls line? she asked, her eyes warm and caring. I knew it was safe for me to speak honestly.
I m supposed to be a boy, I answered. I don t belong with the girls. She stayed like that, crouched down beside me for a few moments, her comforting hand on my shoulder.
I understand, she said. Do you think that could be something private you only share with really good friends? She nodded encouragingly. I am very happy to be your friend and I think it would be best for you to line up in the girls line, but know in your heart how you feel. She smiled warmly. Okay?
I nodded and forced a small smile. In that moment, a few months shy of five years old, I understood how it was. She was so kind to me. She knew I d be pushed in a ditch if the other kids knew what was up with me.
MY PARENTS HAD braved a blizzard early one December morning to drive to the hospital for my birth. The evening before, as she d sat in her sewing class, labor pains had gripped my mother. She and our next-door neighbor Sarah-her intrepid companion on various self-improvement courses such as Chinese cooking and knitting-had cut the night short and ventured home through the Calgary snowstorm, Mom wiping the fogged glass as Sarah drove, peering through the windshield. The sewing lessons never translated into any inherited stitching or mending expertise, but tales of Mom drinking copious amounts of stout while she was pregnant-thanks to a Dr. Spock recommendation for anemic expectant mothers-left me convinced I came by my love of beer and later alcohol troubles honestly.
I also credit my ability to fit in anywhere to Mom. Whether it was cooking or sewing classes with Sarah, annual summer family camping trips when my brother, my sister, and I were kids, or tolerating the eight-hour semiannual drives to spend a week with Dad s mother and many siblings in rural Saskatchewan, Mom did it with aplomb, even if her apparent enjoyment may have lacked sincerity. Had she participated in these activities grudgingly or as if they were beneath her, I might have defined her as a snob. But she dove in, if not quite with gusto, then at least with a good college try at merriment.
She d been born into the role of outsider-she grew up in a rural Alberta town among farmers as the daughter of the bank manager, accustomed to visiting without pretension among the locals in her formative years. Perhaps it was her generation s awareness of manners, rendering her loath to rock the boat or draw undue attention to herself, but I believe she carried a comprehension of how unique she was and accepted that her differences would be more difficult to bear if she bemoaned her pedestrian life.
Occasionally, she d lament a life unlived, telling me that she d given up a lot for me, for us, without providing any specifics other than regret that she hadn t pursued her own journalism ambitions and sadness that the only career options widely available for women of her era were nursing and education. She had chosen education. She d taught for four and a half years-one of them at the school where she met Dad-and decided it wasn t for her. Whatever dreams she may have had, she kept them to herself. The truth was, while we shared many traits, my mother loomed over me, a larger-than-life enigma. Much like a mysterious painting whose profundity I only superficially understood, I would spend my lifetime observing her, puzzling over her-sometimes squinting, other times with eyes wide open.
She was not warm, nor was she stone cold; my mother could best be characterized as English. She was born in Alberta to a sensitive, artistic Englishman and a genteel French woman who each were averse to overt displays of affection and self-disclosure. Mom towered in relief above the surrounding terrain, educated and well-read. A swan among hens, she settled right in at whatever farmhouse we were visiting, elegant even in shorts and a cotton blouse, sipping her rye and Coke with Dad s sisters and the wives of his many brothers, making lunch or dinner for the men while chatting about the kids, who played outside in the late summer heat. If my Saskatchewan aunts were Tom Sawyer s Aunt Polly, my mother was a hybrid of Peggy and Joan, pure Mad Men in style and bearing, as steely and smooth as they come.
Dad was the only one of his siblings to leave Saskatchewan. He was achingly shy, a quiet, sensitive man. As a youngster, he had stayed home to listen to the radio on Saturday afternoons while the rest of his family went out, tuning in to the Metropolitan Opera s weekly broadcast. When he met Mom, she couldn t get over his deep love and knowledge of the opera, or the fact that he d developed it in his south Saskatchewan farmhouse kitchen. A moustache adorned his upper lip for almost his entire life, and I d often get the impression it served as a curtain to hide the rare mischievous smirk he would allow himself. Thick glasses completed his look; his students were known to don joke shop Groucho glasses (complete with nose and moustache) en masse on the last day of school as a good-natured joke that never failed to crack him up. Our Calgary life stood in sharp contrast to the world of Dad s farming relatives. He worked as a junior high principal in the Catholic school system and Mom worked at home caring for Jake and me-and three