Transparent: Love, Family, and Living the T with Transgender Teenagers

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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008 - Family & Relationships - 323 pages

When Cris Beam moved to Los Angeles, she thought she might volunteer just a few hours at a school for gay and transgender kids. Instead, she found herself drawn deeply into the pained and powerful group of transgirls she discovered. Transparent introduces four: Christina, Dominique, Foxxjazell, and Ariel. As they accept Cris into their world, she shows it to us--a dizzying mix of familiar teenage cliques and crushes and far less familiar challenges, such as how to morph your body on a few dollars a day. Funny, heartbreaking, defiant, and sometimes defeated, the girls form a singular community. But they struggle valiantly to resolve the gap between the way they feel inside and the way the world sees them--and who among us can't identify with that? Beam's astute reporting, sensitive writing, and passionate engagement with her characters place this book in the ranks of the very best narrative nonfiction.

 

Contents

School
3
EduardoGeriChristina
24
Mothers
55
Arriving
80
Body
108
Boyfriends
139
Lockdown
159
Skidmarks
189
Violence
226
Change
244
Commencement
272
Authors Note
299
Endnotes
301
Selected Bibliography
319
Acknowledgments
321
Copyright

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About the author (2008)

Cris Beam is the author of several award-winning books, including To The End of June: The Intimate Life of American Foster Care, and Transparent: Love, Family and Living the T with Transgender Teenagers. Her journalism has been featured in several national magazines and on public radio. Beam teaches creative writing at Columbia, NYU, and Bayview Women's Correctional Facility and lives in New York City.

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