Transgender Book Reviews

S/he
Nonfiction by Minnie Bruce Pratt
Copyright 1995, 189 pages, $11.95
Firebrand Books
ISBN 1-56341-059-1

Capsule: Sixty-nine often-poetic vignettes by a woman who grew up in the Southern U.S., married, and had children before discovering her attraction to women. Starting a new life, she eventually became the loving partner of well-known author Leslie Feinberg. Beyond discovering her own femme lesbian identity, Pratt was forced to confront the feelings of some lesbians that Leslie was too mannish. Pratt's conclusion: end the slavery of arbitrary gender assignments.

Full review

A very personal and often poetic account of a woman looking for freedom and happiness in a dangerous and occasionally violent zone. The book is half about the lesbian experience and half about the middle gender ground between men and women.

Pratt evokes the South early on. It's North Carolina in the 70s. Forbidden sexuality lurks just under the surface. For ten years she's been married to a nice man and has two children. Caught up in the women's movement, she begin to trust her strongest sexual instincts, which point to other women. She writes: "We must read the poems we write with our bodies." Because she is now identified as "too much woman; not woman enough," she loses custody of her children to her former husband.

So begins an odyssey. At first she adopts the uniform of the movement: T-shirt, military trousers and boots. There is a small problem with alcohol. She learns to navigate in the femme lesbian world and has a number of short-term lovers.

Eventually she uncovers her real self, a self which actually enjoys wearing dresses. As in the romantic novels she read as a teenager, she wants to be taken, just a little roughly. At about the same time she meets the love of her life, Leslie Feinberg, the battle-scarred transgendered author of Stone Butch Blues and Transgender Warriors (also reviewed on this web site). They seem to be made for each other. Of their relationship, Pratt writes: "You follow me to the edge of creation and you can go only with me, where I can go only with you."

They are both in the public arena as writers.

But such an unconventional relationship is not without its difficulties. Not only do straight people hassle them or are embarrassed by their presence, but the lesbian community itself is uneasy. Even lesbians want the security of knowing if a person is biologically male or female, despite the importance of a transgendered person's state of mind. For example, Feinberg is biologically female, yet she is "read" by many as male, or as sexually indeterminate.

Pratt argues for greater latitude in looking at sexuality and gender. She knows her lover can take her sexually like a guy, yet Feinberg has the sensitivities of a woman.

The author holds back nothing in talking about her body or her desires, and the workings of her relationships with others. She ultimately seems to say "We are more than our body parts -- we get to choose who we want to be" along the spectrum of gender.

Politically, Pratt shares the political philosophy of her partner that the strict assignments of "man" or "woman" in western society is for the purpose of control, with women on the losing end of the equation.

(Reviewer: Valory Gravois) (Copyright ©1999 by Alchemist/Light Publishing)

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