Canary Author Canary Conn By Canary Conn
I think that no matter what a person does on the outside, they are still what they are on the inside. 0553110608
Canary Author Canary Conn
This book charts the transition of Canary Conn. I became interested in reading this autobiography after seeing it on an Oprah article of
115 LGBTQ Authors Share the Books that Changed Their Lives. There's a lot more visibility within the trans community today and I wanted to read a story from a time in which trans lives were less than celebrated from the source. It was interesting to read what still resonates today and how attitudes have changed.
She finds herself struggling to make ends meet and lives in constant fear of being discovered for who she is or being outed by someone she had confided in and becoming the topic of discussion at the office or other social gathering. At the conclusion of the book, she's working as a journalist, but Canary seemed to disappear. I (and others) wonder what happened to Canary? #WheredidCanaryGo 0553110608 Reading this book is one of the main reasons I made it out of my transolescence alive. Miss Conn was an inspiration and having her words to read again and again gave me enough hope to move forward and I could never, ever thank her enough. 0553110608 I heard about this book on a podcast, and I was fascinated by Canary’s self expression in interviews. I have to say, while the book is a great description of someone’s trans journey, I found myself getting hung up on outdated language and terminology, especially the constant conflation of gender and sexuality. I find Ms. Conn very determined and self assured in her drive to find a solution to her gender dysphoria, especially for someone so young in 1968, which is practically the stone ages of psychiatry and gender studies, and I do want to know more about her life, especially because there are a few inconsistencies between the memoir and an interview from around the same time frame I heard on a podcast. 0553110608 Good representation (I think!)of transexuals as real people. I have to say that the author is kind of a narcissist, but whatever. 0553110608 Overall a marvelous autobiography about the experiences of a MtF transsexual in the 1970s, going into detail about the author's thoughts/feelings as well as people's responses to the author as a person in various stages of the transition.
A little challenging for me were the highly normative gender role expectations. I think that was likely because these situations took place in a society thirtysomething years ago (with all that this entailed). Plus the author's own non-radical views on gender roles, which was in spite of his own complex experience of gender (including a change which is non-normative in most all societies) -- but those are not contradictory (i.e. a person could believe they are actually a man instead of a woman, and also have more conservative beliefs about what men or women should do (/how to behave) in society). It was just that the more limited gender role expectations were more difficult for me to read, especially in light of the author's resulting views about queer folks and their relationships. 0553110608
