There is nothing more affirming for anyone in the process of coming out and claiming a particular sexual identity than to be able to read the life stories of others who have gone before them. For transgender people, this is more difficult than usual, given the historic attitudes defining sexuality as either male or female , with no alternative spaces permitted.
A Strange Sort of Being began as the author’s dissertation and opens with a very readable discussion of the problems of interpreting the life of an individual who repeatedly and emphatically declared that they were “a man in all that the name implies “ (despite being born in a female body ) and who lived in a relationship with another woman as husband and wife for decades while being subjected to the attentions of both local law enforcement agencies and the medical profession.
Useful features include the full text of Lobdell’s 1855 autobiography and numerous contemporary discussions and depictions which attempted to cope with the challenge to nineteenth-century American views on sexual identity posed by the facts of this life.
Geographic coverage ranges from Lucy Ann/Joseph Israel’s childhood and youth in upstate New York to later residences in Minnesota and Pennsylvania in full male garb and social privilege.
Most useful for librarians wishing to build depth into their transgender collections in all types of libraries.
Reviewer: Robert Ridinger
Northern Illinois University