Woman I Was Not Born to Be: A Transsexual Journey

These days, it is understood that sometimes boys will be girls; in Alfred Brevard Crenshaw's case, he wanted to be a woman--and what a woman! Born in 1937 to a genteel Tennessee family, Crenshaw knew that he was different from an early age. In his early 20s, he fled to San Francisco, where he became a female impersonator and a hit, under the name Lee Shaw, at Finocchio's, the world-famous nightclub featuring top-line drag entertainment. But by the early 1960s, simply dressing up wasn't enough; Shaw wanted to undergo surgery to become a woman. His desire was so great that, even before he underwent the brand-new technique of transsexual surgery, he castrated himself (with the help of a friend) in his own kitchen to shut down his body's production of testosterone. After seeking safer, medical solutions to his gender dysphoria (namely, 11 hours of surgery), Lee emerged as Aleshia Brevard--a well-built knockout. Pursuing a career in entertainment, Aleshia became a burlesque queen, a Playboy bunny and a B-movie star, playing the lead against Don Knotts in The Love God. Brevard's story adds an entertaining curve to the growing body of literature--academic, scientific, theoretical and literary--on transgender experience, without the self-pity or sentimentality found in many such memoirs. 17 photos. (Mar. 26) Forecast: Written in a gossipy style reminiscent of 1950s movie-star autobiographies (which, at heart, it is), this book could break out beyond the publisher's more usual academic readership to lovers of celebrity tell-alls and B-movies.