Jennifer Finney Boylan's latest memoir 'Cleavage' is a reflection on transgender life
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Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. The writer Jennifer Finney Boylan has been one of the most prominent transgender voices since she wrote her memoir, She's Not There, back in 2003. Since then, she's been on the news and has written more books about the trans experience, and yet even she was taken aback when her own kid came out as trans.

She writes about this in her new book, Cleavage, Men, Women, and the Space Between Us. And she talks to Here and Now's Robin Young about what it's like to grow old as a trans person, which, yes, includes your kid not talking to you about their feelings. That's coming up. This message comes from Thrive Market. The food industry is a multibillion-dollar industry, but not everything on the shelf is made with your health in mind.

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Jennifer Finney Boylan's new memoir is as lyrical as her previous bestsellers about her journey transitioning from male to female in her early 40s with loving wife, Dee Dee, and their two little kids by his, then her, Jenny's side.

Jenny says her earliest memory at four or five is of knowing she was a girl, even as she loved that tall cardboard rocket her dad built for all the neighborhood boys. Dad lit it and, metaphor alert, it just plopped over, but then roared back to life, scutting along the baseball field aimed right at the meanest kid in town, which reminded the adult Jenny of Senator Josh Hawley running from the mob on Jan. 6. Oh, such writing.

Jenny says while her first memoir, 2003's She's Not There, was about the newness of her life as a woman, this new memoir is about growing old as one. There's another difference between now and then. In 2003, Jenny writes, people hadn't yet had formal instruction on how to hate transgender people. They fell back on their own human decency. Now, transgender people are being banned.

Oh, and in this book, there will be a new-to-some gobsmacking revelation. Didn't see that one coming. Jennifer Finney Boylan is a writer-in-residence at Barnard College, president of PEN America. Her new memoir is Cleavage, Men, Women, and the Space Between Us. Jenny, welcome back. Hi, how are you? I am just fine. Just got to get this out of the way, elephant in the room.

Did you mean for this memoir to land in the middle of a nuclear culture war over transgender people? Oh, my God. I've been working on this book for over five years. And wouldn't you know, it happens to come out now. Well, so no, that wasn't intended. And when you read the book, there is no mention of it except kind of sideways. Meantime, there seems like there are two themes here. You know, the overwhelming power of love and all of your amazing friendships growing up.

And this Charlie Brown-like doubt that you deserve it, is it from, you know, living with a secret?

I think that if you have a secret, you spend a lot of energy making sure that no one ever finds out. And to some degree, I think that is the biggest difference in me between now and 25 years ago. It's really not having gone from male to female. It's going from someone who had a secret to someone who doesn't. Yeah. Well, and in so many ways, this was like reading some of those scout magazines that my brother used to have, you know?

Right? What, because of the Rocket Club? Well, the Rocket Club and, you know, going off in the witty cars and the oops, the car accidents you and your pals had to, you know, hide. And, you know, yes, all the time you have this terrible secret and a secret cupboard in your room, you know, with your earrings and things. And then these stories, you thread them throughout. And, oh, there's the beautiful Ben, one of your sweet best friends. And right in front of you when you're teens...

He's riding a wave. It crashes into the ground right in front of you. He's paralyzed for life. Later, when you go back to a school reunion and you go back as a woman and he goes back in a wheelchair, he says to you, we both have a before and after. And I'm also thinking, wow, and there's a lot of different ways to be trapped in a body. Well, and I think there's a lot of befores and afters in our lives too. But I think a challenge for us is to find...

a connection between that before and that after so that you wind up living one life rather than two. I mean, everybody needs a childhood, even if it's a childhood in which you were uncomfortable or unhappy or uncertain.

But one of the things that I have happily been able to do is to make peace with that boyhood. As we said, this book is also about, yeah, look back at your childhood through today's prism, but also sharing with us growing old as a transgender woman, you know, unlike 25 years ago. Well, yeah. I mean, most trans memoirs, and there's a new one that comes out every year.

five minutes. Most of them are about transition. And why wouldn't you want to write about transition? It is amazing. But a transition is not the only moment in a transgender person's life or in anybody's life. So some of the questions that I wanted to look back on and to answer are questions like,

What is it like to have the thing for which you've been yearning your whole life finally? And also just some of the basic differences between being a man and being a woman, at least as I've lived it. Everything from my relationship with food to my experience of time itself, in fact, and friendship and sex itself.

And my sense of safety in this world has certainly changed as well. So all of those are things worth exploring and worth telling stories about. Which you do. And just take a couple of them. Your weight suddenly became an issue. And suddenly you're like, wait a minute, my svelte little figure. It's a woman thing. Yeah, I'll tell you what. I weighed myself this morning before coming on the radio. Like, seriously, that's a thing that happened. And I had a cold last week, so my voice is kind of...

Right.

some of which I thought I had left behind forever. Some of them are still with me. But it's interesting, voice. You reveal to us that there's a small cottage industry of people who help people who've transitioned find their new voice. There are a couple of gasp-inducing moments in the book for many. One, Dee Dee summons you. We're going for a hike right now, and you nervously go. And she gets to the top of this mountain, and she's speaking to you, but it's like she's speaking to all of us, because

Because you're kind of like, what's happening? And she says, are you kidding me? I just want to tell you how much I love you and how fun my life has been. And I felt like saying, oh, me of little faith. Well, but me too, because both in that moment as well as throughout, you know, there are a lot of times when I, quite honestly, I think, how can she possibly be happy with somebody like me? And as she will remind me,

If you have found the person that you love, maybe even what gender they are is less important than what's in their heart. I don't know. I mean, I think we marry the people we love in hopes that whatever changes come, there are changes that we will endure and with any luck celebrate. And if I can, I want to go to that other moment in the book. You know, this is at a point when you and Dee Dee have settled in.

into lives of writing and watching sunsets and watching your amazing kids ready to set off on their own paths. When Yowzers, Zach, and his girlfriend approach you one night nervously clutching hands, this revelation could have knocked me over with a feather. Zach wants to and does transition.

Yeah, my child comes out as trans, and I didn't see it coming, and I wasn't crazy about this news, in part because I was embarrassed that I hadn't seen it coming, and in part because, you know, it's a hard life, being trans. I mean, it's a great life, it's a gift, I can say all of that, but it's also a hard life, and I...

I feared that I had made this life look like fun, as if that would be enough. But in my brain, I thought that. But I have to say, you did, you thought, I think I might even have caused this somehow by also being trans. And in that moment, you realized...

Oh, my gosh. I'm having the reaction of a lot of parents, even though I've been through this. Indeed. And, you know, if parents are struggling, and I know they are, with a child who comes up and says, I'm trans and I'm going to go through transition or I'm going to start on hormones or something like that, and whether that child is 10 years old or 40, a parent can't.

can find themselves challenged because your idea of who it is that you have been in love with all these years has to be rethought. Well, and you also, Jennifer Finney Boylan, took it personally, like, wait a minute, why haven't you come to me for advice because have you not noticed I am Jenny Finney Boylan? Yeah.

Yeah, well, and this will sound familiar to parents, too, that even though you might be considered by some people an expert or an authority in some particular way, my child kind of wanted to do it on her own. She didn't want to walk in my footsteps. That was also humbling for me.

Well, and you write, yes, there are hate mongers, but you also know that there are people who are genuinely confused and don't understand. And even you, with all of your understanding, had moments of, wait, what's happening? So this gave you even more of an understanding of the genuinely good people who may not understand some of this. Yeah, and I think...

I mean, it may be that our movement has wound up being defined, at least in the last half a dozen years, by some of the gnarliest and most difficult to understand aspects of our experience. And I can tell you, look, I don't want to play on your sports team, and I don't want to come over to your house and force your child to have...

hormones. What I want above all is to be left alone. What I want above all is to be able to live this woman's life that I fought so hard for and to share that life with

the people that I love with my friends. And I think that's what most transgender people are fighting for. We should say that your daughter's eye is flying. Yeah, she's thriving. And so is my son. Yes. The two of them are pretty amazing. The kids are all right. So what do you want to say to that little then boy decades ago? Such all these friends and everything and this burning secret who could never imagine the possibility of the life you have now. What would you say?

To some degree, I want to say, look, if you think this is a curse, please know this curse is actually going to turn out to be your gift. Because being trance is going to enable you to see things that most people don't get to see. And above all, it's going to give you some amazing stories that you are uniquely positioned to tell yourself.

So I would tell that young child, I'm so sorry for the pain that you feel, but pain is not the only thing you will feel. And in time, you're going to know love, you're going to know hope, you're going to know joy, and laugh your head off. Because sometimes things that are terribly sad can also be strangely comic when viewed from the right perspective and with enough hope.

author Jennifer Finney Boylan, her new memoir, Cleavage, Men, Women, and the Space Between Us. Jenny, thanks so much. Thank you so much. This message comes from Lisa. Since 2015, Lisa has donated over 41,000 mattresses nationwide. Elevate your sleep with Lisa. Go to Lisa.com for 20% off plus an extra $50 off with promo code NPR.

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