Second Skins: The Body Narratives of Transsexuality

by Jay Prosser

Book Overview

Do we need bodies for sex? Is gender in the head or in the body? In Second Skins Jay Prosser reveals the powerful drive that leads men and women literally to shed their skins and--in flesh and head--to cross the boundary of sex. Telling their story is not merely an act that comes after the fact, it's a force of its own that makes it impossible to forget that stories of identity inhabit autobiographical bodies.

In this stunning first...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0231109350
• ISBN13: 9780231109352
• Release Date: April 1998
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.1"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

An uncommonly perceptive critique

Jay Prosser's book (in addition to being uniquely insightful) occupies a unique place in the growing (trans)gender studies canon: it is the only one that engages seriously with the specificity of transsexual (as distinct from transgender) identification, and critically examines the points of critical divergence between the two (or the several, if you prefer). His readings of the Well of Loneliness and Stone Butch Blues, as well as the appended consideration of transsexual photographic self-portrait (which is as moving as it is insightful) are, quite simply, not to be missed. A must.