My Life as a Boy: A Woman's Story

by Kim Chernin

Book Overview

By turns provocative and startlingly revealing, MY LIFE AS A BOY is the story of a woman trying to figure out what love is, trying to understand what happens between desire and the determination to possess the object of that desire, and discovering what it's like to go after what you want. Chernin writes with the grace of a poet and the insight of a psychotherapist, bringing the shape-shifting nature of intimate relationship alive.--San Francisco...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1565121635
• ISBN13: 9781565121638
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Algonquin Books
• Length: 204 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 7.4"

Customer Reviews

A poem of self-transformation

The book reads like a poem in some places, like stream of consciousness in others. The style to me was as wonderful as the story, which, told in regular everyday words doesn't sound like much. She grows apart from her husband, becomes a 'boy' and chases after a local woman. But it's not about lesbianism, or about any such issues, it's not about leaving her husband or about the woman she was chasing. It is about the transformation that she herself undergoes as she comes out of her shell and finally feels the confidence and the drive to go after something purely because she wants it, with no thought to the people that are in her way. In that way, she becomes a boy- brash, driven and concentrated only on herself and what she wants. It is an unusual journey that I highly recommend.

Letter to Kim Chernin

First, I was jealous of your priveleged lifestyle... no apparent work, surrounded by those who have the money and the leisure time to seek self-fulfillment. Oh, for the luxury of pondering! If you had less time on your hands, you may have made it with this babe, or you may have searched elsewhere sooner. I floundered for almost two years too; a first-timer, groping for someone inaccessible. Twenty years later, she still occupies my thoughts and rains on me like sadness on an umbrella. I applaud you for baring your mind and heart, and hope to run into you some day in Berkeley. Yes, life is serious

An interesting,well-written exploration of androgyny & power

Ms. Chernin's autobiographical vignette is a well constructed narrative of her transformation from timid married woman and mother into a strong, impulsive lesbian. She likens this new power she has to the power a boy has. Personally, I think she is a little hung up on gender stereotyping but her point is well taken. It's a tightly written little book that should be of interest to women of all types, but especially for those of us interested in butch-femme dynamics as well as the transition from wife into lesbian. One does sort of get the feeling that had she not lived in Berkeley and been surrounded by fabulously interesting people, she might never have made this transformation, but she did and has created a very nice example of autobiography as a result