The Woman I Was Not Born to Be: A Transsexual Journey

By Aleshia Brevard

Book Overview

Told with humor and flair, this is the autobiography of one transsexual's wild ride from boyhood as Alfred Brevard ("Buddy") Crenshaw in rural Tennessee to voluptuous female entertainer in Hollywood. Aleshia Brevard, as she is now known, underwent transitional surgery in Los Angeles in 1962, one of the first such operations in the United States. (The famous sexual surgery pioneer Harry Benjamin himself broke the news to Brevard's parents.) Under the stage name Lee Shaw, Brevard worked as a drag queen at Finocchio's, a San Francisco club, doing Marilyn Monroe impersonations. (Like Marilyn, she sought romance all the time and had a string of entanglements with men.) Later, she worked as a stripper in Reno and as a Playboy Bunny at the Sunset Strip hutch. After playing opposite Don Knotts in the movie The Love God , Brevard appeared in other films and broke into TV as a regular on the Red Skelton Show. She created the role of Tex on the daytime soap opera One Life To Live . As a woman, Brevard returned to teach theater at East Tennessee State, the same university she had attended as a boy. This memoir is a rare pre-Women's Movement account of coming to terms with gender identity. Brevard writes frankly about the degree to which she organized her life around pleasing men, and how absurd it all seems to her now.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1566398398
• ISBN13: 9781566398398
• Release Date: February 2001
• Publisher: Temple University Press
• Length: 249 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

comforting and truly gifted writing!

I baught this book for myself for Christmas 2008. I read it straight through. It floored me! The author is able to reach down inside of the reader and bring up all kinds of wonderful feel-goods about life. The fact that she's transsexual is secondary to the interesting life Aleshia has lived. An actress, a college proffesor, and a great friend to the ones who cross her path. After reading it, I located the Author and was able to see how genuine a person she is. She is brave, and very courageous. You will not be dissappointed with this purchase. I'll treasure mine forever. We can only hope their will be a sequell to keep us informed and entertained! What a gal, Alesia Brevard!

The Woman I Was Not Born to Be: A Transsexual Journey

What can i say about this book. Well It's very rare for me to read any book from cover to cover but this one had me gripped its funny and its also very sad in places. As you read the book you begin to feel like your part of what is taking place you feel like you're in the book especially if you are trans gender or you just like gender related books.Don't pass this book because the subject of trans-gender doesn't appeal to you buy it and read it and you might find out what it is like on the other side.

I fully applaud Ms. Brevard!

I'm not even completely finished with this book, but feel compelled to post a `review.' I've been fascinated with transsexuals stories since I discovered Canary Conn's (born Danny O'Connor) autobiography when in college. I guess I've been searching for better understanding as to what would cause a person to make the ultimate, surgical, decision. Well, I can honestly say that after reading most of Aleshia Brevard's honest autobiography, I am not only fairly close to understanding, but have the utmost respect for those who have to correct a birth defect in their gender (to paraphrase Ms. Brevard). But, this book isn't merely a transsexual's story - it's a human story about feeling different, and how to correct that difference. I fully applaud Ms. Brevard, not only for her integrity and grit to make that ultimate corrective action, but also for this wonderfully human account that's now shared with the world (and, she's got a great sense of humor). Let's hope that more people, no matter what their gender, read and appreciate this book. To Ms. Brevard I say, BRAVA!

MORE WOMAN THAN I'LL EVER BE

I have just read this marvelous book and I can't stop thinking about the people and places I saw, through the eyes of the author, that I had never seen in just that way before.It so happens that I know the author (but I never knew ANY of THIS!). When I met her I immediately admired her -- but I never knew why. I mean, other than the obvious, which she did not stress in her book but which I can personally attest to -- how SMART she is -- which is quite obvious in the book. Aleshia tells us how, at her dear mother Mozelle's urging, she went to college (which is where we met!). She dashes off her college degree while battling husband and health problems, and it's the latter two that she finds taxing. She breezes through her practice teaching, making it all look easy (and it WAS NOT EASY). Apparently she often made things look easy that cost her a lot.Later she gets mad because some snotty actor "one-ups" her with his Master's degree. Just to "show him," she goes and gets herself a Master's too! So there! You see, my dear Aleshia, not everybody is capable of doing that, only people who are smart, literate and know how to learn. That's a quality so prevalent in the book. Young people should read this to see how a smart person survives in a hostile world, indeed a lesson for us all.People on campus who knew I knew Aleshia would sometimes crassly ask me if I had heard that "she" was on sports teams as a boy back in high school. My answer was heartfelt. "I don't know, but I do know that she's more of a woman than I'll ever be." It was true. She admits in her book, she was a slave to the times of Jackie, Marilyn and a woman cleaving to a man not only for food and shelter but also her identity. This "pre-feminist" era is difficult to explain to anyone who wasn't there, but Aleshia does a very fine job.So yes, I have always admired Aleshia, and I really admire this book. As someone who has known her (off and on) since college, I will tell you that this book is just like sitting down with her on a cozy evening and saying, "So, you castrated yourself, huh?," and she takes it from there, an honest, earnest, touching and amusing story of sexual (genetic?) confusion. Finally, I look at the picture of "Buddy." I look in "his" eyes and I see the Aleshia I know. It's ALESHIA. I don't have the words, but it is the soul, the essence of "buddy/aleshia," one person... Anyway, whether man, woman, boy or girl... SHE IS. Thank God for that!P.Murphy(Fellow Speech & Theater Major at MTSU, now a writer in Hollywood)

A Courageous Journey

Laughing through the tears and whistling past the graveyard and surviving to write it all down. This book is the humourous, down-to-earth account of a very brave boy who never was and woman who longed to be. Brevard takes the reader on a wild ride from the backwoods of her (his) Tennessee childhood in the 40's, to San Fran's Finocchios in the 50's, to the horror of self-castration,required for gender re-assignment surgery in the 60's.The book evokes the humor and pathos of following this real life adventure. The injustice of having to hide is mixed with Brevard's insecurities and submission to the male dominated attitudes of that time, until finally resolving, within herself, the true value of her life and existence.The book can occasionally be hard to follow because it moves quickly through many events, but whatever effort is expended, it is well worth the read! In this book, the reader becomes intimately acquainted with one of the most courageous yet charming, engaging and beautiful women of our time.