Winter 2017

Crossing: A Memoir

We have read the stories of those who have "crossed" lines of race and class and culture. But few have written of crossing—completely and entirely—the gender line. Crossing is the story of Deirdre McCloskey (formerly Donald), once a golden boy of conservative economics and a child of 1950s and 1960s privilege, and her dramatic and poignant journey to becoming a woman. McCloskey's account of her painstaking efforts to learn to "be a woman" unearth fundamental questions about gender and identity, and hatreds and anxieties, revealing surprising answers.

Sex Changes

Sex Changes: What do you do when the other woman is your husband? Christine Benvenuto and her husband had been married for more than twenty years and were raising their three young children in a beautiful New England town. One night in bed he turned to her and said, "I'm thinking constantly about my gender," adding that he was unhappy in his body and wanted to become a woman.

Sex Changes is a journey through the end of a marriage and out the other side. Christine, desperate to save her family and shelter her children. She learns what to tell the neighbours when your transgender husband starts accenting his shirts and ties with heels.

Fiercely funny, self-lacerating, and not entirely politically correct, Sex Changes is a journey of love and anguish told with hilarity, heartbreak and a lot of soul-searching. It is about the mysteries in every marriage, the secrets we choose to keep, and the freedom that the truth can bring.

Friday, January 13, 12:00-2:00

Reading: Introduction, Crossing - Part I: Donald

Light Lunch served

Location: CHN 1137

Friday, Feb 3, 12:00-2:00

Reading: Crossing - Part II: Dee

Light Lunch served

Location: CHN 1137

February 17, 12:00-2:00

Reading: Part III: Deidre

Light Lunch served

Location: CHN 1137

March 3, 12:00-2:00

Reading: Sex Changes - Part I

Light Lunch served

Location: CHN 1137

March 17, 12:00-2:00

Reading: Sex Changes – Part II

Light Lunch served

Location: CHN 1137

Mar 31, 5:00-8:00

Reading: Sex Changes - Part III

Dinner meeting

Location - TBA