"...an entertaining and heartfelt journey from male to female, ostracism to acceptance, and obscurity to fame. ... Aleshia Brevard's journey is a brilliant, gutsy, and insightful look at a life simultaneously marginalized and in the spotlight." —Lambda Book Report "The Woman I Was not Born to Be is not the kind of book one really expects from an academic press: ... Read moreno statistics, no elaborate theoretical structure. Nor is it the story of people whom history has utterly ignored. Mocked, crucified, tortured, and jailed, yes; ignored, no. But I'm glad Temple University Press chose to publish it: in academia as in real life, a reasonably well-adjusted, kind-hearted woman who was born male is not so common." —Amy Bloom, Wilson Quarterly "Brevard's story adds an entertaining curve to the growing body of literature—academic scientific, theoretical and literary—on transgendered experience, without the self-pity or sentimentality found in many such memoirs....Written in a gossipy style reminiscent of 1950's movie-star autobiographies (which at heart, it is)." —Publishers Weekly Show Less