Sissy

A heart-wrenching, eye-opening, and giggle-inducing memoir about what it's it's like to grow up not sure if you're a boy, a girl, something in between, or all of the above. From the moment a doctor in Cary, North Carolina put "male" on Jacob Tobia's birth certificate, everything went wrong. Alongside "male" came many other, far less neutral words: words that carried expectations about who Jacob was and who Jacob should be, like "masculine" and "aggressive" and "cargo shorts" and "SPORTS!" Naturally sensitive, playful, creative, and glitter-obsessed, as a child Jacob was given the label "sissy." In the two decades that followed, "sissy" joined forces with "gay," "trans," "nonbinary," and "too-queer-to-function" to become a source of pride, a curse-turned-blessing, a freak-flag hoisted high. Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story charts those decades, from Jacob's Methodist childhood to the hallowed halls of Duke University and the portrait-laden parlors...M.F