The University of Wisconsin Press

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Memoir / Gay & Lesbian Interest / Gender Studies / Judaica

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Through the Door of Life A Jewish Journey between Genders Joy Ladin Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiographies David Bergman, Joan Larkin, and Raphael Kadushin, Series Editors · 2012 Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award for Biography, Autobiography, or Memoir · Finalist, Transgender Nonfiction, Lambda Literary Awards · Selection, Over the Rainbow Project, GLBT Round Table of the American Library Association “Not only a memoir of transgender experience, it’s also a story of family heartbreak and family love; of growth as a teacher and writer; and, not least, of a self deeply connected to God and Judaism throughout a life lived across genders.” —Rabbi Jill Hammer, author of The Jewish Book of Days and Director of Spiritual Education at the Academy for Jewish Religion Professor Jay Ladin made headlines around the world when, after years of teaching literature at Yeshiva University, he returned to the Orthodox Jewish campus as a woman—Joy Ladin. In Through the Door of Life, Joy Ladin takes readers inside her transition as she changed genders and, in the process, created a new self. With unsparing honesty and surprising humor, Ladin wrestles with both the practical problems of gender transition and the larger moral, spiritual, and philosophical questions that arise. Ladin recounts her struggle to reconcile the pain of her experience living as the “wrong” gender with the pain of her children in losing the father they love. We eavesdrop on her lifelong conversations with the God whom she sees both as the source of her agony and as her hope for transcending it. We look over her shoulder as she learns to walk and talk as a woman after forty-plus years of walking and talking as a man. We stare with her into the mirror as she asks herself how the new self she is creating will ever become real. Ladin’s poignant memoir takes us from the death of living as the man she knew she wasn’t, to the shattering of family and career that accompanied her transition, to the new self, relationships, and love she finds when she opens the door of life. Listen to Joy Ladin give a talk at Hebrew College.    Photo © Lisa Ross Joy Ladin, David and Ruth Gottesman Professor of English at Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University, is the first openly transgender employee of an Orthodox Jewish institution. She is the author of five books of poetry, including, most recently, Psalms and Coming to Life. For more information regarding publicity and reviews contact our publicity manager, phone: (608) 263-0734, email: publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu Of related interest: My Diva 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them Edited by Michael Montlack "My Diva is a series of love letters to some of the most inspiring, surprising, dynamic darlings ever, from Claude Cahun and Julia Child to Kate Bush and Cher." —Time Out New York

March 2012 LC: 2011040974 PS 270 pp.   5 1/2 x 8 1/4 Cloth $26.95 t ISBN 978-0-299-28730-6 eBook $14.95 ISBN 978-0-299-28733-7   Adobe Digital Edition (PDF) About our e-books Printing and cut/paste allowed, access on six different devices. ADD TO CART   Click here for a further explanation of the shopping cart feature. Wisconsin edition not for sale in Europe, Russia, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, Australia, and New Zealand “Joy Ladin’s book succeeds so well because it is anything but a trans tract; it is a fierce story of regular old human life: hideous choices, endless repercussions, occasional glory, frequent humiliation, abiding difficulty. It could have happened to us. She makes us believe it.” —Kay Ryan, former poet laureate of the United States, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry "Joy Ladin’s lyrical and thoughtful new memoir... adds another before-and-after metaphor to the mix, yet its searing narrative undercuts any such simplifications." —Jay Michaelson for Lambda Literary. Read the full review here.

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