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Title details for Sorted by Jackson Bird - Wait list

Sorted

Growing Up, Coming Out, and Finding My Place: A Transgender Memoir

by Jackson Bird
Jackson Bird
Audiobook (Includes supplementary content)
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 2 weeks
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0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 2 weeks
An unflinching and endearing memoir from LGBTQ+ advocate Jackson Bird about how he finally sorted things out and came out as a transgender man.
When Jackson Bird was twenty-five, he came out as transgender to his friends, family, and anyone in the world with an internet connection.

Assigned female at birth and raised as a girl, he often wondered if he should have been born a boy. Jackson didn't share this thought with anyone because he didn't think he could share it with anyone. Growing up in Texas in the 1990s, he had no transgender role models. He barely remembers meeting anyone who was openly gay, let alone being taught that transgender people existed outside of punchlines.

In this "soulful and heartfelt coming-of-age story" (Jamia Wilson, director and publisher of the Feminist Press), Jackson chronicles the ups and downs of growing up gender-confused. Illuminated by journal entries spanning childhood to adolescence to today, he candidly recalls the challenges and loneliness he endured as he came to terms with both his gender and his bisexual identity.

With warmth and wit, Jackson also recounts how he navigated the many obstacles and quirks of his transition—like figuring out how to have a chest binder delivered to his NYU dorm room and having an emotional breakdown at a Harry Potter fan convention. From his first shot of testosterone to his eventual top surgery, Jackson lets you in on every part of his journey—taking the time to explain trans terminology and little-known facts about gender and identity along the way.

"A compassionate, tender-hearted, and accessible book for anyone who might need a hand to hold as they walk through their own transition or the transition of a loved one" (Austin Chant, author of Peter Darling), Sorted demonstrates the power and beauty in being yourself, even when you're not sure who "yourself" is.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    September 24, 2019

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781797103075
      • File size: 171956 KB
      • Duration: 05:58:14

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Jackson Bird, a YouTube nano celebrity and professional Harry Potter fan, engages listeners as he recounts his personal journey as a bisexual trans man in the U.S. This memoir's title plays on the fictional Hogwarts Academy's sorting process for new students, an experience that mirrors Bird's own process of self-realization and self-acceptance. Originally released as a zine for Bird's "Free the Nipple" campaign supporters, his memoir has expanded to include accounts of his youthful attempts to navigate structured gender and identity expressions in Texas. Listeners will appreciate Bird's conversational tone as he describes his blossoming identity from his college years to the present. An accompanying PDF provides additional resources that acknowledge the personal nature of gender and sexual identities. J.R.T. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      September 9, 2019
      YouTuber Bird draws on “over five dozen physical journals” and “hundreds more digital diaries” in this frothy memoir of his journey as a trans man. Originally conceived as a zine, the book retains such arty touches as hand-lettered pages, small black-and-white photos, and screenshots. Bird opens with a glossary of transgender terminology before recounting his experiences growing up in Michigan, Texas, and New Mexico; having a pregnancy scare in college; binding his chest (“Looking in the mirror and seeing my flat chest felt so innately right that it would flood me with a rush of endorphins”); coming out to his mother; picking his male name; and undergoing reconstructive chest surgery. Bird admits to suffering “cringe attacks” when reading his old diaries, and readers may similarly recoil from the occasionally overwrought prose: “Words flowed with a raw mellifluence unlike any I’d experienced before.” But Bird’s sense of humor and lightness of touch elsewhere—as when he likens the assigning of gender identity to the Sorting Hat in the Harry Potter books—help to offset such pretentiousness. This jokey, brighter-side account will appeal to younger readers bogged down by the doom-and-gloom heaviness that can cloud the trans experience.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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