This autobiography was written in the 1970s, and describes April Ashley's life to that point, amab April Ashley left her home in Liverpool as a teenager in the early 1950s to London where she began her transition. Moving to Paris she worked as a performer in one of Paris's drag bars, called Le Carousel, where she became friends with a host of other transgender women. She describes a time in the 1950s and 1960s where being transgender was extremely marginalised and the women all helped each other acquire hormones and surgeries. This culminated with her undergoing gender reassignment surgery in Casablanca with one of the early pioneers of bottom surgery. Her life post surgery was perhaps most noted for the events of the Corbett vs Corbett legal case. She was married to a cisgender man when the Daily Mail outed her as a transsexual, and her husband sued for divorce. …
This autobiography was written in the 1970s, and describes April Ashley's life to that point, amab April Ashley left her home in Liverpool as a teenager in the early 1950s to London where she began her transition. Moving to Paris she worked as a performer in one of Paris's drag bars, called Le Carousel, where she became friends with a host of other transgender women. She describes a time in the 1950s and 1960s where being transgender was extremely marginalised and the women all helped each other acquire hormones and surgeries. This culminated with her undergoing gender reassignment surgery in Casablanca with one of the early pioneers of bottom surgery. Her life post surgery was perhaps most noted for the events of the Corbett vs Corbett legal case. She was married to a cisgender man when the Daily Mail outed her as a transsexual, and her husband sued for divorce. The case established a legal exclusion which prevented transgender people marrying in accord with their gender identity, instead forcing us to use our birth sex, which lasted in the UK until the gender recognition act in 2004.
She had an amazing life and this book helped me as a teenager to contextualise my own gender dysphoria properly. I once lent it to cisgender friend who was incredibly snobby about her writing, I definitely took that personally. I would say this is a good book for trans girls and young trans femmes of any age to read but i also provides some fantastic historical insight into the lives of our trans elders. She deserves more recognition.
