"In July 1991, the author underwent a surgical sex change from a man to a woman. The surgery was performed (in Trinidad, Colorado) by Stanley Biber, M.D., dean of sex change operations. This work begins at the time Ms. Griggs decided to pursue the surgery and continues through her recovery. Though the procedure altered the author's body, poignantly accounted for also is the mental transformation."
"Given the grim and bloody nature of Griggs' 'journal of a surgical sex change,' why do readers need to return to this book now? First, sex-reassignment surgery needs to be recognized as a painful and difficult process rather than the quick fix that it appears to be in idealized accounts….
"Claudine Griggs earned her BA and MA in English at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, and she has worked as the writing center director at Rhode Island College and a visiting professor of communication skills at Soka University of America. Claudine Griggs' publications include three nonfiction books about transsexuals along with a several dozen articles on writing, teaching, and other topics. She also writes fiction and science fiction, her first-love genre as a teenager."
"I met Biber at a time when I mistrusted most of the medical profession, yet Biber seemed like a good old country doctor who actually cared about patients. And he was imperiously confident in his skill, which was exactly what I needed at the time. I had been terrified of some of the physicians I’d met in past years and worried that they might kill me on the operating table through incompetence. I once said that Biber seemed a mixture of Huck Finn and Genghis Khan. Just what I needed to prevent a complete emotional meltdown at the time."
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