"The idea of an open and increasingly accepted LGBTQ+ community was inconceivable when Christine stood alone for what she believed in. She knew who she was deep down inside and never gave up in her quest for acceptance and to live in the way that made the most sense to her. On each page of this moving and thought-provoking transgender biography you’ll be introduced to a chapter of trans history that deserves to be retold."
The book covers the story of Christine Jorgensen (1926-1989), an American singer, actress, celebrity, and the most iconic figure of the transgender movement in the USA, if not in the whole world, famous for being the first world-famous person to have surgery sexual reassignment conducted in Denmark in the 1950s, inducted into Chicago's Legacy Walk celebrating LGBT history in 2012, honored in San Francisco's Rainbow Walk in 2014, and included in the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor at Stonewall National Monument in New York City in 2019.
The woman, Christine Jorgensen, had been born a male and after living as a shy, effeminate young man for twenty-four years, had been surgically transformed into a woman. For Christine, the transformation signalled the end of a tortured search for sexual identity. For the press and public, however, "George-Christine" became America's No. 1 topic of conversation.
Her private life was not successful. She wanted to marry John Traub, a statistician but the engagement was broken. In 1959, she announced her engagement to Howard J. Knox, who worked as an office worker in Massapequa, New York, where her father had built a house for her after her reassignment surgery, but the couple was denied a marriage license because Jorgensen's birth certificate still listed her as a man. She died in San Clemente, California, on May 3, 1989.
Available via openlibrary.org
and photo via TransasCity.org
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