Rosalyne Blumenstein - Branded T

2003, English, Rosalyne Blumenstein, USA,

"This is a true story about a teenage runaway, her contact with suicide, gender identity issues, drug addiction, and the sex industry. This is also the anecdote of how recovery opens the door to a healing process and alters the subjugators, one day at a time."

In 20013, I interviewed Rosalyne and asked her about what inspired her to write the memoir: "Ego, f*!* Ego! There is a song that I want to be played at my memorial when I'm gone… No Regrets, by Edith Piaff, but in French of course. So you think I have culture☺.

However, I have some regrets about writing this book. I was in my angry black woman phase. (in my role as a clinical educator I use the term “angry black woman” but also state why it is perfectly normal for a black woman to be angry because of our societal systematic behaviors). I use the term not as a pathology but as an experience, one has when the ecosystem surrounding you is just coming at you from too many directions."

"I left NYC (New York City) in 2002 annoyed and confused. I left the trans socio-political work within an LGBT movement angry and disdained. Within my years at the LG Later LGBT Center I became a public figure within a movement and with that lost my ability to just be Rosalyne. Every which way I turned I was fighting, fighting public access for clients, fighting the police for violence, fighting the gay and lesbian community to be inclusive and educated, fighting amongst the people of trans experiences that were the haves and have nots, fighting social workers to be more progressive, fighting the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association HBIGDA now called WPATH World Professional Association for Transgender Health to stop pathologizing the trans identity, fighting those with access to money and literary power to share with those of us that come from a varied unconventional education."

Available via Amazon

and The Heroines of My Life