Deirdre N. McCloskey - Passaggi: Da Donald a Deirdre

"Passaggi. Da Donald a Deirdre. Un viaggio in tre atti ai confini dell'identità" (Passage. From Donald to Deirdre. A journey in three acts to the borders of identity) is the Italian language edition of "Crossing: A Memoir" by Deirdre N. McCloskey.

In the late 1990s, readers encountered something rare: a memoir about not just crossing boundaries of culture or class, but crossing the deepest divide of all, the line between male and female. Crossing: A Memoir, written by the distinguished economist Deirdre Nansen McCloskey, tells the story of a world-renowned scholar who chose authenticity over comfort, truth over convention, and laughter over despair.

 

Before becoming Deirdre, she was Donald: Harvard-trained, a rising star at the University of Chicago, an accomplished economist, husband, and father. His book The Applied Theory of Price shaped generations of students, and his work on cliometrics, applying quantitative methods to economic history, was at the center of an intellectual revolution. Outwardly, Donald had everything that a mid-20th-century academic life could promise. Inwardly, there was a secret so tightly held that even his loving, liberal parents never suspected. The memoir begins with the rupture of that secret. In 1995, at the age of 53, Donald became Deirdre. She was among the very few academics of her stature to transition publicly in that era. Four years later, she published Crossing, which was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her prose, both sharp and self-mocking, details the steps of transition with candor: the facial surgeries, the voice training, the hours spent trying on clothes “like a teenager in front of a mirror.”

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2007, Deirdre N. McCloskey, Interview, Italian,

Deirdre N. McCloskey - Seitenka

"Seitenka: 53-sai de josei ni natta daigaku kyōju" (性転換―53歳で女性になった大学教授 - Sex Change: A University Professor Who Became a Woman at 53) is the Japanese language edition of "Crossing: A Memoir" by Deirdre N. McCloskey.

There are lives that feel like two novels stitched together. Deirdre Nansen McCloskey’s is one of them. The first book tells the story of Donald, a gifted Harvard graduate, economist at the University of Chicago, husband, father, a man admired for his intellect. The second book begins in 1995, when Donald steps aside and Deirdre takes her place. Crossing: A Memoir is where those two lives meet, and where the seam between them is laid bare for the world to see. Her writing is unflinching. She does not shy away from describing the surgeries, the painstaking voice lessons, the awkward joy of shopping for clothes with the self-consciousness of a teenager. But beneath the details lies something deeper: a woman building herself in plain sight, learning how to be, not just look, female. It is a story of apprenticeship, not spectacle.

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2001, Deirdre N. McCloskey, Interview, Japanese,

Deirdre N. McCloskey - Crossing: A Memoir

Full title: "Crossing: A Memoir" by Deirdre Nansen McCloskey.

We have read countless memoirs of people who crossed boundaries of race, class, or nationality, but far fewer who have written so openly about crossing the most intimate boundary of all, the line of gender. In Crossing: A Memoir (1999), the distinguished economist Deirdre Nansen McCloskey recounts her journey from living as Donald, a “golden boy” of conservative economics, to becoming Deirdre, a woman who not only transitioned but thrived in the academic world despite formidable challenges. McCloskey’s story is not simply a tale of surgery and hormones. It is an intellectual memoir, a cultural critique, and a deeply personal reflection on what it means to live authentically. It asks fundamental questions about identity, gender, and society’s response to those who break its most rigid categories.

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1999, 2019, Deirdre N. McCloskey, English, Interview,