Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America

Rating:
Summary: The best book on the topic
Review: By starting with life experiences of some individual male and female berdache, Roscoe literally captivates readers, before carrying us into the comparative, theoretical, analytical second half which is sophisticated but clearly written. Will Roscoe's work on North American berdache/"two spirit" is far and away the most theoretically sophisticated and historically systematic work in a burgeoning field. While many people have been pawing at a few historical records and fantasizing a great deal, he has systematically gone through a multilingual literature, showed how the discourse unfolded in specific European national traditions, and sorted out continuities and discontinuities in space and in time (both in the discourse and in the phenomena of Native American cultural survivla, insofar as it can be glimpsed through Christianity-distorted lenses).

Although Roscoe's primary focus is on historical records of "berdache," he has also discusses contemporary "gay Indians," building on his earlier book _Living the Spirit_. My only regret is that Roscoe did not include his article "Was We'Wah [the Zuni "man-woman' he wrote an earlier book about] a homosexual?" in this book. _Changing Ones_ is the single indispensable book on the subject of gender and sexuality of Native American gender-mixing roles.

Rating:
Summary: A fantastic resource on Native American 3rd/4th genders
Review: Will Roscoe has compiled a wonderful and invaluable overview of a long-neglected topic. As he notes in the introduction to this volume, our language is currently burdened by an archaic and often unhelpful lexicon in addressing 'third and fourth genders' so commonly encountered in pre-Columbian North America. This book includes a compilation of the historical and current literature, and readers will find the extensive Glossary and the Tribal Index to be of great use as a source for further investigation. Roscoe's will undoubtedly remain one of the most useful contributions in this are