Finding the Real Me: True Tales of Sex and Gender Diversity

Rating:
Summary: Essential Reading for the Human Community
Review: The subtitle for this amazing and long overdue anthology is "True Tales of Sex & Gender Diversity", which pretty well sums up what the book is about. There have been many anthologies published over the years that deal with a range of different issues, but Finding the Real Me is the first volume to tackle the complexities of gender diversity.

In the books' introduction, editors Tracie O'Keefe and Katrina Fox explain that "you don't have to have sex or gender issues to appreciate this book - it is for anyone who has even the remotest interest in human nature." Reading the twenty-six stories that make up the volume only confirms this. The stories are of people from all walks of life, age groups, cultural and social backgrounds with hopes, fears, dreams and aspirations the same as ayone else. It's the sex and gender diversity of each writer that makes the stories unique - that is, unique from other anthologies, but also unique from each other, as every person's story is quite different.

The editors also make the point that it was a conscious decision on their part not to provide analysis or comment on the stories, so there's no intellectual rhetoric here, just the stories themselves, told in the contributors' own voices with a remakable level of emotional honesty. As the editors say in their introduction: "Come with us to learn, be inspired, laugh, cry, and appreciate these wonderful, courageous people and their journeys to be their true selves." In short, this book is essential reading for anyone, not just from the GLBTQ community, but the human community.