Synopses & Reviews
Professor Jay Ladin made headlines around the world when, after years of teaching literature at Yeshiva University, he returned to the Orthodox Jewish campus as a woman—Joy Ladin. In Through the Door of Life, Joy Ladin takes readers inside her transition as she changed genders and, in the process, created a new self.
With unsparing honesty and surprising humor, Ladin wrestles with both the practical problems of gender transition and the larger moral, spiritual, and philosophical questions that arise. Ladin recounts her struggle to reconcile the pain of her experience living as the “wrong” gender with the pain of her children in losing the father they love. We eavesdrop on her lifelong conversations with the God whom she sees both as the source of her agony and as her hope for transcending it. We look over her shoulder as she learns to walk and talk as a woman after forty-plus years of walking and talking as a man. We stare with her into the mirror as she asks herself how the new self she is creating will ever become real.
Ladin’s poignant memoir takes us from the death of living as the man she knew she wasn’t, to the shattering of family and career that accompanied her transition, to the new self, relationships, and love she finds when she opens the door of life.
2012 Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award for Biography, Autobiography, or Memoir“Wrenching—and liberating. . . .[it] opens up new ways of looking at gender and the place of LGBT Jews in community.”—Greater Phoenix Jewish News
“Given her high-profile academic position, Ladin’s transition was a major news story in Israel and even internationally. But behind the public story was a private struggle and learning experience, and Ladin pulls no punches in telling that story. She offers a peek into how daunting it was to learn, with little support from others, how to dress as a middle-aged woman, to mu on make-up, to walk and talk like a female. She provides a front-row seat for observing how one person confronted a seemingly impossible situation and how she triumphed, however shakingly, over the many adversities, both societal and psychological, that stood in the way.”—The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide
Review
“A diverse and colorful anthology. This is the first major work to focus on accomplished writers, on the specific topic of their creative influences.”—Jerry Rosco, author of
Glenway Wescott PersonallyReview
“These vibrant essays draw the reader in, illuminating a rich, intriguing, and previously unexplored subject.”—Will Fellows, author of Farm Boys and editor of Gay Bar
Review
“A wonderful anthology about literary mentors to a host of interesting gay male writers in the past few decades. An original aspect of this book is the diversity it represents.”—Philip Gambone, author of Travels in a Gay Nation: Portraits of LGBTQ Americans
Review
“Betsy Donovan’s delightful jacket design for
Who’s Yer Daddy: Gay Writers Celebrate their Mentors and Forerunners juxtaposes vintage masculine archetypes, hot-pink pride, and sassy slang in a way that perfectly conveys the smart, earnest, and utterly engaging contents of one of the best gay collections to be published in years.”—
Passport MagazineReview
“Gay bibliophiles and aspiring writers, especially those interested in the creative process, will enjoy this engaging collection.”—
Library JournalReview
“Ladin’s story is a deep, beautifully written exploration of her journey from being a man to becoming a woman.”—Lucy Bledsoe, author of The Big Bang Symphony, Ferro-Grumley Award finalist for LGBT fiction
Review
“Joy Ladin’s book succeeds so well because it is anything but a trans tract; it is a fierce story of regular old human life: hideous choices, endless repercussions, occasional glory, frequent humiliation, abiding difficulty. It could have happened to us. She makes us believe it.”—Kay Ryan, former poet laureate of the United States, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry
Review
"Not only a memoir of transgender experience, it's also a story of family heartbeak and family love; of growth as a teacher and writer; and, not least, of a self deeply connected to God and Judiasm throughout a life lived across genders."—Rabbi Jill Hammer, author of The Jewish Book of Days and director of spiritual education at the Academy for Jewish Religion
Review
“Readers will be rewarded not only with an expanded understanding of a complicated choice but also a compelling and moving story of a person transitioning, not only from male to female but from a numb, suicidal 'nonexistence' to opening the 'door of life.' ”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Review
“Moving from living in misery to being joyful and grateful provided a profound, fundamental release from what she saw as a moral quandary. It’s the kind of resolve that makes her work reverberate with emotion, and her artful, thoughtful writing creates an even deeper resonance. . . . A cohesive, powerful memoir.”—ForeWord
Review
“Joy Ladin’s Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders is a life-affirming and generous work—and one of the most compelling memoirs of recent years. . . . [S]he writes with beautiful clarity, humility and breathtaking candor.”—Jewish Woman Magazine
Review
“No doubt about it, change was going to hurt. It would require, if not tears, then a kind of ripping of your soul, a new way of life, an alteration of outlook. . . . For author Joy Ladin, pain was exactly the reason for change. Pain had accompanied her for most of her days, but in her new book
Through the Door of Life, she explains a journey that was, for her, long overdue.”—
LGBT WeeklyReview
“In painstakingly and painfully constructing her new self, Ladin is fully aware of the societal conventions and privileges of which she makes use. . . . But there seems to be a poignancy, of which Ladin is exquisitely aware, that precisely because what Ladin wants is so normal, her efforts to obtain it are so fraught with pain.”—Lambda Literary
Synopsis
From Elizabeth Taylor, Bette Midler, and Diana Ross to Queen Elizabeth I, Julia Child, and Princess Leia, these divas have been sister, alter ego, fairy godmother, or model for survival to gay men and the closeted boys they once were. And anyone—straight or gay, young or old, male or female—who ever needed a muse, or found one, will see their own longing mirrored here as well.
These witty and poignant short essays explore reasons for diva-worship as diverse as the writers themselves. My Diva offers both depth and glamour as it pays tribute with joy, intelligence, and fierce, fierce love.
Finalist, Lambda Book Award for LGBT Anthology, Lambda Literary Foundation
Synopsis
From Elizabeth Taylor, Bette Midler, and Diana Ross to Queen Elizabeth I, Julia Child, and Princess Leia, these divas have been sister, alter ego, fairy godmother, or model for survival to gay men and the closeted boys they once were. And anyone—straight or gay, young or old, male or female—who ever needed a muse, or found one, will see their own longing mirrored here as well.
Synopsis
Who’s Yer Daddy? offers readers of gay male literature a keen and engaging journey. In this anthology, thirty-nine gay authors discuss individuals who have influenced them—their inspirational “daddies.” The essayists include fiction writers, poets, and performance artists, both honored masters of contemporary literature and those just beginning to blaze their own trails. They find their artistic ancestry among not only literary icons—Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, André Gide, Frank O’Hara, James Baldwin, Edmund White—but also a roster of figures whose creative territories are startlingly wide and vital, from Botticelli to Bette Midler to Captain Kirk.
Some writers chronicle an entire tribal council of mentors; others describe a transformative encounter with a particular individual, including teachers and friends whose guidance or example cracked open their artistic selves. Perhaps most moving are the handful of writers who answered the question literally, writing intimately of their own fathers and their literary inheritance. This rich volume presents intriguing insights into the contemporary gay literary aesthetic.
About the Author
Jim Elledge is professor of English at Kennesaw State University and author of A History of My Tattoo: A Poem; The Chapters of Coming Forth by Day: A Novel; and Various Envies: Poems. David Groff, an independent writer and poet, is author of Theory of Devolution and coeditor of Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS and Whitman’s Men: Walt Whitman’s Calamus Poems Celebrated by Contemporary Photographers.
Table of Contents
Introduction—Michael Montlack
Sappho (630 BC): Love, I Implore You in Polyester Lapels—Michael Broder
Queen Elizabeth I (1533): Heart of a King—Patrick Letellier
Virginia Woolf (1882): This Perpetual Revision of Thought—Brian Teare
Margaret Dumont (1882): Duchess of Dignity—Christopher Murray
Bessie Smith (1892): Empty Bed Blues—Sam J. Miller
Claude Cahun (1894): Masks, Makeup, Meaning—Peter Dubé
Gracie Allen (1895): Comic Muse—Lloyd Schwartz
Lotte Lenya (1898): Divine Weltschmerz—David Bergman
Gloria Swanson (1899): Sunset Boulevard—Edward Field
Agnes Moorehead (1900): Afternoons as Endora—Richard Blanco
Marlene Dietrich (1901): Falling in Love Again—Walter Holland
Joan Crawford (1905) and Bette Davis (1908): "But ya AHHH, Blanche!"—David Trinidad
Lucille Ball (1911): Flaming Redhead—Lawrence Applebaum
Mahalia Jackson (1911): Divine One—Forrest Hamer
Julia Child (1912): Life's Ingredients—Bill Fogle
Billie Holiday (1915): Lady Day—Alfred Corn
Edith Piaf (1915): A Share of Pain—Gregory Woods
Evita Perón (1919): Santa with a Soundtrack—Guillermo Castro
Grace Paley (1922): O Stone! O Steel!—Mark Doty
Ava Gardner (1922): Small Town Girl—Chris Cleo Creech
Aurora de Albornoz (1926): Tia Divina—Scott Hightower
Joan Sutherland (1926): Dame Joan and I—Gary Ljungquist
Eartha Kitt (1927): Purrrfectly Detached—D. A. Powell
Betty Berzon (1928): Dinners with the Diminutive Diva—Jim Van Buskirk
Jeanne Moreau (1928): Living Dangerously with Jeanne—Collin Kelley
Two Fat Ladies (Jennifer Paterson) (1928): Cocktails with Jennifer—Jack Lynch
Audrey Hepburn (1929): Adoration and the Icon—Joseph Campana
Elizabeth Taylor (1932): The Über-Diva—Scott F. Stoddart
Anna Moffo (1932): Her Funeral—Wayne Koestenbaum
Ms. Kiki Durane (Depression Era): Her Sound and Fury—Christopher Schmidt
Nina Simone (1933): I Got It Bad for Bangles & Diamonds—Regie Cabico
Julie Andrews (1935): My First Maria—Mark Wunderlich
Tina Turner (1939): Tina & I—Jim Elledge
Karen Black (1939): Diva of the Deranged—Michael Schiavi
Raquel Welch (1940): As My Mother—Ron Palmer
Julie Christie (1941): The Cocteau Girl—Cyrus Cassells
Helen Reddy (1941): Before Anarchy—Richard Tayson
Wonder Woman (Lynda Carter) (1942): Exploring the Amazon—Jeff Oaks
Diana Ross (1944): How to Reign Supreme—Jericho Brown
Rocío Dúrcal (1944): The Day She Died—Rigoberto González
Bette Midler (1945): First Loves—Steven Cordova
Jessye Norman (1945): Als Ob Ich Säuseln Hörte—Dante Micheaux
Liza Minnelli (1946): Everybody Loves a Winner: Five Lessons from Liza—Jason Schneiderman
Cher (1946): History (1987–2)—Aaron Smith
Laura Nyro (1947): All She Asked of Living—Michael Klein
Stevie Nicks (1948): "And Wouldn't You Love to Love Her?"—Michael Montlack
Jessica Lange (1949): Isn't It a Laugh?—Allen Smith
Patti Lupone (1949): Patti's Turn, In the Key of Diva—Jonathan Howle
Wendy Waldman (1950): Seeds and Orphans—Paul Lisicky
Cyndi Lauper (1953): The Sadness in Her Rasp—Steven Riel
Rickie Lee Jones (1954): The Duchess of Coolsville—Timothy Liu
Annie Lenox (1954): Desire, Despair, Desire: Some Notes on Annie Lennox & Tension—RJ Gibson
Siouxsie Sioux (1957): Black Eyeliner and Dark Dreams—Benjamin Harper
Auntie Mame (Rosalind Russell) (1958): "I'm Going to Open Doors for You, Doors You Never Even Dreamed Existed"—Lewis DeSimone
Kate Bush (1958): The Invisible Diva—Reginald Shepherd
Jamie Lee Curtis (1958): When the Artist Met His Muse—Vince A. Liaguno
Sade (1959): The Other Material Girl—Christopher Lee Nutter
Taylor Dayne (1962): "Tell It to My Heart"—Peter Covino
Björk (1965): With Regards to Ms. Gudmundsdottir—John Dimes
Kristin Hersh (1966): "Is Sticky Ever Blue?"—Mark Bibbins
Céline Dion (1968): Cirque du Céline—Jim Nason
Parker Posey (1968): A Pocket Full of Posey—Michael J. Andrews
Margaret Cho (1968): How to Break Every Oriental Stereotype in the Book—Kenji Oshima
Mary J. Blige (1971): I Take Shallowness Seriously—Jeffery Conway
Princess Leia (1977): Leia's Kiss—Christopher Hennessy
Contributors