Born Both: An Intersex life

Viloria, a writer and activist who identifies as both male and female and uses s/he and he/r as pronouns, describes he/r life as an intersex person and what led he/r to become a spokesperson for intersex and genderqueer/nonbinary people. Born in New York in 1968 to parents who had recently emigrated from Central America, the author was raised as a girl and was mostly unaware of he/r anatomical difference from other girls. It was not until s/he was in he/r mid-20s that the author read an article on intersex people and began to piece together clues. Eventually, s/he came to identify as intersex and as someone who experiences he/r gender as fluid. The memoir is written episodically, with scenes arranged in roughly chronological order and introduced with a location and date (“San Francisco, California, May 1996”). The author’s childhood and adolescence are touched on, but the majority of the narrative focuses on he/r activist awakening and recent advocacy. The present-tense narrative and recreated dialogue are clunky at times, and readers unfamiliar with certain events and organizations described may wish for more context. Despite these drawbacks, the book will be a valuable resource for those seeking first-person narratives by intersex people.[em] (Mar.) [/em]