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A Memoir of Marriage, Gender, and Moving On
by Christine Benvenuto
Christine Benvenuto had been married for more than twenty years - with three young children - when her husband turned to her one night in bed and said "I'm thinking constantly about my gender." He was unhappy in his body and wanted to become a woman.
Part memoir, part voyeur's look into a marriage, Sex Changes is a journey through the end of a marriage and out the other side. We see a woman, desperate to save her family and shelter her children, discover a well of strength and resilience she never knew she had. We learn what to tell the neighbors when your husband starts wearing heels with his shirts and ties. We see a woman open herself to a group of friends who travel with her through her darkest times, provide light and levity throughout - and who offer the opportunity to learn how to give as well as receive the love and support of true friendship. When she lost her husband to skirts and hormones, life made Chris a better woman.
Sex Changes is the story of what one woman discovered about herself in the midst of the conflagration of her family. Fiercely funny, self-lacerating, and not entirely politically correct, Sex Changes is a journey of love and anguish told with hilarity, heartbreak and a lot of soul searching. It is about the mysteries in every marriage, the secrets we chose to keep, and the freedom that the truth can bring.
"A refreshingly gutsy narrative that offers a compelling view of sexual maturity and a sexual coming-of-age at midlife." - Kirkus
"Christine Benvenuto's Sex Changes is a long overdue book: the story of her experience with her husband's gender transition is complex and questioning, and always honest. It suggests how deeply transformative recovering from the loss of a marriage can be." - Helen Boyd, author of She's Not the Man I Married
"Christine Benvenuto pulls us into the eddies of heartbreak, confusion, anger, and epiphany that swirl in the wake of her shattered marriage...This is the power of storytelling at its best." - Sally Ryder Brady, author of A Box of Darkness: The Story of a Marriage
This information about Sex Changes was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Christine Benvenuto is the author of Shiksa, as well as fiction, essays, and reviews that have appeared in many publications, including The Village Voice, the San Francisco Chronicle, Tikkun and Moment. She lives in western Massachusetts.
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