Aaron Raz Link

Aaron Raz Link is the coauthor of the critically acclaimed book What Becomes You. He joins us at Esprit to share his unique perspectives as a FTM transsexual.

"Being a man, like being a woman, is something you have to learn," Aaron Raz Link remarks. Few would know this better than the coauthor of What Becomes You, who began life as a girl named Sarah and 29 years later began life anew as a gay man. Turning female to male and fro teaching scientist to theatre performing, Link documents the extraordinary medical, social, legal, and personal process involved in a complete identity change. Hilda Raz, a well-known feminist writer and teacher, observes the process as both an "astonished" parent and as a professor who has studied gender issues. All these perspectives come into play in this collaborative memoir, which travels between women's experience and men's lives, explores the art and science of changing sex, maps uncharted family values, and journeys through a world transformed by surgery, hormones, love, and . . . clown school. Combining personal experience and critical analysis, the book is an unusual -- and unusually facinating -- reflection on gender, sex, and the art of living.

He is a writer, performing artist, curator, and historian of science, and is the director of the Museum of Nature in Portland, Oregon. Hilda Raz, a professor of English and women's and gender studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, is the Glenna Luschei Endowed Editor of Prairie Schooner and author of the poetry collections, Trans and Divine Honors.