This is an international magazine, so this time around our special theme is transgendered books from Britain.
Let's begin with a true classic, I Want What I Want by Roy Brown. This is one of the first pieces of TV fiction that I ever saw and one of the few to be made into a movie, starring Anne Heywood as Roy/Wendy.
Frankly, I loathed the movie. Not only did they cast a woman in butch drag as the TS, but they also turned Roy from a blue-collar kid in inner-city Hull into an upper middle class twit in a real estate office in London. In the process, his father goes from an ex-sergeant to a colonel.
In the novel, Roy works in his father's Fish `n' Chips shop while trying to pursue his one real ambition - to become a woman. His father not only doesn't understand, but brutally beats his son in a vain attempt to force him to become "normal."
Still, Roy truly "wants what he wants" and a legacy from his dead mother offers him the chance to flee his old life and become Miss Wendy Ross. Soon, Wendy has her own apartment, clothing, friends and even an attractive boyfriend. But her body is still male, so she cannot commit to a relationship with the man that she now loves. Worse, this is England and in order to work, Wendy has to show a National Health card that only Roy has. Without a job, sooner or later Wendy's money and her life as a woman must run out.
This novel is a tragedy. There is no happy ending and the uneducated, not overly-bright heroine may not appeal to some. But this book is very sensitively written and moving. I loved it when I first read it and I haven't changed my mind since.
You might also find in your local library Sunday Best by Bernice Rubens. Now this one is downright funny, if you like English humor. George Verry is a much put-upon teacher in an English state school. He's trapped in a seemingly loveless marriage to an overly-conventional woman, Joyce. He's in trouble with his boss, a racist snob posing as a liberal, who is more concerned with stopping scandals than teaching children. Oh, and his next door neighbor just committed suicide in circumstances that make it look like George is the real father of the dead man's son. Heavens, George has barely so much as said "hello" to the woman.
The only thing that makes all this endurable is Sundays, when George can trot out his best dress and escape for a little while. One Sunday George escapes a little farther than usual and ends up as a lady's maid to a wealthy Gypsy widow who lives in a tent in her living room in Brighton.
Of course, with his usual timing, George has walked off on the very day one of his fellow teachers was murdered. Now, Joyce who truly loves him, is frantic, thinking George may also have been murdered. The police are also upset. They think he's the murderer.
Your college library may also yield most of a copy of Drag... A History of Female Impersonation on the Stage by Roger Baker. I say most, because in the last ten years, I have yet to find a copy that hasn't had the picture of Ricki Renee cut out
Yes, this is a serious history of theatrical impersonation from Shakespeare's boy-actresses to the 1970s, including chapters on male impersonators and onnagata [Japanese female impersonators from Kabuki theatre]. It's fairly well written, informative, and well worth reading.
Along the same lines, but more oriented towards the movies, is Anthony Slide's The Great Pretenders. Not as informative, but it does have more pictures, including shots of the legendary Julian Eltinge in his prime, and the photos of other 19th century impersonators are worth the cost in themselves.
The book Men In Petticoats is a fun read. It's literally a collection of letters to the editor from the 1860s to the 1890s by and about Victorian crossdressers and passing men, plus actual photos of Boulton and Park. There's lots of talk about corsets, if you like that. It's really remarkable how little some TV fantasies have changed in 100 years.
On the other hand, Men In Frocks is an oral history of the gay/drag scene in England over the last fifty years. The photos are interesting, together with interviews of the people involved and some of the Drag-It-Yourself tips are amusing but not particularly useful.
Still, overall, it's one of the better drag books published. The photos are close to a par with Mariette Pathy Allen's Transformations. Even if you are straight, you will enjoy this one.
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