Acknowledgments A Blessing (Spring 2007) Introduction: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Stern College (September 2008) Part One: Who Will Be 1 Things Fall Apart (Summer 2005) 2 Being a Man (Fall 2006) 3 Girl in a Bag (Winter 2007) 4 In the Image (Spring 2007) 5 Suicide (Spring 2007) 6 Truth (Spring 2007) 7 Choosing Life (June 26, 2007) Part Two: Adolescence 8 Adolescence (Summer 2007) 9 Mothering (Summer 2007) 10 Like a Natural Woman (July 2007) 11 Anger (Summer 2007) Part Three: The Door of Life 12 The Day My Father Died (October 2, 2007) 13 The God Thing (Fall 2007) 14 The Voice of the Future (Summer 2008) 15 Two Trips to the Wailing Wall (March 2002 and October 2008) 16 Teaching Naked (Spring 2010) 17 The Door of Life (March 2010) 18 Try (May 2010)
Joy Ladin, David and Ruth Gottesman Professor of English at Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University, is the first openly transgender employee of an Orthodox Jewish institution. She is the author of five books of poetry, including, most recently, Psalms and Coming to Life.
"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
"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
"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
"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
"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
"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)
"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
"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 Weekly
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