Customer Reviews

'O Au No Keia: Voices from Hawai'i's Mahu and Transgender Communities

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I recently had the opportunity to read "'O Au No Keia: Voice's From Hawaii's Mahu and Transgender Community". As someone with no transgender feelings, it was a glimpse into a part of our community that I knew very little about. Its a very real book, written by the transgendered people themselves. Mr. Matzner interviewed a number of transgendered people on O'ahu, edited what they had wrote and then gave them a chance to review, correct and add to what they had said. So rather than being a book about transgender people, its really a book by transgendered people.

Their stories were real and often touching. Their feelings and lives, while outwardly very different than what I've ever experienced, were so real and human that it would be almost impossible to not understand and feel for them. They openly share both the good and bad parts of the lives in an effort to get those of us outside the transgender community to see how their stories could be anyone's story. They succeed. Its not an cheap book (almost [$$$]) but its worth every penny if you want to better understand our friends in the trangender community.

in his empathic and diverse oral histories of some mahu and transgender individuals on Oahu, andrew matzner opens a window on hawai'i lesser known cultural features. of great interest to the academic community in gender studies, as well as non-specialists interested in Hawaiian culture.