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Both Sides Now: One Man's Journey Through Womanhood [Hardcover]

Dhillon Khosla (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)


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Book Description

March 16, 2006
The courageous and heart-wrenching story of a man's decision to risk it all to be true to himself.

Imagine waking up one morning in the wrong body-and that body is the wrong gender. What would you do? Would you experience the world differently? Would your politics change? Would you just accept that this was how you were destined to live out the rest of your life? Or would you fight with every ounce of strength you have to find your way back home- to the body that is familiar and comfortable, to the person you know yourself to be?

Both Sides Now is a vivid and compelling account of how one man's search for wholeness led him through multiple, complex, and life-threatening surgeries that transformed him not only physically but emotionally and spiritually as well. Born with the body of a female, Dhillon Khosla never felt fully at ease in his own skin. He knew very early on that his true identity was male, but spent nearly twenty years repressing this knowledge and trying to embrace his female form. Shortly after turning twenty-eight, he came across an article about men who were born with female bodies and had undergone surgeries to reclaim their male identity. As soon as he began reading their stories, Dhillon felt flashes of recognition stirring within and-for the first time-hope.

In this spellbinding memoir, Dhillon discusses openly and honestly what it has been like to live first as a woman and now as a man. Through anecdotes from his work in the courthouse, and his experiences on dates, in bars, and at strip clubs, he shares unique and profound insights into the sexes and our social mores. He also shows us that experiencing life as both genders leads to the understanding that the spiritual consequences of our actions are far more important than the political ones. But ultimately, Both Sides Now is a story about what it truly means to love oneself: the willingness to endure numerous trials and tribulations to be true to your inner voice, even in the face of extreme adversity, and no matter what the cost.


Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In filling a gap in transgender memoirs, Khosla avoids the usual arc of transsexual memoirs, which start with childhood gender discomfort and the build up to the decision to transition, and instead employs a clever, if distracting, structure: he begins with his decision to become a man and weaves childhood memories and surreal dream sequences (in italics) with his story of testosterone injections and surgeries (there are plenty of these: mastectomy, hysterectomy and two kinds of genital reassignment surgeries). Khosla shares his emotional tumult when he hears "sir" from some people and "ma'am" from others. After one person addresses him as the wrong gender, he becomes so angry he punches his image in the mirror. He discovers the joys of being a regular guy at a strip club and transitioning at his high-powered legal job. Unfortunately, Khosla's prose feels too much like a legal brief. Narrating a breakup with a girlfriend, he writes: "The incompatibilities that lay between us when we first began dating had resurfaced." A major falling out with his mother late in the book is likewise flat. Also, Khosla's abrasive personality makes it hard for the reader to sympathize with him. However, he does a good job of letting the reader inside his inner landscape as he grows comfortable in his own skin.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

San Francisco attorney Khosla contends that there is a unique door to the unknown for each person. His quest for inner peace led to opening it up to a man trapped within a woman's body. Khosla was living as a lesbian when an ex-girlfriend shared a 1994 New Yorker article on female-to-male (FTM) sex changes, and it helped Khosla to arrange the pieces of a personal puzzle through a series of gender-reassignment surgeries. After attending FTM support meetings and undergoing continuing therapy, Khosla informed two female supervisors, who proved supportive; her European parents, who were accepting; and an uncle and an aunt, who felt only so-so about it. Hormone therapy brought mood changes and irritability, but Khosla enjoyed short hair and being called "sir" by strangers. Eventually, there were a full hysterectomy and multiple further surgical and emotional changes before Khosla arrived as the man in the dust-jacket photograph. Keen observation, warmth, and humor make Khosla's journey most readable. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 336 pages
  • Publisher: Tarcher (March 16, 2006)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1585424722
  • ISBN-13: 978-1585424726
  • Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.4 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #419,542 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

8 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (8 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars A fantastic, emotional, page-turning read., September 5, 2006
This review is from: Both Sides Now: One Man's Journey Through Womanhood (Hardcover)
READ THIS BOOK! You don't have to be a transsexual, homosexual, male, or female to get a lot out of this book. I'm a married heterosexual female and read this book with an open mind, and am so glad I did so. Kholsa's transition from a female body to a male one that matched his male brain offers insights on the societal and biological constructs of gender and how our bodies are hard-wired to think and behave in certain ways by our hormones, our sociology, and so many other things. The fact that Kholsa has experienced both sides can help you learn more about yourself and the opposite sex than you ever thought possible.

Written in gorgeous, dramatic prose that will keep you turning pages well into the wee hours. Fantastic! A great choice for your book club, too---sure to inspire hours of lively discussion.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars a true inspiration, January 4, 2007
This review is from: Both Sides Now: One Man's Journey Through Womanhood (Hardcover)
This book changed my life...I mean really. The writter struggled with the very same things I did...that is until I read his book! After reading it I aquired the same courage that he did and solved the same problem. I only wish that books and other information such as this had been made avalible sooner. I found it hard to put down. I laughed and cried along the way. I would recomend this book to anyone struggeling with similar innertermiol and you will no longer feel alone!
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Living in and through his body, July 9, 2006
This review is from: Both Sides Now: One Man's Journey Through Womanhood (Hardcover)
Dhillon Khosla, in his book, Both Sides Now, offers readers an intimate chronicling through which he presents his bodily transformations from female to male. His chapters are broken down by the month and range from July 1997 (when Khosla is twenty-eight years old) to November 1999, moving readers through various steps in his transitions as a transsexual man.

Although not exclusively focused on the various medical and surgical procedures Khosla undergoes (including, but not limited to a full mastectomy, testosterone shots, hysterectomy, and metoidioplasty) Both Sides Now does center heavily on such bodily transformations. Khosla's memoir makes evident the extent to which he lives in and through his body, and the utmost significance it is to his well-being (mental, emotional, physical, etc.) that his body not only match his gender identity as a man, but also that others in the world receive him as a man and his body as male.

Many may not understand the depth of the despair Khosla feels whenever he is addressed as "ma'am" instead of "sir." I certainly don't purport to fully understand the utter dejection Khosla conveys at such instances. But, to his credit, Khosla tells his story in such a manner that demonstrates to readers the necessity of such bodily transformations for him, if not for readers themselves.

With this said, I would expect Both Sides Now to appeal to other transsexual men looking for affirmation for their own choices to undergo various sex-alignment surgeries, while possibly being met with some skepticism from those transgender and genderqueer people who find themselves in various relationships to the question of hormones and surgery, whether in favor of some surgeries but not others, against any hormones and surgery whatsoever, and all other possible options.

An element concerning his various surgeries that I especially appreciated was Khosla's descriptions of his pre-surgery routines and his post-surgery recuperations. Khosla gives us several glimpses of the processes circumscribing surgery--from researching surgeons, scheduling appointments, finding the money to pay for surgeries that health insurance won't cover, getting home after surgery, dealing with drainage bulbs and catheters, as well as adjusting to the external physical changes (or lack thereof) accompanying surgery.

The struggles to find money to pay for transsexual-related surgeries are certainly not a new topic within transsexual narratives, nor are the concerns about post-operative satisfaction. However, I did find Khosla's discussion of various pain medications and post-op recoveries (with and without complications) to be rather unique. It is in large part due to his struggles around surgery that he is able to so convincingly sway readers as to the vitality of surgery for him. (And, I doubt that we were even privy to the most gruesome details his post-op experiences.)

Another element that could have proved unique would have been if Khosla had said a little more about how his race came into play in his transition (he was born to an East Indian father and a German mother). We get glimpses of his racial identity in relationship to food, language, and growing up outside of the U.S., but never really in terms of his sexual or gender identities (with the exception of the name he chooses for himself).

[Hopefully race will figure more centrally in the book I picked up alongside Khosla's, Max Wolf Valerio's The Testosterone File: My Hormonal and Social Transformation from Female to Male.]
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
I had that dream when I was nineteen years old and I remember laughing when I woke up, wondering how dense God must have thought I was to send a dream with such a transparent metaphor. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
testicular implants, lower surgery, next surgery, outpatient surgery center, chest surgery, upcoming surgery, female references, last surgery
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
San Francisco, Los Angeles, New Yorker, Bay Bridge, Palo Alto, Recovery Inn, Santa Cruz, United States, Middle Eastern
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