This abstract is from the cover of the book.
Christine Jorgensen was arguably the most famous person in the world for a few short years nearly half a century ago,” writes historian Susan Stryker in her indroduction to the new edition of Jorgensen's memoir. When George Jorgensen, a shy, American-born man of twenty-six, departed for Denmark in 1951, he returned one year later, newly named Christine Jorgensen, the first world-renowned transsexual. By 1953, over a million and a half words (the equivalent of fifteen full-length books) had been written about her in publications throughout the world. “It seems to me now a shocking commentary on the press of our time,” Jorgensen observes of her overnight headline status, “that I pushed the hydrogyen-bomb tests at Eniwetok right off the front pages.”
In her own personable style Jorgensen offers a brave, first-hand account of her ground breaking life as a long-suffering, sexually confused youth who chose to end his unhappiness by becoming a woman. “Nature made a mistake,” she writes, “which I have corrected.” Without self pity or false modesty, she speaks candidly of her struggles both before and after her surgery. Additionally, Jorgensen revisits the highlights of her international fame, recounting a dazzling carer as a Las Vegas entertainer, her acquaintances with Truman Capote, Judy Garland, Walter Winchell, and Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey, being “banned” from performing in Boston, winning the title of “Woman of the Year,” and serving as the first public spokesperson for transgenderism in the era preceding the sexual revolution of the 1960s. “I am proud, looking back, that I was on the street corner when the movement started,” she adds. “We may not have started it, but we gave it a good, swift kick in the pants.”
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