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One Woman's Year Disguised as a Man
by Norah Vincent
Book Reviewed by:Having gone where no woman (who wasn't an aspiring or actual transsexual) has gone for any significant length of time, let alone eighteen months, Norah Vincent's surprising account is an enthralling reading experience and a revelatory piece of anecdotally based gender analysis that is sure to spark fierce and fascinating conversation.
A journalist's provocative, spellbinding account of her eighteen months spent
undercover will transform the way we think about what it means to be a man
Following in the tradition of John Howard Griffin (Black Like Me) and
Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed), Norah Vincent absorbed a cultural
experience and reported back on what she observed incognito. For more than a
year and a half she ventured into the world as Ned, with an ever-present five o'clock
shadow, a crew cut, wire-rim glasses, and her own size 11 1/2 shoes—a perfect
disguise that enabled her to observe the world of men as an insider. The result
is a sympathetic, shrewd, and thrilling tour de force of immersion journalism
that's destined to challenge preconceptions and attract enormous attention.
With her buddies on the bowling league she enjoyed the rough and rewarding
embrace of male camaraderie undetectable to an outsider. A stint in a
high-octane sales job taught her the gut-wrenching pressures endured by men who
would do anything to succeed. She frequented sex clubs, dated women hungry for
love but bitter about men, and infiltrated all-male communities as hermetically
sealed as a men's therapy group, and even a monastery. Narrated in her utterly
captivating prose style and with exquisite insight, humor, empathy, nuance, and
at great personal cost, Norah uses her intimate firsthand experience to explore
the many remarkable mysteries of gender identity as well as who men are apart
from and in relation to women. Far from becoming bitter or outraged, Vincent
ended her journey astounded—and exhausted—by the rigid codes and rituals of
masculinity. Having gone where no woman (who wasn't an aspiring or actual
transsexual) has gone for any significant length of time, let alone eighteen
months, Norah Vincent's surprising account is an enthralling reading experience
and a revelatory piece of anecdotally based gender analysis that is sure to
spark fierce and fascinating conversation.
Seven years ago, I had my first tutorial in becoming a man.
The idea for this book came to me then, when I went out for the first time
in drag. I was living in the East Village at the time, undergoing a
significantly delayed adolescence, drinking and drugging a little too much,
and indulging in all the sidewalk freak show opportunities that New York City
has to offer.
Back then I was hanging around a lot with a drag king whom I had met
through friends. She used to like to dress up and have me take pictures of her
in costume. One night she dared me to dress up with her and go out on the
town. I'd always wanted to try passing as a man in public, just to see if I
could do it, so I agreed enthusiastically.
She had developed her own technique for creating a beard whereby you cut
half inch chunks of hair from unobtrusive parts of your own head, cut them
into smaller pieces, and then more or less glopped them onto your face with
spirit gum. Using ...
The story drags a little at times, but despite this most women and many men will find Self-Made Man a fascinating read...continued
Full Review
(453 words)
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Bruce Bawer, author of A Place At the Table
An extraordinary human document, rich in empathy and insight. Readers
expecting a light read about a diverting stunt will find themselves taking a
riveting and richly illuminating journey into some of their own deepest
truths. You start out peeping into a window and end up staring into a
mirror. Christina Hoff Sommers
A fascinating, original and often hilarious long day's journey into
the world of men. Posing as a man and infiltrating the female-free places
males congregate, Norah Vincent finds the male precincts to be a lot
better--and a lot worse--than most women ever imagine. Nuala O'Faolain, author of Are You Somebody?
This gripping book got me through a delayed transatlantic flight
beside a shrieking baby. Could I say more? It was high-risk stuff, Norah
Vincent's undercover research into what men are like when they're in the
places where men are men. The reader's heart beats fast at the chances she
took. In adventure writing like this it is the quality of the adventurer that
matters. Norah Vincent's perceptiveness, and above all her large sympathies,
make her the perfect guide.Nora Vincent says..... "Being able to incorporate the lessons of manhood into womanhood is, I suppose, one of the best examples of how my concept of womanhood changed because of Ned. In my view, this is the greatest liberation of feminism, a liberation that men haven't yet experienced in their own roles. They haven't really been allowed to express traditionally feminine qualities, and they are limited as a result. Having lived as both a man and a woman, it seems to me now that the definition of womanhood, at least as I live it and as I believe our culture defines it, is so much larger, can happily encompass so much more, than the definition of manhood. I can borrow from the boys—wardrobe, mien, temperament&#...
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