Social sciences

摘要

Completed in 1962 but unpublished until now is the long-neglected autobiography of Dillon/Jivaka (1915-62), born Laura Maud Dillon, who transitioned from female to male in the 1940s through testosterone treatments, a double mastectomy, and phalloplasty (the first performed on a transgender man). The public revelation of this transition and subsequent press attention spurred Dillon to flee to India, where he became a Buddhist monk as relayed in his memoir Imji Getsul: An English Buddhist in a Tibetan Monastery. Descriptions of emotional and psychological struggles regarding the author's gender identity and spiritual philosophy are clear and candid yet often surrounded by stretches of more prosaic detail such as family histories and accounts of his years as a physician. Editors Lau (postdoctoral fellow, Univ. of California) and Partridge (lecturer, Harvard Divinity Sch.) use Dillon's writings to create successfully a historical document. VERDICT Worthwhile, purely for its status as a personal voice from the shadowed world of 20th-century transgender history, though more of a general biography than a work on gender issues. Reading this in conjunction with Self: A Study in Ethics and Endocrinology, Dillon's study on transsexu-ality, might provide a fuller experience on the topic.