Is gender basic to personal identity, or is it peripheral? In the continuum of sexual behavior does culture define sex roles, or do sex roles evolve from ones assigned sex? Do situations have a bearing on sexual orientation? Why do imprisoned heterosexual males sometimes act out homosexual behavior when they have no access to women?

Trans-Sister Radio deals with the deeper question of gender identity--transsexual and transgender issues. Chris Bohjalian's Dana Stevens, a male professor, is a transsexual waiting for reassignment surgery. After taking a class from him, Allison Banks, a divorced elementary school teacher, falls in love with Dana. They date, enjoy each other, and have sex before Dana tells Allison his future plan for surgery. Allison, clearly in love with him, wonders whether his/her sex change will make a difference in her (Allison's) affections. She promises to see him through the ordeal of the operation. Will Dana be the same person after reassignment surgery, or will he/she be a different human being? We are back to the same question: How basic is gender to personal identity?

When Allison's daughter, Carly Banks, and her ex-husband Will get involved with Dana, they have their own questions to struggle with. Once the townspeople and Allison's students' parents hear she is living with a transsexual many are outraged.

Bohjalian allows each character to speak in separate chapters. Each one battles with upset gender relationships, and tries to set personal boundaries. The author creatively weaves a PBS radio interview through the narrative. Carly, having been mentored by her father, who is the manager of Vermont PBS, interviews a variety of people, including a sex therapist, and Dana to get to the heart of gender identity problems.

Although Bohjalian paints Allison as an authentic character, some of the other characters are not as well delineated, which makes the book not entirely believable. That said, the wok is well researched, and brings the psychological and social implications of transgender to light. A good read for anyone interested in human experience.

The subject matter is perhaps avant-garde, and treated more sensitively than any hundred authors before him. And unlike most transgender fiction I have read, the focus of the book was not on Dana; rather, it was on how Dana's change affected the people in her life. This is already a good sign; however, that does not save the whole of the work.

The book is at its best when it's focusing on people other than the core couple (Alison and Dana), and instead on how her family, friends, and the community at large reacts to her change, as well as (most of) the segments from the fictional NPR program. These elements are the best part of the book, and are the most enticing. However, the problem is that these are side stories -- Alison and Dana's rocky relationship is central, and is not particularly well-written. It is hard to find any understanding of Alison or Dana as you read through, as their personalities shift to suit the chapter. It's confusing and it continually distracts.

There are a few other problems to note. On one hand, you have the often well-researched but all-too-dry (or excessively titilating) explanations of the specifics of a gender change, which always jars from the moment whenever. On the other hand, there is a horrible spoiler right before you even open the book: the title. "Trans-sister radio" is a multi-level pun on the story's events. It's almost as if Mr. Bohjalian wrote that title, and all other plot elements were secondary to the convoluted ways that the title pun could be referenced. By the time you notice this, the rest of the book is predetermined; even the 'twist' ending is predictable if you take a common Harlequin romance novel ending and switch the genders.

In the end, I can't reccomend this book to anybody. Not even to transgender readers, or their family, those who you would think would get the most out of this book. Recently, I lost this book in a move, due to a storage container being misplaced -- and I have no plans on replacing it.

I thought this was a good TG book, It was Dana Stevens transition story, written by a third party. It had a surprising ending (at least if you didnt already know what actually happened to her). It didn't cover as many details about the transition, as it was more about her interaction with another family, and how it affected them.

I was a Midwives fan and so thought I'd give this book a shot. I was so disappointed. I hoped to explore the soaring passion and power of transcendent love that lifts you out of any sense of time and space -but found the author to be limited in his ideas about gender and identity as well as love. To feel trapped in a body IS the hell of human existence. We all long to be seen and known for who we are in truth, and the culture-bound definitions of sexual identity used in this book don't provide me with enough to fall in love, either with the characters or their experiences. Much of it was too "clever", too shallow, too physical...too predictable...

I enjoyed reading this book. In my opinion it is important to see the prospective from the social envorment around a transexual. Looks to me that is very difficult to be accepted if you are different. That's the reality.
In general, our society force our public image to fit in the role of male or female we must play. For most people that role is determinated by their fisical gender. But Jung, like Freud, felt that we are all really bisexual in nature. When we begin our social lives as infants, we are neither male or female in the social sense. Almost immediately -- as soon as those pink or blue booties go on-- we come under the influence of society, which gradually moulds us into men and women.
In all societies, the expectations placed on men and women differ, usually based on our different roles in reputation. Women are still expected to be more nutring and less aggressive; men are still expected to be strong and to ignore the emotional side of life. But Jung delt these expectations meant that we had developed only half of our potential.