‘Cleavage: Men, Women, and the Space Between Us’

By Terri Schlichenmeyer

You had plenty of both and then, well, life and politics wedged an ocean-sized chasm between you and it makes you sad. And yet – are you really all that far apart? As in the new memoir, “Cleavage” by Jennifer Finney Boylan, maybe you’re still two peas in a pod.

Photo by Dan Haar

Once upon a time not so long ago, Jennifer Finney Boylan was one of “a group of twelve-year-old Visigoths” intent on mischief. They hung around, did normal boy stuff, setting off rockets, roughhousing, roaming, rambling, and bike-riding. The difference between Boylan and the other boys in her group was that Jim Boylan knew she was really a girl.

Then, she vowed that it was a “secret no soul would ever know,” and James went to college, enjoyed a higher metabolism, dated, fell in love too easily, then married a woman and fathered two boys but there was still that tug. Boylan carried the child she once was in her heart – “How I loved the boy I’d been!” – but she was a woman “on the inside” and saying it aloud eventually became critical.

Boylan had a hard talk with her wife, Deedie, knowing that it could be the end of their marriage. She’s eternally grateful now that it wasn’t.

She’s also grateful that she became a woman when she did, when politics had little to do with that personal decision. She worries about her children, one who is trans, both of who are good, successful people who make Boylan proud. She tries to help other trans women. And she thinks about the words her mother often said: “Love will prevail.”

“Our lives are not a thing to be ashamed of,” Boylan says, “or apologized for, or explained. Our lives are a thing of wildness, and tenderness, and joy.”

Judge “Cleavage” by its cover, and you might think you’ll get a primer on anatomy. Nope, author Jennifer Finney Boylan only has one chapter on the subject, among many. Instead, she leans heavily on her childhood and her transition rather late in life, her family, and her friends to continue where her other books left off, to update, correct, and to share her thoughts on that invisible division. In sum, she guesses that “a huge chunk of the population… still doesn’t understand this trans business at all…”

Let that gentle playfulness be a harbinger of what you’ll read: some humor about her journey, and many things that might make your heart hurt; self-inspection that seems confidential and a few oh-so-deliciously well-placed snarks; and memories that, well-told and satisfying, are both nostalgic and personal from “both the Before and the After.”

This book has the feel of having a cold one with a friend and Boylan fans will devour it. It’s also great for anyone who is trans-curious or just wants to read an enjoyable collection of work from a born storyteller. No matter what you want from it, what you’ll find in “Cleavage” is a treasure chest.

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