All About Yves

A timely and thought-provoking memoir about the trans experience. Was I always trans, part boy beneath my skin, or was it that I landed in a place where 'girl' was a container so small it could break your bones? I learn that a ready smile and sympathetic ear are the only props required to impersonate a woman. The performance becomes so familiar I almost forget that it's staged. What happens when, aged 30, you realise you're transgender? This was the question that confronted Yves Rees, a historian whose life was upended by gender transition in 2018. Then known as a woman called Anne, Yves was forced to grapple with the sudden realisation that they were not, in fact, female at all. But did this realisation mean that Yves was a man-or something else altogether? When you've lived a lie for so long, how do you discover who you really are? And how do you re-learn to live in the world as a different gender? This book follows Yves on their raw journey of re-becoming, telling a transmasculine transition story that digs into the messiness of bodies, gender and identity. It brings to light the challenges and joys of being transgender in Australia today, and reveals how much trans experience can teach all of us about what it means to be man or woman.? The time is right for stories that reveal what is means to be a transmasculine person in Australia today. What are the realities of this experience? How does it feel to be gripped by gender dysphoria? What does 'gender transition' involve? What is it like to be on the receiving end of transphobia? And perhaps most importantly: what can transmasculine experience teach all of us about gender, patriarchy, power and privilege? All about Yves: Notes from a Transition is timely, thoughtful and thought-provoking.