Transgender Stories Through Mothers’ Eyes

Sunday, October 18 · 4pm

Transgender Stories Through Mothers’ Eyes · A Two Author Event

$10 Florida Series

Jo Ivestor Once a Girl, Always a Boy

A Family Memoir of a Transgender Journey

Jo Ivestor’s book is the story of her son’s difficult yet joyful journey. Her son, Jere­my, is trans­gen­der. Thir­ty years ago, she wel­comed him into the world as a daugh­ter. As a child, Jeremy pre­ferred “masculine” toys and clothes; in his twen­ties, he had sex reassignment surgery. The book is told from multiple perspectives: Those of the sib­lings who strug­gled to under­stand the broth­er they knew as a sis­ter, and of the par­ents who joined him in the bat­tle against dis­crim­i­na­tion. This is a sto­ry of accep­tance in a world not quite ready to accept.

Jo is an LGBTQ speak­er and advo­cate with degrees from MIT and Stan­ford. She serves on the boards of Equal­i­ty Texas, the ADL, and GLSEN.

Mimi Lemay

What Will I Become: A Mother, a Son, and a Journey of Transformation

This coura­geous book teaches us to lis­ten to our chil­dren, remove preconceptions and see the world through a child’s eyes. It chronicles a family’s jour­ney of los­ing a daugh­ter named Em and gain­ing a son named Jacob - and of three generations of seekers learning to forge their own paths, just as Jacob had when he resolutely declared himself a boy at age two. In accept­ing Jacob for who he was, the author’s nuclear fam­i­ly moved through emo­tion­al tur­moil to peace and under­stand­ing, ground­ed on a sol­id foun­da­tion of love.

Mimi Lemay is an inter­na­tion­al advo­cate for trans­gen­der youth and a mem­ber of the Par­ents for Trans­gen­der Equal­i­ty Nation­al Coun­cil at Human Rights Cam­paign and holds a master’s in law and diplo­ma­cy from the Fletch­er School at Tufts University.