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Little-Known Transgender Memoir: ‘Reborn’ (1955)
Tamara Reese published her ‘Factual Life Story of a Transition’
I just learned of a memoir called Reborn: A Factual Life Story of a Transition From Male to Female (Los Angeles: Irene Lipman, 1955). It’s a short narrative by Tamara Reese. Although it went out of print, there’s a PDF available free online, recovered and hosted by Transas City, which wrote an article about it.
Dr. Walter C. Alvarez (1884–1978) of the Mayo Clinic wrote on the title page of his copy: “I knew Tamara for years and she seemed to be a fine friendly woman — trying to help people. I sent her a puzzled man named Br — — ? And she married him. The[y] adopted a little girl.”
According to Tamara’s memoir, she was born in 1924 in Kansas City, Missouri to “an average middle class family.” She lived with her mother, father, older brother, and younger sister. She transitioned in her late 20s (the early 1950s).
