Book Review

Reviewed by Tracie O'Keefe

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Katherine's Diary

The Story of a Transsexual, Revamped, Updated, Uncut

by Katherine Cummings
Published by Beaujon Press
I.S.B.N.9780980365306

This is an updated, expanded and uncensored version of a previous autobiography published in 1992 that won an Australian Human Rights Non-Fiction Award. Kate, as she is known to close friends (and there seem to be a profusion of them in her book) tells all. The title of this edition is Katherine's Diary, the story of a transsexual, revamped, updated, uncut. As a highly qualified librarian by profession she seems to have kept notes of practically every day of her life. For 400 pages she rattles off endless adventures, people she met including Clive James, Edward de Bono and Madame Lash, places she went and her ultimate journey from husband and father of three to matron of seventy-three with a continuing consummate thirst for life, even after open-heart surgery and demonisation by the Catholic Church.

This book is very well written and honest with the reader getting a sense of being on life's adventure with the author through the highs, lows and at times bizarre detours, almost as if one were in a road movie.

There are also many pictures taken over seventy years illuminating Katherine's perpetual experimentation and reinvention of what John / Katherine was, fantasised about becoming and eventually became. It is written in digestible chapters which makes it great bedtime reading, but don't count on getting any sleep, and the fainthearted and puritans should keep large supplies of holy water by the bed. Her prose is indeed deliciously characteristic of her personality as she turns her phrases soulfully, never playing to the stalls but giving the reader the full colour of her experiences and anecdotes.

The author digs deep as the reader witnesses her relentless seeking out of what at times is a difficult journey, her path to transition at fifty-plus years old. The loss of her wife and daughters is explored and mourned as Katherine berates herself about what she might have done differently to stay close to them; reeling from the divorce from her wife who seems to have been one of the major loves of her life. This work does explore the dilemma faced by families when one partner, apparently a part-time transvestite develops into full-blown transsexualism, (though Katherine prefers to describe herself as transgendered).

Many people like John have another gendered alter personality in a suitcase for half a century, only to discover the more they try to repress their other self the more the other self takes over. For Katherine there seem to have been no real regrets about having been John, fallen in love with the wife and fathered three daughters. Katherine might, however, have given any descendants with a nautical bent, lots to think about with pictures of her astride a cabin cruiser in shiny stilettos with five-inch heels. The secret lives of librarians it seems are far more spectacular than the popular image of bespectacled, reserved, custodians imposing noise restrictions in a university reading room. It is difficult to know where to start (or stop!) a review of a work as deep and broad as this book, so I'm just going to dive right in.

Polare is published in Australia by The Gender Centre Inc. which is funded by the Department of Community Services under the S.A.A.P. Program and supported by the N.S.W. Health Department through the AIDS and Infectious Diseases Branch. Polare provides a forum for discussion and debate on gender issues. Advertisers are advised that all advertising is their responsibility under the Trade Practices Act. Unsolicited contributions are welcome, though no guarantee is made by the Editor that they will be published, nor any discussion entered into. The editor reserves the right to edit such contributions without notification. Any submission which appears in Polare may be published on our internet site. Opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the Editor, The Gender Centre Inc.I, the Department of Community Services or the N.S.W. Department of Health.