Cleavage is the 3rd memoir by Jennifer Finney Boylan. If you're like me and don't know who she is, Boylan is the co-author of Mad Honey. She is also a transgender woman who has been advocating for trans people for decades.

Cleavage walks us through Boylan's life and inner monologue from her early years, self-discovery, transition, and life as a woman. Though her professional career is quite interesting, my favorite part of this book is Boylan describing her mental thoughts and inner turmoil. As a cisgender female, I have a hard time understanding trans individuals purely because I cannot relate. Boylan's book helps me understand and emphasize with the people I come in contact with regularly.

Boylan's book goes beyond her story of coming out and transitioning. It's so much more than that. Physically and socially being a woman altered her thinking about herself and her body. Post transition, she NEVER thought about her body or her weight. Society completely subconsciously altered her way of thinking about herself (ie her weight and body image). It proves the impact society has on women in general.

Thank you NetGalley for providing me the audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to Netgalley, Macmillan, Celadon Book, and Jennifer Finney Boylan for an ARC in exchange for a honest review!

Cleavage is well written, with compelling stories that touch on gender, identity, and family, including her son growing older, going into college, and her daughter’s transition. Her discussion of gender—especially likening women to that of puppets—was thought-provoking to me. I sat on that chapter for at least three days with how much it made me think. However, the nonlinear timeline and bouncing between events made it difficult for me to fully connect, leading to a 2.5-star rating. While it wasn’t to my taste, Boylan’s writing and the themes explored are undeniably impactful. I'll definitely will check out her earlier works. I listened with the audiobook and it was so well done!

As a mother to a trans child, I really liked the idea of this book. My teen is FTM so hearing things from a MTF perspective sounded amazing. While there was a lot of that, there were also a lot of things that felt like the author rambling. Like getting together with a friend and their telling you the same stories they've told you a dozen times.

I loved parts of the book that described her trans journey and her feelings as a child through adulthood pre and post-transition. The anecdotes about other famous trans people and their impact on how the public views trans people. The relationship changes due to her identity, etc.

What I did not enjoy was the repetition of snippets of a story. I received an audio copy and there were a few times where I thought there must be an error because I've heard this paragraph before. It really brought me out of the story. I get that it's a memoir but it felt like it lacked structure.

Overall I think it's a great read. I believe it could be super helpful in the trans community to offer more perspectives like this.

Based on the cover, I thought this book would be more research and critique on women’s looks in the entertainment industry. However, this was a look at Boylan pre- and post-transition. The story flips between her as a child, feelings she had then, through her teens and her marriage. Post-transition was really interesting to me seeing how Boylan experiences things like weight, feeling pretty, and the male gaze. I enjoyed the eye-opening perspective and enjoyed how the story would alternate between past and present - there was a good flow.

A very interesting memoir about coming out trans in the late 1990s. She details her life growing up, the strong love of family. When Jenny was James, he married Deirdre in 1998 and has remained married since. She explains the struggles to realize and being able to verbalize her thoughts as a youngster.  He is able to verbalize the differences between men and women from a very uniquely human point of view.

5 stars

The voice actress, Gabra Zackman, is amazing. The production quality was top notch as always. Thank you to Macmillan Audio for the advance listener copy and Celadon books for the print arc.

Thanks to NetGalley and MacMillan Audio for the digital copy of this audiobook; I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I knew nothing of Jennifer Finney Boylan, but she came out as transgender in 2000, which was absolutely unheard of at that time. She quickly became the go-to for the media in talking about transgender issues, appearing on Oprah and writing pieces for publications like The New York Times, and even writing a memoir in 2003. Now Finney Boylan is back with more reflections about her life since the publication of that book and how society treats the LQBTQIA community.

She muses on self-identity and how her feelings have evolved over the years, and how she handles herself now versus when she first came out. She admits that she might have been too open and honest with people like Oprah, who kept asking her about her private parts. Hard to imagine now, but back at the turn of the century, many didn’t respect privacy around those things. Many today still don’t.

Finney Boylan also talks about gender as a construct and information about the sexes that one might not have thought about before. I appreciated that she wove in details of other people’s stories and not just her own. She’s definitely got a gift for writing.

Narrated by Gabra Zackman, with an introduction and acknowledgements read by the author, I really enjoyed listening to this book. The tone was both serious and upbeat as the book progressed. I’d definitely listen to something by this narrator again.

Lastly, a word about the cover and title. It’s a bit misleading to put a picture of Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield on the cover and the book really doesn’t have much to do with physical cleavage or how women are portrayed in society or Hollywood. I’ll admit the cover is what drew me to read the synopsis, and I was still interested in the subject matter, but I’ve noticed other reviews where people didn’t read the blurb and just when off the title of the book.

I really enjoyed this memoir and the insights into Jennifer Boylan's life before and after her transition and how she and those around her reacted differently to things based on their perceived gender.

I will say that since this is not her first memoir, some parts definitely feel disjointed or like we are missing a larger story if you have not read her other work.

Additionally, I felt like the marketing for this book was really off. Initially I thought this would be a pop-sociology book about boobs, ala Butts: A Backstory, which was entirely based on the cover and title. Once I got past this misconception, however, I thought the book was a delightful and poignant look at both Jennifer's life and society at large.

The writing in the book was beautiful. Jennifer is great at illustrating intimate, emotional moments with language. But I struggled a lot with keeping track of the chronology since the writing is non-linear.

Full disclosure, when I requested this ARC, I skimmed the description when very tired and mostly focused on the cover and title. When I opened it up the next morning, I was surprised not to be reading a book about the history of breasts in pop culture! Luckily, it was an interesting memoir/essay collection about gender identity, which also interests me! However, even having reread the description after a few confused minutes of audiobook. It hadn't been clear that this book feels more like a memoir rather than a more general book on gender. This isn't a knock on the book, and luckily I love memoirs, but if you're looking for something that isn't so personal, you should look elsewhere!

I enjoyed this book but struggled at times to find the connective thread between the different sections. I think this may partially have been due how I listen to books rather than reading them, as I listened to the audio version.

Jennifer Finney Boylan is a trans woman, activist, prolific writer, professor, and parent of a trans child. This book is part memoir, part musings on gender identity and covers much of the author's story (though presumably not the same parts as her memoir, which came out 25 years ago and which I have not read), as well as musings on the author's self identity and feelings about her own presentation and how they have evolved, trans history and information about gender. I enjoyed listening to it and found her experience and story to be unique and worth telling. I also really liked the way that she wove in detail about other people's stories, which made for a great reading experience.

Boylan is certainly a talented storyteller and extremely knowledgable on the topic. Overall, this book is a win for me. With that said, I did find myself losing the thread about the overall theme from time to time, and I'm not entirely sure what the thesis was, even with the explanation of "cleavage" that we get in the book.

Thank you to MacMillan Audio for for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley.

I've been reading a lot of memoirs lately (think Patti Smith, Joan Didion, you know the ones), and this blends in with those nicely. The writing (and narration) flows exactly in the way I want a memoir to flow, making it pleasant to listen to and absorb. I went into this one a little bit blind - without knowing much about Jennifer or her life and family - but was surprised at how interesting I found it and how much I was learning! I was particularly excited about the science breakdown she has in the second half of the book, super important and very glad it's been included! I also found the assorted story inserts about other trans people to be valuable, many of whom I had never heard of. Highly recommend, check the TW first, and get cozy!

Thank you to Macmillan Audio for the ARC.