Published in 1993, this brave, original novel is considered to be the finest account ever written of the complexities of a transgendered existence.Woman or man? That's the question that rages like a storm around Jess Goldberg, clouding her life and her identity. Growing up differently gendered in a blue--collar town in the 1950's, coming out as a butch in the bars and factories of the prefeminist '60s, deciding to pass as a man in order to survive when she is left without work or a community in the early '70s. This powerful, provocative and deeply moving novel sees Jess coming full circle, she learns to accept the complexities of being a transgendered person in a world demanding simple explanations: a he-she emerging whole, weathering the turbulence.Leslie Feinberg is also the author of "Trans Liberation," "Trans Gender Warriors "and "Transgender Liberation," and is a noted activist and speaker on transgender issues.

Leslie Feinberg (b. September 1, 1949, in Kansas City, Missouri) is a transgender lesbian and communist activist, speaker, and author. Feinberg's first novel Stone Butch Blues is widely considered a groundbreaking work about gender.

Leslie Feinberg is a secular Jew, and was assigned female at birth. Feinberg explains: "I was born in Kansas City, Missouri--not Buffalo, N.Y.--into a blue-collar, factory-working family." Feinberg prefers the gender-neutral pronouns "hir" and "ze", as well as s/he.

Feinberg's partner is the prominent lesbian poet-activist Minnie Bruce Pratt.

Feinberg has been battling the effects of Lyme Disease, Babesiosis, Bartonella and other co-infections caught from a tick bite in the 1970s.

Feinberg has carried legal documents for 40 years that state clearly who is, and is not, part of Feinberg's family. Irving David Feinberg, Betty Vance Hyde and Catherine Ryan Hyde, though biologically related to Feinberg, are legally defined as not part of Feinberg's family. These documents also define Feinberg's partner Pratt to be family; Feinberg also refers to certain other chosen people as family.