![]() ![]() That transition can be an ecstatic and amusing process as well as a melancholic one is rarely entertained in mainstream portrayals of trans subjects. Editors Ellis Martin and Zach Ozma, who pieced this book together from the archive of Sullivan’s diaries from the collection of the GLBT Historical Society, have chosen an especially apt title for the collection: As much as Sullivan fled discomfort in his lifelong journey to become himself, he also enthusiastically pursued joy. But there is more to transition than running away from pain. It is also true that living in contradiction with one’s internally held gender can hardly be called living at all. It is true that suicide rates among trans people, especially those barred from transitioning by familial or financial circumstances, are high. ![]() ![]() In her 1968 autobiography, Christine Jorgenson, the first American to attract significant media attention for transitioning back in the 1950s, noted that her newsmaking decision to have gender confirmation surgery was for her “a matter of survival.” Many first-person reports since then have described a similar path forked between transition and death. We Both Laughed in Pleasure, a selection of Sullivan’s diaries from his childhood to his death from AIDS complications at 39, dispenses with the ubiquitous narrative of transition as a dreary but necessary inconvenience. We Both Laughed in Pleasure The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan, 1961-1991 ![]()
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