A True Story of Violence, Forgiveness and Becoming a Man

by Thomas Page McBee

What does it really mean to be a man?

In "Man Alive," Thomas Page McBee attempts to answer that question by focusing on two of the men who most impacted his life: one, his otherwise ordinary father who abused him as a child, and the other, a mugger who almost killed him. Standing at the brink of the life-changing decision to transition from female to male, McBee seeks to understand these examples of flawed manhood and tells us how a brush with violence sent him on the quest to untangle a sinister past, and freed him to become the man he was meant to be.

"Man Alive" engages an extraordinary personal story to tell a universal one--how we all struggle to create ourselves, and how this struggle often requires risks. Far from a transgender transition tell-all, "Man Alive" grapples with the larger questions of legacy and forgiveness, love and violence, agency and invisibility.

9780872866249, paperback