Crossing: A Memoir

A renowned economist and historian, a husband and father, Donald McCloskey (now Deirdre) had crossdressed for years without wanting more. But at age fifty-two a sense that he was denying his real identity grew to the point where he knew he had to become a woman. "Crossing" is the poignant story of this realization and its consequences.

We have read the stories of those who have "crossed" lines of race and class and culture. But few have written of crossing--completely and entirely--the gender line. "Crossing" is the story of Deirdre McCloskey (formerly Donald), once a golden boy of conservative economics and a child of 1950s and 1960s privilege, and her dramatic and poignant journey to becoming a woman. McCloskey's account of her painstaking efforts to learn to "be a woman" unearth fundamental questions about gender and identity, and hatreds and anxieties, revealing surprising answers.