Awards

• Commended for Lambda Literary Awards (Nonfiction) 2013

Overview

A few years ago the novelist T Cooper wrote his parents a letter, telling them he 'wasn’t their daughter anymore.' And this was the 'good news.' Real Man Adventures is Cooper’s brash, wildly inventive, and often comic exploration of the paradoxes and pleasures of masculinity. In it he takes us through his transition into identifying as male, and how he went on to marry his wife and become an adoring stepfather of two children—the head of a perfectly nuclear American family. Cooper can be bemused or exasperated when he feels compelled to explain all this, but he never loses his sense of humor.

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9781938073007

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Reviews

 In this mind-bendingly good book, T Cooper gets to the heart of what it is to be human by circling around questions most of us don't ever know to ask. Subtle, engaging, righteously furious and often brilliant, this book radiates infinite possibility.  Nick Flynn T Cooper (The Beaufort Diaries) used to be a woman. Now he's a man. If we were all comfortable with that, we'd be done. But we're not; there are people who respond violently when they discover that someone doesn't meet their standards of manliness. Cooper knows the  essential truth that  the foremost thing on people's minds when confronted with a transgender man is his dick, and addresses these facts (salient, but not dispositive), along with others, in a variety of registers humorous, angry, resigned, fearful, accepting, worried, matter of fact. This variety one of the book's strengths extends to the book's contents, which include interviews, telling six-word autobiographies, letters, and longer memoirlike segments. For those seeking a more standard account of a transperson's  journey, the book may disappoint, but Cooper's free-form story, including pieces of his process, paeans to his wife and kids, what it's like to be a member of the  Man Club, and what he most fears, is humorous, surprising, and heartfelt. Spoiler alert: he finesses that most pressing question, pushing the reader to consider their prurience and conceptualization of gender around a key but limited set of body parts.  Publishers Weekly Sublime confidence and spirit distinguishes this unorthodox memoir of gender and identity.Novelist Cooper (The Beaufort Diaries, 2010, etc.) establishes his point of view early on when describing himself as a droll, outspoken, Jewish, darker-skinned man who has undergone gender reassignment surgery. Wholly at ease in his own skin, he unleashes a flood of provocatively opinionated, informative slices of his life as a fully transitioned female-to-male American. With lively writing throughout, Cooper presents haiku pieces, childhood memories and the 'sitting down to urinate' debate creatively interwoven with frank discussions of transgender violence, poignant commentary from his wife, who constantly fears for her husband's safety (they live in a 'decidedly conservative and religious' Southern state), and the author's innermost fears. Cooper also shares varied versions of a revealing 2009 letter to his parents explaining how their daughter is now (and has always been) 'basically a dude.' Extended interviews with 'seasoned tranny' Kate Bornstein, Cooper's brother (a member of the LAPD) and the parents of other transgendered acquaintances are probing, entertaining and revealing. The author's inner journey toward self-awareness seems to have been relatively smooth, other than a series of conversational minefields he encounters regularly when discussing his gender identity with others. But chapters on his own personal confusion and uncertainty demonstrate a distinct consciousness for the paradoxical nature of the transgender experience at large.A memoir infused with personality and the ballsy honesty of someone for whom becoming a man was 'the most natural thing in the world.'  Kirkus [A} sharp, hilarious, incredibly personal, and ingenuously honest look at what the hell it even means to be a man.  Interview Magazine [A} sharp, hilarious, incredibly personal, and ingenuously honest look at what the hell it even means to be a man.  Interview Magazine You've never read a book about this particular experience told in such a compelling voice.  Paul Constant, The Stranger This is a terrifically entertaining, often hilarious book.  Boston Globe A deeply personal, honest, and wildly creative expression of Cooper's view of himself and of the world in which he lives.  Knox News A completely original take on the personal transgender narrative.  Lambda Literary Review Cooper emphasizes the broader concept of humanity, which makes us more similar than different.  The Daily Californian Cooper's is an absorbing adventure.  Time Out Chicago A valuable, enlightening document that sidesteps cliche and easy answers in favor of a bracing account of what it means for Cooper to be a man in this world.  The Portland Mercury At turns distancing and powerfully intimate, like a person consciously revealing himself.  SF Weekly T Cooper bravely and often hilariously shares his life as a transgender family man in Real Man Adventures.  Vanity Fair [This] book, a species of memoir all its own, tackles with deft humor and brazen honesty the conundrum that is gender identity and just what in the hell  being a man' may or may not actually mean A heroic open letter.  Leveled Mag Vibrant With a finely tuned voice, Cooper manages to be both exacting and uproariously funny.  Next Magazine A refreshing, funny, angry, startlingly insightful examination of gender and masculinity.  Truthout Our favorite author!  Original Plumbing Deeply honest a brave book. The irreverent, wry humor throughout keeps Cooper's brash personality at center stage, where it belongs.  Shelf Awareness T Cooper's book is full of self consciousness, self examination, and expressions of emotion, and activism, and is inclusive of other voices in an apparently earnest effort at leveling hierarchies of I and Thou, Man and Woman, to networks of experience. It is from this position that Cooper reels to the pace of his journey, a sailor on the rungs of on an exploratory vessel. From here he chronicles both inner and outer journey, not only in his own sights from the crow's nest but in the voices of those with experience of age, of parenthood and generations, and of the second adolescence that is transition for the transgender man.  Justin Cascio, Good Men Project a go-to resource for understanding an incredibly underrepresented and often silenced community.  Flavorwire

In this mind-bendingly good book, T Cooper gets to the heart of what it is to be human by circling around questions most of us don't ever know to ask. Subtle, engaging, righteously furious and often brilliant, this book radiates infinite possibility. --Nick Flynn <br> T Cooper ( The Beaufort Diaries ) used to be a woman. Now he's a man. If we were all comfortable with that, we'd be done. But we're not; there are people who respond violently when they discover that someone doesn't meet their standards of manliness. Cooper knows the essential truth that the foremost thing on people's minds when confronted with a transgender man is his dick, and addresses these facts (salient, but not dispositive), along with others, in a variety of registers--humorous, angry, resigned, fearful, accepting, worried, matter of fact. This variety--one of the book's strengths--extends to the book's contents, which include interviews, telling six-word autobiographies, letters, and longer memoirlike segments. For those seeking a more standard account of a transperson's journey, the book may disappoint, but Cooper's free-form story, including pieces of his process, paeans to his wife and kids, what it's like to be a member of the Man Club, and what he most fears, is humorous, surprising, and heartfelt. Spoiler alert: he finesses that most pressing question, pushing the reader to consider their prurience and conceptualization of gender around a key but limited set of body parts. -- Publishers Weekly <br> Sublime confidence and spirit distinguishes this unorthodox memoir of gender and identity. <br>Novelist Cooper ( The Beaufort Diaries, 2010, etc.) establishes his point of view early on when describing himself as a droll, outspoken, Jewish, darker-skinned man who has undergone gender reassignment surgery. Wholly at ease in his own skin, he unleashes a flood of provocatively opinionated, informative slices of his life as a fully transitioned female-to-male American. With liv

In this mind-bendingly good book, T Cooper gets to the heart of what it is to be human by circling around questions most of us don't ever know to ask. Subtle, engaging, righteously furious and often brilliant, this book radiates infinite possibility. --Nick Flynn<br><br><br>

Author Information

T Cooper is the author of three novels, including the bestselling The Beaufort Diaries and Lipshitz Six, or Two Angry Blondes. Cooper's work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Believer, and One Story, among others. He lives in both New York and the South with his wife, children, and two rescue pit bulls.

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