Middlesex
A Novel
Chapter One
THE SILVER SPOON
* * *
I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit
day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in
an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.
Specialized readers may have come across me in Dr. Peter Luce's
study, "Gender Identity in 5-Alpha-Reductase Pseudohermaphrodites,"
published in the Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology in 1975. Or
maybe you've seen my photograph in chapter sixteen of the now
sadly outdated Genetics and Heredity. That's me on page 578, standing
naked beside a height chart with a black box covering my eyes.
My birth certificate lists my name as Calliope Helen Stephanides.
My most recent driver's license (from the Federal Republic of Germany)
records my first name simply as Cal. I'm a former field hockey
goalie, long-standing member of the Save-the-Manatee Foundation,
rare attendant at the Greek Orthodox mass, and, for most of my
adult life, an employee of the U.S. State Depar ... read full excerpt from: Middlesex ebook
