Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story

A heart-wrenching, eye-opening, and giggle-inducing memoir about what it's like to grow up not sure if you're (a) a boy, (b) a girl, (c) something in between, or (d) all of the above.

When the political reality facing this country seems dark, we need shinier, sparklier thinkers in the public eye. With a signature style matched only by their wit, Jacob fits that bill perfectly. --Alan Cumming

From the moment a doctor in Raleigh, North Carolina, put male on Jacob Tobia's birth certificate, everything went wrong. Alongside male came many other, far less neutral words: words that carried expectations about who Jacob was and who Jacob should be, words like masculine and aggressive and cargo shorts and SPORTS!

Naturally sensitive, playful, creative, and glitter-obsessed, as a child Jacob was given the label sissy. In the two decades that followed, sissy joined forces with gay, trans, nonbinary, and too-queer-to-function to become a source of pride and, today, a rallying cry for a much-needed gender revolution. Through revisiting their childhood and calling out the stereotypes that each of us have faced, Jacob invites us to rethink what we know about gender and offers a bold blueprint for a healed world--one free from gender-based trauma and bursting with trans-inclusive feminism.

From Jacob's Methodist childhood and the hallowed halls of Duke University to the portrait-laden parlors of the White House, Sissy takes you on a gender odyssey you won't soon forget. Writing with the fierce honesty, wildly irreverent humor, and wrenching vulnerability that have made them a media sensation, Jacob shatters the long-held notion that people are easily sortable into men and women. Sissy guarantees that you'll never think about gender--both other people's people's and your own--the same way again.