Bilbo's Bend, by Aleshia Brevard
Are you thinking about mainly publications Bilbo's Bend, By Aleshia Brevard If you are still puzzled on which of the book Bilbo's Bend, By Aleshia Brevard that need to be acquired, it is your time to not this site to try to find. Today, you will need this Bilbo's Bend, By Aleshia Brevard as one of the most referred book as well as many needed publication as sources, in various other time, you can delight in for some other publications. It will certainly rely on your prepared demands. Yet, we always suggest that publications Bilbo's Bend, By Aleshia Brevard can be a fantastic infestation for your life.
Bilbo's Bend, by Aleshia Brevard
Read Ebook Bilbo's Bend, by Aleshia Brevard
Trey Bilbo spent his early life on a Tennessee farm, the son of a loving Appalachian-born mother and a distant blue-blooded father. Young, handsome, and talented, he wins an art school scholarship that takes him to San Francisco. He finds himself an affordable place to live in the nefarious Tenderloin district, where he is befriended by a male street hustler with a flair for fashion design, a Cajun stripper who performs with his pet boa, and an assortment of 1960s social activists. Trey experiments with several personas in his search for identity—as the boy-toy of a wealthy male art connoisseur, the husband of a pregnant friend, an ally to a transsexual high fashion model—all the while struggling to find himself. Does sleeping with another man mean he’s gay? Why does that feel not quite right? In this coming-of-age novel, Trey Bilbo wrestles with probing questions about his sexual uncertainty, as he revisits many of the San Francisco haunts and wilder sides of streets that Ms. Brevard herself knew in her pre-gender-transitioning days. Author Aleshia Brevard transitioned from male to female in 1962, not long after sex change surgery, as it was called then, became available. In the years since, she has often wondered what life as a boy might have been if gender reassignment had not been possible. This novel is her answer.
Bilbo's Bend, by Aleshia Brevard - Amazon Sales Rank: #1560039 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-10-20
- Released on: 2015-10-20
- Format: Kindle eBook
Bilbo's Bend, by Aleshia Brevard About the Author For nearly 50 years, Aleshia Brevard hid the fact that she was one of America’s first transsexuals from her friends, stepchildren, fellow actors and actresses, film producers, students, university administrators and even from her four husbands. Before her transition in 1962, Ms. Brevard worked as a drag queen at Finocchio’s under the stage name Lee Shaw. Later she worked as a stripper in Reno and as a Playboy Bunny at the Sunset Strip hutch. In 1969 she played opposite Don Knotts in the movie The Love God and appeared in seven more films during her career. After breaking into TV as a regular on the Red Skelton Show in the early 1970s, she appeared in 37 television productions and over 50 stage shows and tours. She created the role of Tex on the daytime soap opera One Life To Live. Ms. Brevard was America’s first transsexual actress to appear in prime time television, even though her gender history was never made public. Following her theatrical career, she returned to teach theater at East Tennessee State, the same university she had attended as a boy. Ms. Brevard has published two fascinating memoirs, The Woman I Was NOT Born To Be, Temple University Press, 2001, and The Woman I WAS Born To Be, Blue Feather Books, 2010. She is now retired and lives on the Central Coast of California.
Where to Download Bilbo's Bend, by Aleshia Brevard
Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. When "what if" becomes "it was"! By A. J. Trivette I doubt there is a person among us who hasn't often wondered what the course of our lives would have been had we made different choices or decisions along the way. For me, two years into college, I met a person who wanted me to be the pianist for a band in Nashville. I moved there "for the summer only" to give it a go. If the band came together, I'd stay to see what happened. If it didn't, I'd return home and continue college. It didn't, and I didn't. I loved Nashville and, in spite of my parents' insistence that I return home, I decided to stay. Soon, I was cast in my very first professional theater "gig", and I met Aleshia Brevard. Even though our time together was short - my show was coming into the theater and hers was leaving - I was drawn to her charming, magnetic personality and liked her immediately. She's that kind of lady. Many years later, after the course of my life brought me back home, the course of her life brought her to the same place (she had roots here as well) as a professor in the theater department of my hometown's university. I don't remember when, how, or, even IF, I learned of Aleshia's transsexuality before her two memoirs were published. But it doesn't matter because it WOULDN'T have mattered. I'd reconnected with an old friend. Had I moved back home when that unsuccessful "summer" was over, I'd never have met Aleshia, and I'd not be here now writing about her book - a book about HER imaging..."How would my life have played out had I not transitioned?" The answer is to be found in her semi-autobiographical novel, "Bilbo's Bend". Starting in rural Tennessee, she takes us back and forth on a nostalgic ride from the 1950s through the 1970s with characters we've all known to various degrees. This is a slice of life with which we all can identify - the punishments and the rewards, the bad choices and the good, the good people and the bad, but most importantly, the storm and the calm. I'm the kind of person who prefers to watch a movie or read a book knowing as little as possible about them. I like for them to "unfold" to me as they will, to take me on a "journey". But there are MANY writers with good stories which are told in such a dreary, drawn-out manner that they lose their way. Not so with Aleshia Brevard! Her style is witty, unpretentious and, at times, laugh-out-loud funny! So, dear prospective readers, if you're in the mood for a good "journey", get yourself a copy of "Bilbo's Bend". Sooner or later, this has GOT to be a movie!!!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Mastered Story Teller By John R. Mullens Aleshia Brevard is a master story teller, as evidenced in her two earlier memoirs, _The Woman I Was Not Born to Be_ (Temple University Press, 2001) and _The Woman I Was Born to Be_ (Blue Feather Books, Ltd., 2010, and reprinted by the author, 2015).In _Bilbo’s Bend_, her third published work, she fictionalizes much of her life’s story in novel form, but any fabricated invention, perhaps, is merely coincidence. As any writer, she explores her own experiences to fashion the novel’s “coming of age” theme. Thus, then, somewhat based on fact, protagonist Trey Bilbo’s exploits are an enlightening and enthralling romp through a late 50s/early 60s San Francisco—where Ms. Brevard once escaped from mid-America in the 1950s—a refugee city, mostly regarded, of course, as one of the holy meccas for the GLBT community—if, indeed, such a community exists. Eight characters and an entity share the novel’s collective narrative voice, chronicling thirty-three years, three generations, and shifting from Bilbo’s Bend, Tennessee to Paris, from Baltimore to San Francisco. Devotees of Ms. Brevard’s memoirs will surely recognize many of her latest characters as reincarnations of the real-life friends and family members who populate the autobiographies. From her opening line—“TREY BILBO WAS NOTHING BUT A SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD ‘New Nanette’ when he moved to San Francisco’s Tenderloin in 1956”—it is apparent that Ms. Brevard herself is Trey and the character speaking, Jessie Lord, is Kathy Taylor, aka Stormy Lee—whom Ms. Brevard first met at the highly renowned Finocchio’s club in San Francisco, where Ms. Taylor performed as an exotic dancer and who willingly took the newly arrived Brevard (known then as “Lee Shaw”) under her wing. Back on the East Coast, Ms. Brevard’s beloved mother, Mozelle Gillentine Crenshaw, is ever present on the novel’s pages as the character of Ida Mae. Somewhat surprisingly, Brevard’s own father, James Crenshaw, whom—she told us previously—she often struggled to understand, appears as James Bilbo. Seemingly, though, in her latest installment, Ms. Brevard has moved toward a higher understanding, if not forgiveness, of her issue. She had little need, apparently, to disguise his first name. On the printed page, James Bilbo emerges, undoubtedly, as both reasonable and lucid. Even Ms. Brevard’s sometimes adored, more often eccentric grandmother, Miss Minnie Lee—as devoted readers know her— ever how sophisticated, imaginably a Southern aristocrat, regardless of her own cantankerousness, makes an appearance as Madeline Estes Bilbo. Through these intimate family depictions, we, as readers, may garner further insights into Ms. Brevard’s early life in Hartsville, Tennessee. We are left to hope, however, that the story between Ida Mae and James Bilbo is based on more fiction than fact. The novel’s character Les Chamblis, irrespective if Ms. Brevard will acknowledge publicly, bears a striking resemblance to Hank Foyle—the ostensibly hetero man she fell in love with prior to her gender reassignment surgery—an unrequited love of which literature is made. When discovered in Les’s arms late one night, embraced in a passion kiss, Trey’s journey in search of identity, sexual and otherwise, is ignited. “What if?” Ms. Brevard asked herself at the outset. What if sexual reassignment surgery had not be available to her? How would she have lived her life as a male? Through Trey Bilbo she has crafted a poignant, often quirky, story postulating such a life. Ms. Brevard has created a compelling cast of characters, and it is her ability to find the humanness of each that is a testament to her artistry, her sensitivity, her humanity. Even Sandy Beech Bilbo, who serves mostly as the novel’s antagonist, is drawn with an impressive dignity. Readers, further, will want to discover “Miss Has-A-Wang-Wong,” authentication of Ms. Brevard's ever enduring sense of humor. In her third published work, Aleshia Brevard does not disappoint. Her ability to craft a competent sentence, her excellent ear for the colloquial and for the vernacular, her wit, her charm, her intelligence are all apparent in her written words. She is, above all else, a mastered story teller. Her prose, not only a delight to read but a delight to savor.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. WISE, WITTY, WICKED AND WONDERFUL! By Randy Buck Thank Heaven Aleshia Brevard's a genius with words, the Mistress of the Mot Juste and the Well-Turned Phrase! I'd hate to think her fabulous life, filled with remarkable incident, incredible (though real!) characters, and hard-earned wisdom, might have gone to waste as source material for fiction had it been squandered on someone who lacked the discipline. wit and ability to get all the fantastic doings down in written form for us mere mortals to share! Luckily for us, she's paused for breath occasionally in her picaresque adventures to give us two memorable memoirs, and now BILBO'S BEND, her initial foray into fiction, where she lands headfirst immediately in the first rank of Southern novelists. Here's a lady who knows where all the bodies are buried, and gleefully limns a guide to the graveyard that will keep you blissfully up past your bedtime, reading and laughing and casting the inevitable film version in your head. Scholars of gay culture can take copious notes on Life Back in the Day in locales ranging from the Dixie sticks to San Francisco to Paris, all sketched with a sharp eye for telling detail and ridiculous behavior that makes for delicious reading. BILBO's honestly the sort of novel that makes you call up everyone you love to blissfully burble, "I just read the most incredible book!" So, dear Amazon friends, consider yourself hereby notified. I just read the most incredible book!
See all 13 customer reviews...
Bilbo's Bend, by Aleshia Brevard
Bilbo's Bend, by Aleshia Brevard PDF
Bilbo's Bend, by Aleshia Brevard iBooks
Bilbo's Bend, by Aleshia Brevard ePub
Bilbo's Bend, by Aleshia Brevard rtf
Bilbo's Bend, by Aleshia Brevard AZW
Bilbo's Bend, by Aleshia Brevard Kindle
Bilbo's Bend, by Aleshia Brevard
Bilbo's Bend, by Aleshia Brevard
Bilbo's Bend, by Aleshia Brevard
Bilbo's Bend, by Aleshia Brevard
