Publisher's Synopsis
AUTHOR'S FIRST BOOK SOLD OVER 10,000 COPIES: The Outskirts of Hope earned a spot on the Wall Street Journal's Best-Seller List; was highlighted on NPR; was named the Writers' League of Texas Best Non-fiction for 2015; won the 2015 National Indie Excellence Award for Autobiography; was selected as the Jewish Book Council Non-fiction Book of the Week in December, 2016; and was a silver medalist for memoirs for the 2015/2016 Sarton Women's Book Award. INCLUDES BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION GUIDE AND ADVICE SECTION: Like the author's first book, Once a Girl, Always a Boy will be a strong book club pick, with a discussion guide and advice section to parents and friends of transgender individuals. UNDERSTANDING OUR TRANSGENDER COMMUNITY IS A CURRENT HOT TOPIC: 70% of our population believes that transgender people should be allowed to serve in our military, yet one of President Trump's early actions was to ban the existing 15,000 troops from service. He also withdrew guidelines protecting transgender schoolchildren and eliminated protections provided by the Affordable Care Act. With close to two million transgender people in the US, many Americans agree it is critical that we address the discrimination, harassment, and violence targeting them. A GROWING AUDIENCE HUNGRY FOR REPRESENTATION: The number of people in the US who identify as LGBT is steadily increasing, yet only a tiny percentage of books being published represents their experiences. There are two million transgender individuals and over eleven million LGBTQ individuals in the US. AUTHOR IS ACTIVE IN THE TRANS COMMUNITY: On the boards of Equality Texas and the Anti-Defamation League, Jo Ivester addresses thousands of people each year as a means of personalizing LGBTQ issues and helping people to move beyond their comfort zones. There are almost one million LGBTQ Texans and their families and allies.
