Jennifer Finney Boylan Announces New BookCleavage —And Shares Her Famous Doppelgängers (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Jennifer Finney Boylan and the cover of ‘Cleavage’.Photo:Celadon Books; Dan Haar

Celadon Books; Dan Haar

Cleavageposes a range of questions, including how gender affects our body image, relationships and our sense of self. Throughout its pages, Boylan also considers her own journey as a writer, activist, spouse and parent in the present day, and the prevailing power of love.

Celadon Books

Cleavage“provides hope for a future in which we all have the freedom to live joyfully as men, as women and in the space between us,” per its publisher. Read on for an exclusive excerpt from the book, below.

The PEOPLE Puzzler crossword is here! How quickly can you solve it? Play now!I was born in 1958, on June 22, the second day of summer. It was also the birthday ofKris KristoffersonandMeryl Streep, both of whom I later resembled, although not at the same time.

I began the story of my life with these words inShe’s Not There, a memoir published in 2003. At the time it seemed reasonable enough, beginning with the beginning.Now I wonder whether I chose the right companions. Instead of Streep and Kristofferson, I could just as easily have picked others born that day —Elizabeth Warren, say, or John Dillinger, or Dan Brown. Would my book have landed differently if my chaperones had been the senator, or the gangster, or the author ofThe Da Vinci Code?

Sometimes I think about it, all the other lives I might have led.

Jennifer Finney Boylan.Dan Haar

Dan Haar

At the time of its publication,She’s Not Therewas a real brouhaha. I was onOprahfive times, Larry King twice. Will Forte imitated me onSaturday Night Live. Though hardly the first trans memoir, it came out at a moment when things were changing, at least a little. I hopeShe’s Not Theredid push the needle, at a crucial moment. The publisher’s promotional copy now calls it “the book that jump started the transgender rights movement.” Big words.

source: people.com