Testimonials
In emblematic photos and texts, Clarissa Sligh chronicles a transsexual experience that also transforms the artist’s own sense of self. With a rare gift for empathy Wrongly Bodied narrates a female to male transition that acquires even greater poignancy when contextualized alongside reflections on cross-dressing and racial passing as necessary strategies for survival. Juxtaposed with an epic narrative of African-American self-fashioning, the textured portraits of Jake, his partners, and support group bring sharply into view the uses of embodiment in the quest for freedom and fulfillment.
— Israel Burshatin, Levin Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature, Haverford College
Clarissa Sligh examines this culture’s greatest persistent taboos—gender, race, and identity. Historic heroism is melded with contemporary chutzpah, likening external enslavement with internal entrapment, all woven together. Wrongly Bodied is a long overdue critical and artistic investigation of self-determination, free will, identity politics, and the role of the artist.
— Carla Williams is currently the editor of Exposure, the Journal of the Society of Photographic Education and co–author of The Black Female Body: A Photographic Historywith Deborah Willis, published by Temple University Press (2002).
Independent Publisher
Paperback: 160 pages, 75 black and white photographs
Price $29.95
ISBN 978-1-60743-932-5