Going to Trinidad, Martin J. Smith
Going to Trinidad, Martin J. Smith
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Going to Trinidad
A Doctor, a Colorado Town, and Stories from an Unlikely Gender Crossroads

Author: Martin J. Smith

Narrator: Natasha Soudek

Unabridged: 8 hr 51 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 04/27/2021


Synopsis

For more than four decades, between 1969 and 2010, the remote former mining town of Trinidad, Colorado, was the unlikely crossroads for approximately six thousand medical pilgrims who came looking for relief from the pain of gender dysphoria. The surgical skill and nonjudgmental compassion of surgeons Stanley Biber and his transgender protégé Marci Bowers not only made the phrase "going to Trinidad" a euphemism for gender confirmation surgery in the worldwide transgender community, but also turned the small outpost near the New Mexico border into what the New York Times once called "the sex-change capital of the world."

Award-winning writer Martin J. Smith spent two years researching not only the stories of Trinidad, Biber, and Bowers, but also tracking the lives of many transgender men and women who sought their services. The result is Going to Trinidad, which focuses on the complicated pre- and post-surgery lives of two Biber patients—Claudine Griggs and Walt Heyer—who experienced very different outcomes. Through them, Smith takes listeners deep into the often-mystifying world of gender, genitalia, and sexuality, and chronicles a fascinating segment of the human species that's often misunderstood by those for whom gender remains a mostly binary male-or-female equation.

About Martin J. Smith

Martin J. Smith, a veteran journalist and former senior editor of the Los Angeles Times Magazine, is the author of five crime novels and four previous nonfiction books. He has won more than fifty newspaper and magazine writing awards, and his novels have been nominated for three of the publishing industry's most prestigious honors, including the Edgar Award, the Anthony Award, and the Barry Award.


Reviews

GOING TO TRINIDAD has absolutely nothing to do with the country of Trinidad. Instead, this superbly researched and written book with the subtitle: A DOCTOR, A COLORADO TOWN, and STORIES FROM AN UNLIKELY GENDER CROSSROADS informs readers of the town of Trinidad, Colorado and it’s unlikely history as......more

Goodreads review by Heather

Being from Colorado, it was interesting to read the history of Trinidad and Dr. Biber. I listened to parts of this as audio and the reader's mispronunciation of some of the Colorado towns drove me up the wall. I wish there had been more stories from patients of Dr. Biber or Dr. Bowers because the tw......more

Goodreads review by Emile

I read this book as a nonbinary trans person living in Colorado and interested in the history of Trinidad, CO, but where this book fails for me as a reader is because the author is a cis man. He spends a lot of the book using dated medical terms without a glossary of terms or clearer explanation of......more