by Nick Krieger, $15; Beacon Press; 202 pages
Nina Here Nor There is about Nina's journey toward self-defined identity and self-love.
The memoir is a journey that grabs your heart and stretches your brain into new ways of thinking. It deals with "top" surgery (removal of breasts) and opens a discussion of nuanced forms of self-identity, subtle distinctions in learning how to express who we are. While there are some descriptive details of top surgery and its aftermath, Nina Here Nor There is more about the emotional and cognitive shifts that lead up to whether to proceed with such a life-changing event.
Nina does her best, and succeeds quite well, at conveying how augmenting her physical anatomy with various items enhances her comfort level with her body. She explains, for instance, how using a "packer" allowed her to relate to her body below the belt. "… it made me feel comfortable and at peace." Yoga also brings her in touch with her body and she grows to rely on the practice more and more.
This, the author's first book, is full of humor and fascinating detail about life in the Castro, particularly among Nina's friends, several of whom are in various stages of preparing for or adjusting to top surgery. But, most of all, the book is about the author's trek from Nina to Nick.
Fresh from her travels, Nina finds the Castro a confusing place at first. Style signposts such as earrings, longish hair, underwear preference "… failed to indicate whether a person self-identified as man, woman, or something else entirely." There are language landmines as well. Words both help us make meaningful distinctions and close down possibilities at the same time. For example, Nina wonders why Bec (short for Rebecca) doesn't switch to a male name since she has had top surgery. Nina wonders if she should refer to Bec as "he" or "she?"
Nina Here Nor There is an easy read. You soon fall in love with Nina and her friendsZippy, Melissa, Jess, Greg, Ramona and morewho provide her support, inspiration and philosophical argument.
Humor passages balance the gravity of the subject, as when, early on, Nina recounts how she weighed her breasts on a grocery store produce scale but confesses the measurement of four pounds each might be a little off as she had to hurry before anyone spotted her.
Nina starts her interior journey with an ill-formed idea of who she is. She converses with Jess about why they want to change their bodies. Nina reasons that, since she doesn't want to be a man, her flat-chest desire must be vanity, like cosmetic surgery. Jess counters it's about identity too. Nina: "I could tell she was waiting for me to agree or object, but I had no response, let alone an identityif the gender pronounced at birth wasn't a given, I wasn't sure where to find one [identity]."
By the end of the book, Nina, soon to be Nick, is comfortable with her evolving self. In a mocking letter from a fake therapist to "Dr. Surgeon," she describes Nina: "… born female, Nina resembled a girl, then woman, then boy, and is on her way to becoming, well, I have no idea. But whatever the ending, it will be happy."
Most touching is the developing breach we witness between Nina and her father, culminating in the complete break that Nina makes with him in a brave independent stance against his refusal to offer her support. Yet, her love for him is achingly apparent.
N ina's mom, on the other hand, rallies and comes to San Francisco to be by her daughter's side when it counts, even though she understands little about what is unfolding.
This book is a worthwhile read not only for anyone contemplating top surgery, but also for those open to understanding different cultural terrains, and especially for the families and friends of those considering top surgery change or already experiencing its rewards and challenges.
You can follow Nick's journeys on his website, www.nickkrieger.com . In his bio at the website, Nick describes how he (as Nina) majored in "Biological Basis of Behavior" in college. Then Nina headed to Sydney to play soccer and basketball in the Gay Games, and traveled throughout much of southeast Asia. Nick got his MFA in writing at the University of San Francisco. His travel writing has won him several awards and he has been published in venues such as Curve, Town & Country and PlanetOut.