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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #532499 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 196 pages

Bizarre, June 2003
Candid interviews with the 'kathoey' themselves, a history of the phenomenon and a whole buncha science make this a ... winner

'Literary Review', May 2003
amongst the personal stories, which Totman tells with sensitivity and insight, there are plenty of statistics... alternately entertaining and poignant.

'Ham & High'
Mixing interviews with extensive cultural, religious and historical research... an exhaustive account of 'the third sex'... Worthy and intelligent.

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Customer Reviews

Should have been better
My first reading of this book put me to sleep. This has never happened to me before when reading books about transgenderism. I needed several sittings to read through it. The subject matter was what kept me reading. Parts of the book I found to be quite well written - the stories of 3 young kathoey. In all, but one instance, the telling of the kathoey's stories was interesting. The one reflection where it could have been a lot better was about the 65 year old kathoey in Khoen Khan. I learned a lot about the Buddhist religion and kathoey in Thailand. All of this left me a bit sad though. The condition of kathoey being depicted as paying for previous sins in previous lives. This book should be read by all women with a trangender background who are thinking of moving to Thailand. Things are not as rosey as they appear. Once can even pick up on this when watching the films "The Iron Ladies 1 and 2". Thailand is not transgender heaven. The last chapter about aging kathoey should have not even been written - so little said - 3 pages or so. It appeared as if it was written at the Bangkok International Airport while the auther waited for the flight back to London. The author was in a position to really gather deep insight into the lives of kathoey and the society they live in (are tolerated in). I think he should have put more work into his book than spending time at the cabaret shows which he discusses to much length. Way too much repetition in the book. Oh well, he did lead me to another book - this one about the Hijra in India which I've ordered. Hope it is better. For me this book is a simple 3 - meaning okay.

'Ladyboys' as they really are.
This is not the sort of salacious account you might read in the newspapers.
Nor is it a superficial Western guidebook account of 'transvestite cabarets.'
Richard Totman lived with a Thai family for several months listening to the kathoey telling their own stories,
and adding an account of their long history as an intrinsic part of Thai culture and their relationship to the nation's religion.
But most of all, this a charming account of real human beings.

In need of an editor...
From such a scholarly writer, this is a curiously unscholarly work. It appears to be a book written in a hurry, without being properly edited.

Chapters are something of a hotch-potch. First, a biographical account, then a chapter on prostitution in Thailand, then another biographical account, and so on. The author refers to himself and the reader as 'we'. Who might this 'we' refer to? Presumably to a 'western' readership, which, ironically, seems to exclude a Thai and Southeast Asian readership (which is odd, given that the book is also published in Thailand). 'We', the authore implies, will be surprised at what we read here: we might not be if we are Thai.

There is a huge amount of repetition in this book. The reader finds him or herself thinking 'didn't he just say that?' A check reveals that he did.

Reference to other writers seems hurriedly done. The anthropologist and American born but 40 years resident in Thailand, William Klausner - probably the person who has done more for describing Thai culture than anyone from outside of that country - is referred to as a 'travel writer'. Certain key Buddhist ideas are insufficiently researched: most authorities consider 'karma' to be 'intentional behaviour' but Totman seems to refer to it as a 'thing' which is accrued.

The author refers to his extensive living and researching in Thailand, for this book but he offers little of the data that must have piled up from all this work. His comparing and contrasting of katoey and monks seems spurious - he seems to argue that one group shores up the other. This is a bit like comparing and contrasting Northern European nuns with European drug adicts: it doesn't get us very far.

Gender references and the use of 'he' and 'she' are not entirely consistent, which is sometimes confusing.

This book is too long and would have been better as a more 'concentrated' essay. Like Wagner's operas, it also needed a good editor. There are many 'western' Thai commentators who have offered more informed and scholarly works: Mulder, Jackson, Reynolds, Klausner and so on. They also offer deeper insights, perhaps, than are offered here. It is easy, as a 'westerner' to be overwhelmed and enchanted by Thailand but its deeper meanings are probably more complex than this author suggests. After many years of researching, both Mulder and Klausner reveal the difficulty for an outsider to 'understand' Thailand and both the country and its people deserve a more cautious account than this.