The author of Going To Trinidad says in his preface that he grew up in “an era when most people believed gender was a binary thing.” I’m a little more than 10 years older than the author and I grew up believing the same thing so I bought this book in the hope that I would learn something about transgender people.
I also bought the book because the author, Martin J. Smith, is a former student and I am pleased to report that I have done no harm, although I could have said that many times over the years after reading some of his novels and another nonfiction book,
In Going To Trinidad, which has the subtitle A Doctor, a Colorado Town, and Stories from an Unlikely Gender Crossroads, Smith focuses on two men who struggled with gender identity and ultimately were treated by Dr. Stanley H. Biber, once a surgeon in a MASH unit in the Korean War where he learned how to replace missing body parts, among other things. Trinidad, Colorado, is the town where Biber practiced and “going to Trinidad” means getting transition surgery. Both patients provided contemporary reports on their lives and Smith has done a good job of using that information to complete the story.
To say that the story is complicated would be an understatement and to tell you why would be a spoiler. I cannot even say that the book is a comprehensive examination of the transgender condition. Smith never set out to write such a book, as the subtitle tells us. Even as Smith began his research, he had to endure challenges from the transgender community, and Smith gives space in an afterword to a woman doctor, once a man, who says his two subjects are atypical of the people who have gender transition surgery. He wrote about that in The Hill and you can find the essay here.
If I have any real criticism of the book it would be that his main characters transitioned physically from male to female. Smith mentions, but does not include in any detail, someone who transitioned from female to male. Of course, that could always be another book.
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