Finished: Middlesex (Eugenides) "I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of l974."  This is the first sentence of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize winner, Middlesex, which tells the fascinating story of a girl born as Calliope, who becomes a grown man known as Cal. The story follows a Greek family who flees, moving from a small village in Greece to downtown Detroit during an invasion by Turkey; as they struggle to make ends meet in the industrial Detroit; and then finally as they make a go of things before moving to the uppercrust Gross Pointe, Michigan. Unbeknownst to them, and with marriages between family members, an identical gene is handed down from both of Calliope's parents which causes her to be biologically what was known at that time as a hermaphrodite. She had both male and female sex organs, but because the old Greek doctor who'd moved to Detroit with the family did just a cursory check of her genitals when she was born, he missed the small, hidden male protrusion, and couldn't feel the testicles that were nesting in her abdomen. The Stephanides, already with a son, were thrilled to have a daughter, and knowing no better, raised Calliope as a girl. Calliope herself never felt anything out of the ordinary until puberty began to change her friends, but not her. At least, not in the feminine way. The book is told beautifully and is heartbreaking, but also humorous, but mostly gut wrenching as you feel so many feelings for Calliope, and then Cal. Calliope falls in love with her female best friend, not understanding the feelings she's having. Cal as an adult later in life, has never let himself get close enough to a woman to get intimate, even though he's fallen for quite a few women, and they for him. The story explores the history of Cal's grandparents, then parents, and then suddenly becomes pretty riveting when Calliope is born. Calliope makes the tragic decision to run away after her condition is finally discovered when she is fourteen, and the "expert" doctor wants to study her and then permanently convert her to a being female, even though he discovers that her genetics shows she's biologically a male. Cal reunites with the family and has embraced his identity as a male, but not before his father has died. There's so much detail in the book, that I say, just read it and you'll be reading a really, really good book while getting a glimpse of what intersex kids must go through to try and live their lives as true as they can to themselves.