The Author (Melissa Rebos)

The author, Melissa Rebos, is a memoirist and teacher, bringing a wide range of personal experiences to her work and shaping them into a complex blend of academically oriented research, self-analysis, and detailed observation. She is the product of a variety of circumstances that, in some ways, are not all that different from those of many individuals. These include being one child of two in a broken marriage, and having complicated relationships with both her biological and non-biological parents; having experiences with both addiction and overcoming it; and experiences of sexual identity that, in the author’s recounting, move across a spectrum from engaging with opposite gendered individuals to engaging with same gendered individuals.

All that said, there are certain aspects of her experience and history that are perhaps somewhat more different from those of other individuals. For example, a defining aspect of her...