Memoirs of an Extraterrestrial, the Negro Conundrum (Revised Edition Book 1)

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It is hard to judge it from the perspective of the world we find ourself in.

Also Jan was born to a class system that most American audiences would not easily identify with, a class of English who was more accepting of the eccentricities of members of its own class: It is an interesting memoir more than for the conundrum, but as a window to a time and place in British history, the sense of male prerogative and how easily females were dismissed with the exception of strong women who interfaced with educated men of their class. It is a fast read for anyone familiar with the upper class British experience and all of their classical and literary references.

I can imagine that others would totally get lost in the weightiness of the dialog Jul 16, Telmo Fernandes rated it liked it. And, as in some fairy tales, what she is to be transformed into is only what she has been all along: She writes about her sense of the wrongness of her male body, but also an appreciation of its energies and what it can do, e.

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She writes about taking estrogen for years before her sex-change operation, and about how it was to travel in the resulting in-between body, reading as a man to some and as a woman to others. Morris is primarily known as a travel writer, and some of the loveliest bits of this book are the ones about landscapes or cities, like this description of the place where she grew up: The sky may not always have been as blue as I recall it, but it was certainly clear as crystal, the only smoke the smudge from a collier laboring up-Channel, or the blurred miasma of grime that always hung over the Swansea valleys.

Hawks and skylarks abounded, rabbits were everywhere, weasels haunted the bracken, and sometimes there came trundling over the hill, heavily buzzing, the daily de Havilland biplane on its way to Cardiff 4. Or this, about Oxford: Even the light that came through the consultancy window was more than reasonably London, much creamier than the Italian light, and charged with the dustflakes of W1. The edition of Conundrum I read is the reprint, which has a new introduction, which Morris wrote in I suspect elite female athletes might disagree.

Memoirs of an Extraterrestrial: The Negro Conundrum

I want to say that the writer is a product of her time and personal history as are we all , that her generation was more steeped in the gender binary and traditional roles And all this would be true. So, in that sense and Very difficult. So, in that sense and given the fact that it is very much a personal account, it was worthwhile reading. My disappointment was in unearthing views that were discomfiting and which the author does not appear to have challenged in herself.

Jun 13, Maggie Holmes rated it really liked it Shelves: She is a very expressive writer and really makes you understand how she felt growing up, why she felt she was in the wrong body, and why she made the choices she did. Her comments about how life as a woman was different from life as a man were intriguing. Read this book to understand more about what a transsexual person is.

There is more than just the flash of Caitlyn Jenner. I have wanted to read this book since it came out in Morris, a journalist and travel writer of the kind that Chatwin and Theroux are known for, tells us about life as a transgender. Not only that but the book tells us about the traveling that he did while figuring out how to cope with this strangely crossed life.

He, is now a she-- for many years now. Morris' family of children and former wife are still enfolded within the circle of her life and she writes on. Early on Morris claims to "adhere to the belief Alongside this Morris freely admits to bein selective in what included and what is not. The prose is precise and lyrical and seems to waft in from a bygone age. The author's expressions of how she perceives she is treated differently also seem somewhat dated. Dec 27, Aubrey rated it liked it Shelves: It seemed a logical enough aspiration, if Woman was so elevated and admirable a being as history, religion, and good manners combined to assure us.

In the United States, there was a ruling within the past year that allowed trans people to join the military. This dubious success characterizes this book completely: This is not to say that Jan Morris does not succeed beautifully on an individual level when it comes to her journey through the life of her self, but that her story could have done well enough sticking to her own sensibilities rather than passing judgment on others.

It explains why there are a number of quotes that are wonderfully conducive to the rights of trans people of every intersecting demographic, and yet within the context of the work's entirety are constrained to a very specific type with which Morris attempts to win the public over via self-neutralization. As such, when she speaks of finding solidarity with others at a surgical clinic in Casablanca, it is unfortunate that I can probably make a very accurate guess as to the skin color and cultural norms of the majority of those empathized with. Let's get one thing straight: That's not the issue here.

What is is how many people defend their right to engage with everything on the most uncritical, and thus the most calcified and bigotry-reinforcing, perspective possible, and how that interacts with those who represent the "good" parts of a regularly maligned community. Let's say Caitlyn Jenner, a more modern example than Jan Morris, also wrote a memoir of her life, focusing on the trans aspect of her identity. Then, you get the wafflers who will go with whichever flow will give them the most economic security. Finally, you get those so obsessed with pat themeselves on the back for a higher morality that they'll praise the work to the skies without questioning the other aspects that go into a trans identity such as religion, ethnicity, and socioeconomic stability.

I don't mention those in true solidarity because they take up such a small percentage of the population. For example, the fact that trans people are conditioned to feel the need to "pass" is nothing but a bunch of aesthetic hogwash resulting from cis people valuing their comfort zones of socialized constructs over respecting others. When one considers the history of transphobia in the LGBTQIA movement up until the present day, there's little guarantee that the non-queer populace will be much better.

Should you read this? The equating of a European city to the entirety of an African continent doesn't help trans people in Uganda, or Morocco, or the Democratic Republic of Congo. If you want to argue that the past excused this sort of writing, you should have read the book and offered your static opinions in when it was first published, not drag the desiccated corpse of faux normalization into There are plenty of living and breathing people who don't fit into the boxes prescribed by this book who have earned your solidarity many times over.

Let's work with them so that they may one day write their own books and complicate the accepted picture of trans accordingly, shall we? To me gender is not physical at all, but is altogether insubstantial. It is the essentialness of oneself, the psyche, the fragment of unity. This is the first piece of Jan Morris's writing that I have read, and based on prose style alone, I will seek out more of her work.

Her style reminds me of books of the 20s and 30s -- it is clear, but she is not afraid to use long sentences or paragraphs, or to take her time to express a thought. I would give this book five-stars for prose, but the content at times is troubling. In her introduction, Jan Morris describes this book as a "period piece", something very much of the s, and in This is the first piece of Jan Morris's writing that I have read, and based on prose style alone, I will seek out more of her work. In her introduction, Jan Morris describes this book as a "period piece", something very much of the s, and in some ways, this is true.

A transgender person born in would not experience the same journey as Jan, who was born in -- but the descriptions of being trans and the difficulties, conflicts, joy and hope that Jan experiences feel timeless. As an account capturing a particular experience in a particular moment of time, this book is excellent.

I struggle with other aspects of Jan's writing: She views women as inherently more creative than men, because they can give birth, and also more passive, because women are "built to yield". She sees homosexual relationships as inherently unsatisfying, uncreative and unhappy because gay people cannot have children. These attitudes obvious colour her writing, and what she has to say about women and relationships can feel trite at best and offensive at worst.

She is also a product of imperial Britain, and sees the loss of the British empire as a sad thing, and her writing about Africa is profoundly racist. So this book can be hugely offensive -- but as a depiction of her own journey, and as an evocation of a place and a time, and indeed of an state of mind, it is successful. And beyond that, as an account of Morris's emotional and physical transition, it is moving and consistently compelling.

Morris is right, it is a "period piece", and it suffers because of this, but that is also part of what makes it so interesting. Dec 08, Dorothy Bennett rated it really liked it. CONUNDRUM is a classic, published in the early '70s, when articles, books, and movies about human beings with gender conflicts were not common nor widely available. Morris, who was successful in every sense of the word as James Morris, always felt that inside he was a woman.

Understanding that and doing something about it consumed the first half of his life; living as Jan Morris made up the second half. The book covers the before, the process of change, and the after; in addition, Morris takes a step back and talks about men and women in a broader sense--who they are, how they behave, and how they are treated in society or were at the time of writing.

Things change, and Morris recognized that fact in an Introduction written for the edition. I found the book very informative and interesting. If I have any problem with it, it is that the language is more formal, intellectual sending me to the dictionary quite often , maybe as a result of the fact that Morris is Welsh-English and when the book was written.

Both books are worth the time to read. Oct 01, Sophy H rated it really liked it.

Greg Sandow -- The Abduction Conundrum

I enjoyed this book. Understandably the writing about a woman's role in society feels quite outdated now, particularly for example when the author refers to physical pursuits such as climbing Everest or taking on physical challenges! It almost feels as if she is saying "oh you know how it is, women can't be bothered with that kind of thing, why would they, its pointless"!!! Bearing in mind the number of female ultra marathon runners, women peaking Everest without the aid of oxygen, women in spac I enjoyed this book.

Bearing in mind the number of female ultra marathon runners, women peaking Everest without the aid of oxygen, women in space exploration, women in positions of power. Thankfully we have come a long way since this book was written. It was quite fascinating to hear about Jan's transition but I found it bizarre that she would get her surgery in a backstreet clinic rather than a Western mainstream hospital. It was also funny to hear her talk of being in the "Old Boys Network" and this being like a covert mission for her as the whole time she felt she didn't belong.

I agree with others that a lot of the book concentrated on her travels rather than her relationships however she seemed quite forward thinking in her relationships with her family wife and children. I would recommend this as a compare and contrast text to the likes of Juno Dawson's experience. Quite a brave book to write at the time she wrote it.

Jul 11, Matt rated it it was amazing Shelves: I've read and loved enough of Jan Morris' books that it seemed past time to put her life into perspective.

This book seemed so personal that I actually chose to go with the audiobook, and I'm glad I did. I'll likely go back and read it in paper at some point in the next couple of years, but as a first experience listening to the story of Morris' experience emphasized the personal feel. Morris' new introduction is quite open about the fact that a lot of her ideas and terminology are now outdated, I've read and loved enough of Jan Morris' books that it seemed past time to put her life into perspective. Morris' new introduction is quite open about the fact that a lot of her ideas and terminology are now outdated, such that she finds it embarrassing to revisit.

I similarly found parts of it a little awkward and dated, but Morris is at her best when she's talking not about how she was trying to understand things, but about her own experience and how she felt and feels about things. That personal aspect of her story is eloquent and persuasive and I think will help this book remain a valuable experience for a long time. The Negro Conundrum by H. Memoirs of An Extraterrestrial The Negro Conundrum is a compelling and at times outrageous collection of fictionalized stories, taken from the life and times of a whimsical, circumspect extraterrestrial after he discovers-to his horror-that he has incarnated to Earth in the body of a Negro.

Homam, our extraterrestrial arrived to Earth's shores in December of , the son of a white mother and Negro father fully conscious of his true nature as something other than what he appeared to be on the outside.

Even his name came from a mysterious source. This wildly entertaining collection of personal memoirs deftly steps between the past and present, as Homam tells the story of his remarkable adventures on Earth, while struggling to find the meaning behind what he believes has been a gross mistake. Growing up in a predominantly colored neighborhood, Homam was restless for a deep connection with others of his kind. But it wasn't until his family moved to a predominantly white-redneck town in Maryland, that Homam began to feel alive.

His affinity toward white people contrasted with an inexplicable, searing dislike for Negroes-including his own father-serves as the catalyst for discovering his true identity. When the confrontations with his father turn violent, it is during these outbursts that Homam begins to see beyond the physical world, into another place in time that may hold the answers to his personal mystery.

Born with certain other-worldly abilities, which in many ways, makes him a perfect objective observer of the human condition, Homam uses these gifts on his journey towards a deeper understanding of his purpose, living a life precariously balanced on a razors edge between life and death. From a career as a insurance salesman, to Executive Producer for a nationally syndicated television show, Homam leaves a swath of transformed souls-most unaware of his extraterrestrial origins, but changed never-the-less by merely entering into his sphere of influence.

He even befriends members of the Ku Klux Klan and manages to inspire them to rethink ideas foisted upon them by their fathers from birth.

His search for answers deposits him in the midst of numerous bizarre encounters within the world of spirits and the paranormal. One such foray finds him confronting an evil unknown to modern man that has been lurking in the shadows for thousands of years, waiting to snatch the lives of unsuspecting human hosts. Memoirs Of An Extraterrestrial The Negro Conundrum is truly a balls-to-the-wall, take-no-prisoners, adult adventure, with lots of twists and turns as Homam explores the depths of gritty human emotions and relationships that lead this unwitting extraterrestrial, as well as the Reader on an entertaining journey to understand who and what we all are beneath these outer facades made from flesh.

Because if there's one thing Homam wants to prove above everything else about his life here on Earth - he's not just another Negro. Paperback , pages. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Memoirs of an Extraterrestrial , please sign up. Be the first to ask a question about Memoirs of an Extraterrestrial.

Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. I have less trouble with the anonymous scientist. Besides, I've run into an anonymous scientist myself; I understand the pressures that would lead a researcher with mainstream credentials to keep publicly clear of the taint of UFOs. Still, a hardnosed journalist could be forgiven for doubting everything that Jacobs says.

It's all hearsay, by the time it reaches me. The story of the family and the stains is even double hearsay -- the people involved told Jacobs what they say happened, and he told me. I can't vouch for any of it. But my personal, non-journalistic reaction might matter even more. Privately, speaking simply as a human being, not as as an investigator, I believed what Jacobs told me. But I also got intensely skeptical. I felt like the American Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter, in an anecdote the dean of abduction investigators, Budd Hopkins, relates in "A Note to the Reader" at the start of his book Intruders.

Karski told Frankfurter of what he had seen and heard, but Frankfurter replied that "he did not believe him.

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