Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton"Suits Me is the biography of a now notorious jazz musician named Billy Tipton, who grew up as Dorothy Tipton in Oklahoma City and Kansas City but lived as a man from the time she was nineteen until she died at age seventy-four. Billy Tipton's death in Spokane, Washington, made news all over the world, not because he was celebrated as a musician but because the scale of his deception - he had been "married" to five women and had reared several adopted children - and the scarcity of ready explanations endowed the skimpy available facts with the aura of myth." "But locked away in Billy's office closet lay files of clippings and photographs documenting the transformation of Billy from she to he, as well as a legacy of annotated comic routines, musical arrangements, and program notes. These revealed to Diane Wood Middlebrook how Billy scattered clues and riddles night after night about the drag she wore. These hints were so bold that they helped conceal Billy's secrets." "With brio and pathos, Suits Me tells the life story of this brilliant deceiver, who lived and loved in two skins, one of each sex."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved |
From inside the book
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Page 10
Gaining erotic satisfaction from women who would not have permitted the same
intimacies if they had known Billy ' s sex ? And what did Billy want ? What was in
it for her when she chose not only to adopt the role of a man but to play it in every
...
Gaining erotic satisfaction from women who would not have permitted the same
intimacies if they had known Billy ' s sex ? And what did Billy want ? What was in
it for her when she chose not only to adopt the role of a man but to play it in every
...
Page 59
The vigilance and discipline required to sustain the masculine role gave a
profound theatricality , gratifying in itself , to the banal routine of Billy ' s everyday
life . Moreover , the style of heterosexual masculinity that Billy eventually
developed ...
The vigilance and discipline required to sustain the masculine role gave a
profound theatricality , gratifying in itself , to the banal routine of Billy ' s everyday
life . Moreover , the style of heterosexual masculinity that Billy eventually
developed ...
Page 217
Once her character had been organized within playing the role of Billy , role -
playing itself seems to have taken over and provided guidance for behavior with
its own legitimacy . Looking at Billy Tipton in terms available in the late twentieth
...
Once her character had been organized within playing the role of Billy , role -
playing itself seems to have taken over and provided guidance for behavior with
its own legitimacy . Looking at Billy Tipton in terms available in the late twentieth
...
What people are saying - Write a review
LibraryThing Review
User Review - bookwormteri - LibraryThingWhile I found this book super interesting, I definitely felt the lack of Billy's perspective in this story. An incomplete read without knowing what he was thinking and feeling and his motivation ... Read full review
LibraryThing Review
User Review - ursula - LibraryThingThis was a very interesting book about Billy Tipton, a musician in the jazz/swing era who was born a woman but passed as a man almost his entire adult life. It's both fascinating and frustrating ... Read full review
Contents
But Who Was She? 18891928 | 12 |
Kansas City 19291932 | 33 |
The In Sex 19331934 | 51 |
Copyright | |
12 other sections not shown
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Common terms and phrases
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Bibliographic information
| Title | Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton Peter Davison bk |
| Author | Diane Wood Middlebrook |
| Contributor | Diane Wood Middlebrook |
| Edition | illustrated, annotated |
| Publisher | Houghton Mifflin, 1998 |
| Original from | the University of Michigan |
| Digitized | 14 May 2010 |
| ISBN | 0395654890, 9780395654897 |
| Length | 326 pages |
| Subjects | › › Biography & Autobiography / Music Biography & Autobiography / Women Music / Genres & Styles / Jazz |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |