Plenty of Paradoxes

A Review of "All She Wanted" by Aphrodite Jones

Reviewed by Kevin Heyne

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"All She Wanted" is the first true crime novel I've read where the writing contains as many paradoxes as the subject matter itself.

Aphrodite Jones is a writer of the true-crime genre. Having made the New York Times Bestsellers list twice before, she has certainly won acclaim in her field. She has presented a very well researched story in All She Wanted. As the reader, however, I was never sure about the author's intentions in this book.

Writing about the killing of Brandon Teena, as well as his friends Phillip De Vine and Lisa Lambert isn't really as clear cut as it might seem. Mainly becausethis particular triple murder was a hate crime of transgendered proportions. I felt that in some areas, the author tried to down play this aspect somewhat.

Ms Jones spends a lot of time exploring the origin of Brandon's transition into manhood, attempts to discuss the issue of his transsexualism but seems hold to be of the belief that "the Brandon identity" is really a deception. That regardless of the fact that this person has gone to great lengths to live as a man, Brandon always seems to remain as Teena in her opinion. Jones seems to feel justified in her statements and cleverly hides this by using the ignorance of his family members in maintaining that "she" is an acceptable pronoun to use.

As the reader and as a transgendered man, I was disappointed that Ms Jones felt she had this right and made me wonder about how acceptable it would be for a sighted person to describe a blind man's experience or a straight person to do justice to a gay experience in print. Towards the end of her book she mocks transgendered activists and accuses them of asserting their own agenda in trying to label Brandon as one of them, but seemingly ignores any agenda of her own which comes through clearly in the experience of reading her work.

Despite these protests, I found the book easy to read and informative (in some places too much so). It does seem to lose itself in the middle; where the author seems to get a little lost in the wealth of information she tries to present about each character in the tragedy. Also, as the trial is underway, Ms Jones seems to attempt to change the focus of the story away from the crime against Brandon and tries to point out that both Lambert and De Vine also lost their lives and thus, despite being merely in the wrong place at the wrong time, are equal victims of the crime. Rightly so, except as I recall, neither Lambert's nor De Vine's faces have made it onto the book cover.

In the end, it's a worthwhile read. Much more information to detail is in the book that hasn't appeared else where. It is definitely, however, a true crime novel and can not be mistaken as a transgendered novel. In its defence, it did leave room in my mind for an internal debate about the subject. I would advise that it's worth the read if only to see how critical it is for people to see that the treatment of minority groups in the media is never something one can afford to be lax about.

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