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Both an intimate memoir and an intellectual musing on sex, gender, and relationships, Apples & Oranges allows writer and academic Jan Clausen to use her own life story as a model for new ways of thinking through sexual categories. Born into a stifling family where neither sex talk nor the slightest profanity was tolerated, Clausen underwent an intellectual and sexual awakening, first at Reed College, and later on the streets of New York City, where she discovered her passions for both the life of the mind and other women. Fast-forward a number of years, and, bored with a life that had become predictable, she moved herself to Nicaragua, where she discovered a newfound freedom -- including the freedom to fall in love with a man. With unflinching clarity and a willingness to treat her own life as case study, Clausen asks to us to reconsider the inherited scripts and categories that have informed our notions of gender, sex, and intimacy. In discovering a space outside of any pre-conceived identity, she finds and offers us the freedom of true self-determination, the power to explore our own inclinations and desires, unburdened by the expectations of the outer world, uncluttered by the baggage so many of us carry within.… (more)
User reviews
The text is very dense and much more erudite and philosophical than I was prepared to expect in her memoir. Clausen
I found the anecdotes of Clausen's life much, much more interesting than her endless exploration of what all of it Means, and how all of it relates to Gender and Identity. It's almost as if Clausen needs to hide behind the scholarly investigation and analysis of her life in order to relate it to a reader. It's not entirely necessary.