The Zuni man-woman Book

Woah. More than I bargained for.

This short book is at once a brief history and anthropology of the Zuni people, a biography of We'wha, who fulfilled the lhamana (third gender) role, a meditation on the nature of gender as a cultural construct (specifically how the lhamana identity fulfills a social need that Western/European culture fails to address), a critique of Western gender, an overview of Zuni rites as they relate to the construction of a gender identity, a (heartbreaking) account of the dismantling of the lhamana and similar "two-spirit" identities by government mandate (as well as the Victorian cultural forces that created those mandates), and a small beacon of hope in the (then in its early stages) reburgeoning of the two-spirit identity within intertribal cultures.

And all of this in 210 pages.

Some sections were denser and more academic than I'm used to, particularly Chapter 6 ("Two-fold One-kind," which is a Jungian interpretation of the "meaning" of Zuni rites), but that's not a criticism; those parts were fascinating. Also, it should go without saying that any book about American indigenous peoples and the injustices they've encountered is going to be very upsetting to anyone with a moral compass.

Tremendous respect to Roscoe for frequently deferring to a Zuni perspective; this book was one of the most sympathetic accounts of a culture I've read. It is unfortunate that the book was written before (just barely before) the offensive term "berdache" fell out of favor, but that is what it is.

Anyway, highly recommended. While this is not an easily-located book, you can buy it at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque, which is where I discovered it, and is well worth the trip.