First Lady From Boyhood to Womanhood Elizabeth Roberts with Alison Mau

First Lady

From Boyhood to Womanhood

Elizabeth Roberts with Alison Mau

First Lady is the honest, insightful, sometimes brutal but often hilarious account of Elizabeth Roberts, the first New Zealander to undergo full sex-change surgery in 1969. 

Her transition from Garry to Liz broke new legal ground. Liz had to convince GPs, surgeons, psychiatrists and bureaucrats to do things they’d never attempted, nor considered; and she succeeded through sheer force of will.

But First Lady is not just about the transsexual experience. It documents the life of a creative, talented and warm-hearted woman who had the courage to be herself, against all odds.

It has been a life punctuated by surgery and its ongoing effects, pain and heartache, often bizarre criticism and opposition, relationship upheavals and time inside both men’s and women’s prisons.

Journalist Alison Mau got to know Liz when she phoned her after a TV debate on same-sex marriage. Ali instantly recognised there was a story that needed to be told.

’Although she had no way of knowing it at the time, Liz was breaking legal and ethical ground in an era when just wearing a woman’s dress could get a man thrown in jail.’

Ali says although Liz’s life story is an important one legally and historically, it is really, at its heart, simply a ‘bloody good yarn’.

Available now, $39.99 RRP, Upstart Press

Footnote

This feature on Stuff is well worth a read : http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/life/71706380/the-story-of-new-zealands-first-sex-change