NEW YORK, November 8, 2023 (CarryOnHarry.com)
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Transgender Awareness Week begins Nov. 13, culminating with Transgender Day of Remembrance and Resilience on Nov. 20. Miles Borrero, author of the new memoir Beautiful Monster: A Becoming (Oct. 24, 2023; A Regalo Press Book; ISBN: 979-8-88845-000-0; $28.99; Hardcover), reveals his journey from girlhood in Colombia to an artistic and mindful life in the United States to achieve the American Dream. Yet, it was his father’s looming death that gave the 40-something-year-old author the impetus to make his transition from woman to man — and affirm his truest self. 

Beautiful Monster candidly discloses Miles’ deepest fears after he decided to have top surgery — a double mastectomy — and start using male pronouns. Regardless of the strides made in the transgender movement over the last decade, Miles knew that he could face not only serious health challenges but also harsh discrimination — both personally and in the workplace. In America alone, the reports concerning transgender people are staggering: 

• Transgender adults are twice as likely as cisgender adults to be unemployed (according to a November 2021 report from McKinsey & Co.), and cisgender employees earn about 32% more each year than their transgender colleagues, even when the latter have similar or higher education levels.
• Funders for LGBTQ Issues reports that trans people are more than twice as likely to live in extreme poverty (earning under $10,000 a year) than all other members of the general population, with Latinx transgender people facing three-and-a-half times and Black transgender people facing three times the poverty rate. 
• According to the AMA, fatal anti-transgender violence in the U.S. is on the rise, and Black transgender women comprise the majority of victims. “The number of victims could be even higher due to underreporting,” notes AMA Board Member S. Bobby Mukkamala, M.D., “and better data collection by law enforcement is needed to create strategies that will prevent anti-transgender violence.”

In Beautiful Monster, Miles Borrero shares his remarkable life journey and spiritual awakening. Written with honesty, grace, humor, and, above all, depth of feeling, this memoir is, in Miles’ own words, “a true re-membering … An act of putting myself together with love.”

Publishers Weekly writes, “Borrero’s incandescent debut memoir … is by turns funny and gut-wrenching.… Readers will be captivated by this always inspiring, sometimes shattering story of self-discovery.” 

About the Author

MILES BORRERO has survived fronting a Latin rock band, riding horses competitively, acting on various stages across the U.S., and nannying a six-year-old. He has been Catholic, Jewish, and a frequent guest at Krishna’s house, and has lived life as a boy, a girl, a woman, a man, and something in between. Now an acclaimed senior yoga teacher who leads retreats all over the world, Miles is passionate about dismantling the systems within ourselves that keep us small. He lives in New York with his sweetheart and their two adorable dogs.

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Source: Miles Borrero, author