Middlesex is a narrative told by the protagonist Cal/lie, a hermaphrodite who is raised as a girl until his adolescence when he decides to be a boy Cal. But it is important to clear that it is more than a hermaphrodite story. Middlesex explores the middle ground not just between sexes but also between Greek and American culture. It is a broad and complex Bildungsroman (coming of age) that tells an immigration saga of a Greek family and explores gender identity among a various other themes like race, …show more content…
One can even question why female to male transformation. Is it for the general power that is seen to be belonging exclusively to men? But that is apparently not so in this book as the author in a discussion at Guardian book club cleared that it was so because that was the truth of Cal’s condition 5-Alpha-reductase deficiency syndrome that he had as result of inbreeding in the family.
Apart from race discrimination that is rampant is the Middlesex, gender discrimination is rather subtle and often draped in sarcasm and humor as reflected in the conversation between Milton and Tessie about male- female sperm that shows the general prejudice but it’s still there in the very distinction between how girls and boys are brought up, in the culturally determined clothes and habits designated as suitable for girls and boys, something with which Cal deals with