Digital Transgender Archive

I Never Asked to Be Born: The Carol Durrell Story

Content Warning: This item contains potentially sensitive content related to child abuse and sexual assault. The autobiography of Carol Durrell (1945-2012), later known as Carolyn D. Rothschild, a Black trans woman who was a singer and performer. The manuscript covers her life from birth to 1976. The first half of the book concerns Durrell's early life as an effeminate, intellectually precocious child who loved to sing. She lived in a number of places as a child -- her grandparents' house in Virginia, her mother and stepfather's apartment in New York City, several ministers' and acquaintances' homes, and the Berkshire Industrial Farm, a rural facility for troubled youth in upstate New York. None of these arrangements were stable or lasting, and most were abusive. Durrell's love of music helped her to survive these painful experiences. By the age of twelve, she had already begun performing professionally with the Adelphi Singers, a gospel group made up of gay men. As a teenager living a marginal existence in New York, Durrell met a group of young street queens who recognized her as trans, put her in women's clothing and makeup for the first time, and introduced her to the sex work by which they all survived. The encounter changed Durrell's life, although she found sex work traumatic and spent the remainder of her youth struggling to survive on the streets. As an adult, she finally attained a measure of stability, singing gospel and performing with the famed female impersonation troupe the Jewel Box Revue, where she made a name with her live singing. Durrell's life took another upward turn when she began medically transitioning, first sourcing hormones from friends and then from a doctor. A steady gig at The Club 82, a Manhattan venue which featured female impersonators, funded her ongoing transition. Durrell also tells the story of her ten-year common-law marriage with a man she loved and his descent into heroin addiction, which gradually destroyed the couple's relationship. Finally, she describes a lifetime of traumatic encounters with police. Durrell's descriptions of her life are interspersed with remarks on her personal philosophy, religion, transition, and sexuality, and occasionally with interjections and commentary from the person who transcribed or typed the manuscript. The date of the manuscript is unclear; it ends in 1976, but was apparently assembled with modern word processing software. At some point after this manuscript was completed, Durrell would move to the small town of Nyack, New York, where she became a beloved local elder.