LGBTQ activist Janet Mock gained national attention when a profile of her experience, ‘I Was Born a Boy' was published in Marie Claire magazine in 2011. I didn’t become aware of her until the press tour for her new book Redefining Realness, when Mock gained notoriety for her very bad-ass takedowns of Piers Morgan and Katie Couric, whose misunderstanding of trans issues was utterly embarrassing.
I was really anxious to read her book, purely for its educational value. Trans culture is deeply complex and demands so much understanding and sensitivity. In my own efforts to be respectful I am often too scared to say or think anything about it, assuming that I cannot, and will never, understand trans experience. So I really appreciated the opportunity to gain her perspective from a memoir that is so deeply personal.
While I wanted and expected lots of didacticism, I was really blown away by its sheer literary merits; that sounds like a backhanded compliment, which is not my intention. Good writers are few and far between, and Mock happens to be an excellent writer and a great trans activist.
Not only that, her own literary experiences are woven throughout and comprise major components in her personal development. I could read literary memoirs all day long, so it was a nice surprise to find that her memoir about gender and identity happened to also veer in that direction. And most importantly, she read and loved many books that I also loved at the same age, and cites Zadie Smith as her number one author crush.
Her tone establishes a kind of intimacy between author and reader that is so hard to form and maintain, and yet it never impedes her authority as a trans woman. More generalized information about trans culture is incorporated into her own experiences so organically that it manages to be both enlightening and simultaneously pleasurable.
My only criticism is that I dearly wish the publisher had gone with a different cover; in many ways this looks like a generic memoir, which it isn’t. It will probably look dated ten years from now, and such a landmark book in LGBTQ culture deserves better.