A review by octavia_cade
Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More by Janet Mock

hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

I've been meaning to read this for a while, so I was pleased to find it in the local library (I've just moved to a different city for work, and exploring the offerings of the local library was high on my to-do list). It's a very thoughtful, considered telling of Mock's life as a child and a teenager. As a young trans girl from a disadvantaged background - which included, at times, drug-addicted parents, homelessness, and sex work - there is a natural process of self-discovery that is complicated by a sense of instability in her family life. That family, it must be said, was in many ways supportive of Mock's transition, if not always highly-involved in it - Mock admits, in the book, that she often held her parents at arm's length on this matter, especially her father, not giving them the opportunity to be as supportive as they might have been. One can hardly blame her, though, for choosing in the end to rely primarily on herself - she had to navigate her own transition in the way she thought best, after all.

It's just a very well-written, sympathetic book.