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

5.0

How do I explain what I felt reading this book? Trans lives matter. Protect trans women, protect black trans women. It's surreal to read her struggles that are so prevalent in many LGBT youth yet find her so unharmed because she had a support system not many are able to have. The way she accepts her privilege of being surrounded by a loving family and the notion that she is "passing" as cis is beautiful and uplifting: we need others like her, like me, like us to understand their are people that accept you not merely tolerate you. That the notion of "passing" is a critique and objectification of women resulting from the patriarchy. We cannot commodify women's bodies because it alienates women and bodies that don't fit what society think women should be or are.

Absolutely loved this book because I am ignorant in the ways of black and trans lives as I am neither. Their voices only strengthen my belief in rights beyond those that I require. It opens me to injustices I have no experience in, to pain that transcends individual identities.