Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love So Much More
By Janet Mock
Publication Year: 2014
Type: Non-fiction
Genre: memoir, LGBTQ
Read on 2019-06-21
View additional specs on this book in Muhan’s 2019 Reading Survey ➞
★★★★☆
** spoiler alert** I first heard of Janet Mock several years ago because she was doing an event at my school promoting this book (I think?). I don’t think I ever fully knew what she did or read any of her writing. Still, her name kept popping up so, when I was looking for yet another memoir audiobook to listen to, I figured why not. First of all - the book title and subtitle do NOT do the contents of this book justice. I was crying on the subway listening to her story. And it’s not just the events of Mock’s life that rivet, but the humanity with which she describes her own selves and her family that just overwhelms you. How extraordinary a woman to be able to write so deeply and immersively, to see the intertwining threads of personal trauma and systemic oppression so clearly and firmly. Janet Mock, in being so kind and compassionate to herself and her own story, gives us all permission and example to extend such kindness and compassion to ourselves and one another. We need these stories, true stories, to bring to life the kinds of things many of us only experience in warped cartoonish misogynistic and racist fiction.
Mock’s writing style is very much that of a journalist by training. She easily segues from personal anecdote to didactic surveys of gender and race. Having a dictionary understanding of a lot of things she introduces early in the book, I found some of these bits kind of pedantic and boring. But I absolutely loved when, later on, Mock gives her more nuanced takes on gender and sexuality. I especially appreciate her point on how, although for reasons of simplicity and political efficacy, claiming queer and trans identities are “born this way” actually skips over the important stages of self-discovery we all experience as we grow up. I additionally liked her discussion of the complexities of expressing stereotypical feminine or masculine gender as a trans person.
I’m mainly turning on the spoiler button for this next part. I didn’t know Mock did sex work as a young woman trying to save money while in college to get gender affirmation surgery. And I am very glad I didn’t hear of this elsewhere and glad this footnote of Mock’s life hasn’t become the tag line of her brand. Because I think it is immensely powerful that Mock was able to tell this part of her story herself, to explore and reflect fully on the series of events that led to that choice. I wouldn’t want to have known this piece of information any other way, and I am immensely grateful to Mock for expanding my understanding of sex work and my compassion towards sex workers.
Other things I learned and loved: navigating racialized identity in Hawaii being native Hawaiian and Black; realizing an idolized parent is not perfect and the ongoing ping-pong match of figuring out how to relate to difficult parents; being a young woman in New York; how people sometimes seek sex and love in ways that replicate trauma and what others have reinforced about your own power.
