Redefining Realness
At the beginning of the memoir, Mock finds herself on a date with a man named Aaron. She soon recognizes that she cannot be truly vulnerable and honest with him since she could not be fully honest with herself: “I had presented Aaron a distorted me, and I couldn’t give him me while wrapped in secrets—stories I’ve never told. They trap you…you lost touch with yourself” (10).
This memoir is Mock’s story, detailing her experience growing up in Oakland, Texas, and Hawaii.
The form of the memoir allows Mock to honestly describe her experience as a trans woman without resorting to a single unified before-to-after narrative. She explains this experience: “I grew to be certain about who I was, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a time when I was learning about the world, unsure, unstable, wobbly, living somewhere between confusion, discovery, and conviction” (16).
Mock expresses that a childhood friend of hers, Wendi, positively contributed to the self-acceptance of her own identity: “I could be me because I was not alone” (118). But Mock proceeds to qualify this statement, “The friendship I had with Wendi, though, is not the typical experience for most trans youth. Many are often the only trans person in a school or community, and most likely, when seeking support, they are the only trans person in LGBTQ spaces” (118). Not only does Mock describe her own experience as a trans person, but she also uses her memoir as a vehicle through which readers might better understand other trans people.
Mock identifies herself as a trans woman of color. Her own self-definition is the following: “I am a trans woman of color, and that identity has enabled me to be truer to myself, offering me an anchor from which I can uplift my visible blackness, my often invisible trans womanhood, my little-talked-about native Hawaiian heritage, and the many iterations of womanhood they combine” (249). Here, Mock describes how giving her identity a definition has positively contributed to her life and allowed her to become truer to herself: “The pivot in which I decided to invite the world into my life, when I chose to acknowledge that though you may not perceive me as trans, I am trans, and being trans—as is being black, Hawaiian, young, and a woman—is an integral part of my experience, one that I have no investment in erasing” (258). This situates Mock’s identity as an integral part of herself; she takes pride in naming her identity.
At a certain point in her transition, Mock became conscious of an innate desire to undergo gender confirmation surgery. In order to raise enough money to do so, she becomes involved in the sex industry. Mock’s experience as a sex worker allows her to shed light on the systemic inequalities that often drive people of color into the industry: “Poverty is the key factor that drives trans women of color into sex work. The sex industry is filled with women of color, and so are our prisons. Race, class, and gender are all factors that frame the harshness of sentences” (213). In pointing out these inequities, Mock humanizes and challenges the stigma of people who are driven to work in the sex industry. Mock explains how people who end up in this situation rarely have much of a choice. Many are homeless or in poverty: “The greatest push factor for trans girls engaged in the sex trade is poverty, stemming from homelessness (often brought on by parents and/or guardians refusing to accept their gender identity) or growing up in already struggling low-income communities where resources are scarce” (213). Mock includes statistics in her memoir, using her personal experience as a segue into and adding context for the factual information: “Of the 1.6 million homeless and runaway American youth, as many as 40 percent are LGBTQ, according to a 2006 report by the Task Force and the National Coalition for the Homeless” (109). The factual information that Mock uses to support her assertions broadens the scope of her memoir, demonstrating how her experiences are not only exclusive to her.
Redefining Realness is a memoir that reverberates with bravery; Mock’s honesty and vulnerability in telling her story are wholly admirable.
