Chris Mosier: In the first chapter of your book, you said, “we need stories of hope and possibility, stories that reflect the reality of our lived experiences.” What were some of the things you read growing up that reflected your experiences, or spoke to you?
Janet Mock: I had access to stories of people who looked like how I wanted to look, or looked like me in skin color and hair. Anything by Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and Maya Angelou; those four authors continued to feed me growing up. They showed me possibilities that a brown woman could live a thriving life, despite going through traumatic experiences. But the intersection of my transness was never involved in those stories, though black womanhood was. I learned storytelling through black women writers, but not through trans women writers. So that was always a struggle for me; I could dream of the hope and possibility of living as a visibly black woman in the world, possibly, but not necessarily as a trans woman of color. That wasn’t possible in my mind yet, so I felt like I needed to write my own story.
I love that you immediately jump into intersectionality in the first answer. One of the things you said was that your mission was to be “unapologetic about the layered identities you carry within your body,” and I thought that the word “unapologetic” was really amazing.
It’s so funny, because it’s a word I’ve always said and I’ve felt and I found myself saying it more and more throughout my speaking and any time I did media blurbs. Then I wrote the book, my brother Chad was like, “you say ‘unapologetic’ a lot!” I guess it’s a point I want people to really start embracing. I think sometimes as someone who communicates through media, who is a media facing person – most of my public life is through media – I’m scared of turning some people off, even within the trans community. I feel like sometimes when I start talking about race, people start to get defensive and turn off. I can say something as obvious as “I’m a trans woman of color” then a lot of white trans women say, “oh, well she’s not really talking about us.” But what I realize too is that there is no universal trans experience. We all have similarities, but all of our experiences are completely different. All of us have different relationships, access points, and exile points, and experiences, access and oppression, and all that kind of stuff. I just try to be unapologetic about the fact that yes, I am a trans woman of color, and I navigate the world as that and with those identities, and I don’t want to feel as though I have to self edit in order to make an audience or anyone comfortable, inside or outside of the trans community.
I think that’s a lot of the trans experience in general is this idea of self censorship and being vulnerable. There can be a lot of self censorship in the retelling of history for a trans person. What was your process like for finding your voice growing up?
I think what was pivotal for me was leaving my father and going to live with my mother in Honolulu. And meeting my best friend Wendi. Because if there was a definition of unapologetic, Wendi would be there. She did not care! She let no one change who she was. When she started interacting with me on a daily basis, that was when my life changed. She gave me the space to be very open about who I was, and that’s when I started finding my voice and reviewing the layers of myself, the fact that I love feminine things and I want to wear make up and I can still be super smart in class and be outspoken – it was like crafting my own composite of what gender was.
When I came into adulthood, I learned from other trans women that “you need to be quiet,” because you “pass” you need to be quiet about your past, so now go and move on and be successful; that was the model that they had. So for me it was like, so I’m done with college and I had already done my transition stuff that made me feel comfortable with myself, and then it was like okay, I’m going to go live in New York and be anonymous and no one is going to know who I am, and I can just figure out what that means to just be a young woman in this world. So I did that, and for a while it was amazing, but part of myself felt like I was silencing myself again, like, “don’t ever talk about being trans, because if you talk about being trans, Janet, you know all of this stuff is going to be pulled away from you.”
I was unpacking: what kind of life do I want to live? How full of a life do I want to have? Do I want to be open with my partners or closest friends in New York City? That was a discovery process that probably happened I’d say two years, three years before I stepped forward in Marie Claire. When I started opening up to my boyfriend Aaron, and to my best friend Mai, and a few other close friends, my world started shifting, and I started not caring so much because these people still loved me. Because what I learned about being trans was that you’re not loveable, because all we are is punch lines to jokes and points of tragedy in movies and popular culture. But that wasn’t my lived experience, because the people around me loved me.
I really like the details of your story telling. Maybe it’s because it’s the first memoir by a young trans person, that shares that experience of becoming yourself and being comfortable with yourself, and really gives that model of ‘I came out and these people still love me and my experience is not what I’ve seen reflected in the media.’ Were there parts of this experience that you didn’t want to get into?
Oh my god, yes! I think I found myself reluctant about opening up about some of this stuff like the points of violence between my parents’ relationship, the suffering there. Dealing with childhood sexual abuse, sexual assaults. I found myself wanting to pull back but I knew that the points in which I wanted to silence myself I needed to push through in the memoir, so that’s why I kind of went there sometimes. Like having sex, and my body being taken from me in certain instances, being taken advantage of as a child, and then going into sex work, surviving through that and thriving through that, and my complicated relationship with that and with trans womanhood – those were the parts that were probably the hardest for me.
It’s been great to watch you tell your story over the last couple years and to use your voice and still engage the community and those around you.
That was the first thing I wanted to do. I knew that my experiences from Marie Claire to speaking at colleges and to young people around the country that when I’m open on stage or open on a page, people then want to be open with me. I go into storytelling and the story sharing process opens up. The first thing I knew with the book was that by being so open and honest and raw about my experience, I knew that whoever was going to have this book, at least half of them were going to want to share parts of their selves. I want to give everyone else another space for story telling. Let’s share our stories at IAMREDEFININGREALNESS. If you have something you want to get off your chest, or you have intersections you feel are being erased, even through my experience, say it here. Here’s a space that we can do that together.
That was the Story Sharing Campaign. What was the Storygiving Campaign?
In the Storygiving Campaign I asked people to donate $20 so we could send books to low income trans people who requested the book. This was one of the things I marveled at – our community, and our supporters of the book and allies came in and gave money, which sent over 120 books to trans people who requested it. I liked that it was like I can give if I can, but I can also request. It was people saying, “I want a book,” and us meeting that need. I would like other people to replicate this when they publish mainstream books. On the campaign page, we wrote down exactly what we did so it’s easy for other people to replicate if they need to.
I saw in your blog in a couple of spots that your book was originally going to be titled “Fish Food.” What was that about and why the change?
[laughs] So I think at first it was a joke with my friends, like “oh yes, honey, it’s gonna be called ‘Fish Food’.” [laughs] You have to hear it in that tone of voice, like, “yes gurl, it’s gonna be ‘Fish Food,’ hunty.” You have to hear it in that queeny voice. Then it was just like how do I explain that on a morning show? “Fish” is a term in the community about you look fish, like passable as a girl. I think it was my political consciousness changing too; I wanted my title to have a mission to it. “Redefining Realness” was more of a takeaway there. Like, even if I don’t read the book, I understand what she’s saying.
Redefining Realness is available February 4, 2014 and is available for pre-order now at janetmock.com/books/. Janet is featured in the 11th print edition of