Janet Mock's honest and sometimes searing journey is a rare and important look into la vida liminal, one that she manages to negotiate remarkably well, with grace, humor, and fierce grit. Mock doesn't only redefine what realness means to her, but challenges us to rethink our own perceptions of gender and sexuality, feminism and sisterhood, making this book a transcendent piece of American literature.

There are things in our blood that are just naturally passed down to us, whether we want to recognize them or not.

The hospital room was as cold as dead skin, the hallway crowded with lost souls and reeking of illness.

This thing I am feeling, I’m almost certain, is the closest I’ll ever come to standing somewhere in between truth and reconciliation.

When we illuminate the road back to our ancestors, they have a way of reaching out, of manifesting themselves...sometimes even physically.

Women destroy me. I allow them to.

The past is buried deep within the ground in Rabat, although the ancient walls in the old city are still standing, painted in electrifying variations of royal blue that make the winding roads look like streamlets or shallow ocean water