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.

I guess it all depends on whom you ask and when you ask. Race, I've learned, is in the eye of the beholder.

Nobody, she felt, understood her-not her mother, not her father, not her sister or brother, none of the girls or boys at school, nadie - except her man.

If Aphrodite chills at home in Cyprus for most of the year, then Fez must be the goddess’s playground

We aren’t encouraged to think for ourselves and ask questions. We are expected to accept what they teach us as infallible truths.

Foisting an identity on people rather than allowing them the freedom and space to create their own is shady.

Support and encouragement are found in the most unlikely places.