For some, excavating the past isn’t an adventure, it’s more akin to tearing a Band-Aid off an open wound.

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.

Women destroy me. I allow them to.

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.

For some, excavating the past isn’t an adventure, it’s more akin to tearing a Band-Aid off an open wound.

Globalization by the way of McDonald’s and KFC has captured the hearts, the minds, and from what I can see through the window, the growing bellies of the folks here.

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