Laura Jane Grace's Memoir "Tranny" is a powerful and essential read (Book Review)

"Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock's Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout," the memoir by Against Me! singer Laura Jane Grace, is a powerful depiction of life in a band and her struggles to recognize and then accept herself as a transgender woman. As is my practice for all memoirs and autobiographies, I will not be offering a numeric score nor a critical review. How could I ever judge someone's life? Instead, please accept when I tell you that this is a fast paced, well-written, eye-opening, and impactful memoir covering more than 15 years of Laura's life from teen to coming out with the crazy band stuff in the middle!

As I am working through my own transition and slowly coming out, I've been searching for people (in real life and in books) to learn from and find mirrors in. I was familiar with Against Me! from my days in the music industry. Although anarchist punk isn't really what I listen to, several of my clients were heavily influenced by them and were big fans, so I knew they were important. Several years ago, I cheered from afar as Laura Jane Grace came out to the world as a transgender woman. I had no idea what her life had been like, how sad, crippling, and dangerous her journey was.

Starting life as the child of a military father, Laura (who does not shy away from using her deadname while telling her story, but I feel uncomfortable using here so I will go by her chosen name) bounced from town to town, including a long stay in Italy. It was there that her parents separated and she was ultimately raised by her single mom back in Florida. There was no one like her there, it was a conservative swamp away from anything that could bring joy. It was a land of bullying, disenfranchisement, and targeting by police. It was there that Laura put her band together.

Against Me! started as a true DIY indie punk band (not even with a real drum kit!), hell-bent on leading a life in line with its anarchist beliefs. The memoir chronicles their rise to fame, the hatred of old fans when they released an album on a major label, the fights, the drugs (OMG the drugs!), the drinking, the changes in the lineup, the loves, and the losses. It does so in vivid, stark, and forthright passages. Laura admits just how messed up and unpleasant she was. She presents with total honesty and self-reflection of her own role in so many destroyed relationships.

However, during her entire life, going back to a young child, she was aware that there was something different inside and over time experienced harsher and harsher dysphoria. Many times in her life she could not fight the urges to present as a woman, if only in private. On and off, rejecting it, hiding it, denying it, fighting against it, this struggle for acceptance seems intimately woven into the other (often poor) choices she made in life, particularly the high level of drug use, a form of self medication possibly.

The memoir ends with her coming out and losing her wife as a result. It also depicts the horrible double bind that being famous and coming out puts on a trans person, who then must conform anew to what society expects from a transgender person. Rather than allowing Laura the freedom to experiment and explore in safety, she was forced to wear this new persona just as she had worn her old gender: in a way that matched other's expectations. How absolutely crushing that she wasn't given the space she needed at the time.

Perhaps though, the passages that most upset me were her discussion of the process of accessing hormone replacement therapy (HRT). She describes in several painful scenes the barriers put up by psychotherapists and endocrinologists, the acts she had to put on to convince them, and the lack of autonomy they provided her back. It is an absolute travesty that trans health-care is not more accessible and less insistent upon playing stereotypes. Many endocrinologists require that people have "lived" as their new gender for a year before starting hormones. However, what else have they been living their whole lives? They may have been expressing a different gender, but they were always living as whomever they were, even if they hadn't realized it yet or chosen to publicly express it. The requirement to be wearing a wig and a dress, as Laura was made to do, just to convince someone else of your gender is unconscionable.

It's hard to tell exactly, but by the end of the memoir, it appears that Laura is settling into her continued transition and the new realities as well as a new era for her music. The whole book is interesting, fast-paced, vividly described and a window into a complex and nearly tragic life. Whether you are looking to understand one person's journey as a trans women or a lover of popular music and curious about the inner workings of the industry, this memoir succeeds. As a combination of both, it is excellent.

While I didn't find as many direct parallels into my own journey with Laura's story as I have with others, there are so many powerful and eye-opening moments that I am so glad I read it. This is a must-read.

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