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As adults, Chad tells Mock how worried he was for her. Mock is picked up on
Merchant Street by a man in a van, someone she would never agree to be with under normal circumstances, but he offers her so much money, and it is so close to her GRS date, that she gets into his van. The man steals her purse and, when the other women on the street help her call the police, the officers are unhelpful. She calls a regular, Sam, to come pick her up and let her sleep in his apartment for the night. Sam offers to pay for her GRS, Mock declines, but asks him about the nude modeling her photographs for.
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When her father moves them into an apartment with his new girlfriend, Denise, Mock connects with her daughter, Makayla. Mock adopts a pseudonym, Keisha, and chats with boyfriends
Makayla is no longer interested with over the phone as Keisha. Once, while at her aunt's apartment, one of the boys she had been meeting up with as Keisha comes looking for her. After the boy addresses Mock as Keisha in front of her father, Mock's father cuts her hair short to make her more masculine. Mock's mother eventually decides to bring Mock and her brother Chad back to Hawaii to live with her.
251:. She makes enough money that she can pay for her own hormone therapy. Later, Rick gets arrested again, and Mock's mother moves back in with Cori. Because of the transphobia she faces at Moanalua, Mock transfers to Farrington, the school where her brother and Wendi attend. At Farrington, there is a Teen Center and a transgender support group called Chrysalis that provides resources to transgender girls. Mock comes out to her father via a letter. Mock decides she wants to undergo
329:, as well as references to many different types of media. Passing, Mock says, implies that transgender people are not actually the gender their identify as; she is not passing as a woman, she is a woman. In the last video, Mock discusses reading at the library as a child, how stories about women who inspired her impacted her growing up, and how her book might be the same for young girls now.
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discusses coming out, as both transgender and a sex worker, which she says is a big theme of her book. She shares about her experience in the sex industry, how she worked in other jobs but sex work gave quick earnings and a tight-knit community, and how sex work is complex. In talking about popular culture, Mock says that
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Mock becomes class treasurer at
Moanalua. After taking estrogen in secret, she talks to her family to come out as a woman and ask to be called Janet. She repeatedly gets sent home from school for breaking the dress code by wearing skirts. She graduates from estrogen pills to shots, which she pays for
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Mock continues to work in the sex trade on
Merchant Street with strict rules on what acts she will perform and for whom. She starts college at the University of Hawai'i. When she pays her mother $ 120 for their electric bill, her mother and Chad realize how she is getting the money but say nothing.
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In 1992, Mock discovers her father smoking crack cocaine in her bedroom. At this moment she loses respect for her father. In 1994, Mock's father moves the three of them to Dallas, where the father's family lives. While in Dallas, Mock begins participating in more feminine activities with her aunts.
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In 1989, as children, Mock's friend and neighbor
Marylin dares Mock to take her grandmother's dress down from the clothesline and put it on. After being caught, Mock is scolded by her grandmother and mother for wearing a dress. At four years old, Mock discovers that her father is cheating on her
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On 30 January 2014, Mock posted a series of six videos on her YouTube channel discussing topics covered in her memoir. She talks about growing up while transgender, having to take care of herself because her parents did not, and hoping that her book will reach other young transgender girls. She
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Mock goes to
Bangkok, Thailand, for GRS. Dr. R. and Dr. C. perform the surgery. In recovery, Mock meets an older transgender Australian woman, Genie. Mock returns to Hawaii on December 28 and her mother embraces her tearfully. While Mock recovers, her mother takes care of her. Mock accepts her
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magazine job. Mock comes out to Mia as transgender. After eight months of no contact from Aaron, he comes to her apartment in the middle of the night. They reconcile, and move in together soon after. The book ends with a discussion of LGBT representation in the media and the perception that
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mother. Her parents eventually split up and at age seven Mock is sent to live with her father and brother, Chad, in
Oakland, California. While there, her father tries to instill masculinity into young Mock, pushing her to participate in sports and other activities that her brother enjoys.
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Mock, Chad, and their younger brother Jeff lived with their older sister Cori and her children. While in school in Hawaii, Mock meets Wendi, another transgender girl. Through her friendship with Wendi, Mock becomes more confident, dresses more feminine, and has access to
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was stated to do more than just tell a personal story as it builds from the tradition of earlier women of color writers, such as those Mock references in the memoir. Green states that Mock's memoir relates to women of all kinds, not just transgender women of color.
29:
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In the paper "Redefining
Realness?: On Janet Mock, Laverne Cox, TS Madison, and the Representation of Transgender Women of Color in Media", scholar Julian Kevon Glover complicates the popular reception of
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woman from childhood to adulthood. Mock opens the book with a scene from 2009, where she starts to tell her boyfriend Aaron that she is transgender and then starts telling her story from childhood.
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norms, beauty standards, and respectability politics. Glover states that many transgender women who do not uphold heteronormative ideals rarely get as much media prestige. While the popularity of
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Returning to 2009, having told her story to Aaron, Mock waits for a reaction. Their relationship is inconsistent for a while, and Mock makes a new friend in Mia, the woman who hired her for a
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was an important book in Mock's girlhood because it was a book about Black women, identity, and love. Other Black female authors that were formative for Mock and her development of
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is significant for representation of transgender women, Glover states, many transgender activists are denied media presence because their bodies or actions are not in line with
235:, a rigorous school. She joins the volleyball team, and becomes more confident in her femininity. She continues to meet up with Wendi, who develops a passion for makeup.
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pills. At age thirteen, Mock comes out as gay to her mother, and Wendi helps her become even more feminine. Together, they meet other transgender women and drag queens.
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After Rick gets arrested, Mock and her brothers, mother, and Rick move into a hotel room. After hanging around with Wendi and other transgender women, Mock enters the
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A 2014 review of the book claims that while Mock's memoir is personal, it reaches across the queer, transgender, and female communities to relate to many people.
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has also been praised for its complexity in representation of transgender people of color and for combining
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is praised for being one of a small number of literary texts written by transgender people of color, especially ones that feature themes of reading.
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Mock poses for a photographer, Felix, in lingerie. This is, she says, the decision she regrets most. She gets $ 1500 for two modeling sessions.
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in cash. She meets a boy named Adrian, who shows interest in her but rejects her when he discovers she is transgender.
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Mock's mother gets back together with Cori's father, her boyfriend from high school, named Rick. Mock attends
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and gets an after-school job at a clothing store to save money. Mock receives a scholarship to the
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Redefining
Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More
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Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More
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Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More
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Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love, and So Much More
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influenced her growing up. Pop culture references appear throughout
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women of color have connected to themes and moments in the memoir.
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Lyle, Timothy (Summer 2015). "An Interview with Janet Mock".
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transgender women need to be out and visible at all times.
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appear throughout the book. She also includes quotes from
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which covers her twenties, a period not much discussed in
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Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters
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for Hardcover Nonfiction. The book's original title was
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Ponce, Joseph (April 2018). "Queers Read What Now?".
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Janet Mock on Pop Culture & Redefining Realness
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813:Bianco, Marcie (June 5, 2014).
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152:. The book has been praised by
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