Janet Mock

Janet Mock was born as her father’s firstborn son and namesake, Charles Mock. She is of mixed native Hawaiian and black descent, and because she was perceived as black, she was therefore raised as black, learning to cope with racism from an early age. From a young age, Mock did not identify with being a boy and writes: “When I look back at my childhood, I often say I always knew I was a girl since the age of three or four” (16). However, she also asserts that this simple statement erases the nuances of her self-discovery and transformation, which was long and complex, and which is the subject of this memoir. Mock spends her early childhood in Honolulu at her Grandma Pearl’s and is then sent to live with her then-estranged father in Oakland. He has a rigid understanding of gender and does not...