27-year-old trans woman’s life-to-fullest memoir
It’s misleading to say that Sarah McBride has written a memoir at 27 years old. Whatever the idea of a memoir from a still fresh-faced adult might connote, McBride subverts it: The past few years of her life contain more human experience than many lifetimes.
When she was 21, McBride came out as a transgender woman. In the years since, McBride, who dreamed of a political career as a child, has made history. She pushed antidiscrimination legislation as a prominent trans activist and was both the first trans woman to work at the White House, as an intern, and the first trans person to speak at a national political convention.
In between, McBride also met and fell in love with a transgender man, Andy Cray, an LGBTQ health advocate and fellow activist, who she married and subsequently lost to cancer when she was just 24.
The tumult of these years — the affirming highs and the devastating lows — are chronicled in her vital and powerful new memoir, “Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality” (Crown Archetype; $26). The book journeys through McBride’s process of coming out, to her family and the world, the loss of her husband and the determined fight for political protection of trans and LGBTQ lives.
Now the national press secretary at Human Rights Campaign — the largest LGBTQ advocacy group in the country — McBride acknowledges how much she’s lived through.
“But I’m also reminded that there are so many 27-year-old people who have experienced so much more than me, right? Who aren’t just widows or transgender people, but who are experiencing hardship that I can’t even imagine,” McBride says.
McBride persistently acknowledges her privilege — her coming out is repeatedly met with love and support throughout the book — while seeing in it a responsibility to fight for those who are more vulnerable to discrimination and violence.
More remarkable, though, is McBride’s strength for optimism; the book maintains hope not only amid harrowing personal loss, but also ultimately in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidential victory, a dramatic shift after former President Barack Obama’s historically pro-LGBTQ administration. Revisiting these parts of her life, particularly her husband’s battle with cancer, was a process of rediscovering that hope, McBride says.
“The quote from my brother (a radiation oncologist) really struck me,” she says, referring to the chapter chronicling her husband’s decline. “When Andy’s health was deteriorating, he said, ‘As someone who had watched a lot of people pass away, this is going to be very difficult, but look around you and take stock in acts of amazing grace.’ ”
Her brother was referring to the breadth of love that she would witness from friends and family during this period — a lesson that would broaden into the Trump era.
“In many ways, that amazing grace, that unending hope, is the story of the last year and half of people marching, of people fighting, of diverse voices coming together and being heard in new ways,” she says.
Toward the end of the book, McBride recounts meeting a 7-year-old transgender girl who asked her a simple question: “What’s your favorite part about being transgender?”
It was a profound moment for McBride. Amid the swirls of vitriol and violence, hate and hardship that surrounds trans narratives came a celebratory question from a child. “It took more than twenty-years to hear that question for the first time,” McBride writes.
It was also an indication of what’s to come. McBride says her book matters now more than ever, in acknowledging the progress that’s been made, even if the political tide appears to have shifted since the election.
“Because frankly,” McBride says, “change always seems impossible until it’s inevitable.”