How she learned to love herself
The road to self-love and confidence is paved with good intentions — and detours. There is no blueprint on how to navigate the world, especially if you’re a transgender woman of color. But with her second book, the recently released “Surpassing Certainty: What My Twenties Taught Me,” activist Janet Mock is attempting to provide a model for those coming behind her.
The book is a candid reflection on her 20s, a time of self discovery, risk taking and success that now makes Mock one of the most visible and defining voices of trans experience. Ahead of the Los Angeles stop of her book tour — 7 p.m. Wednesday at Barnes & Noble at the Grove — Mock spoke with The Times by phone from New York City; the conversation has been edited.
Why did you decide to write a second book?
“Redefining Realness” was about the struggle with my body in the context of how much agency can I have. But I realized there was a whole gap in my life before I became public where I wasn’t open about being trans. I had that privilege to not be met with my trans-ness in every space that I went to. And I felt like this was a genre that needed to be complicated a little bit.
I wanted to offer young girls growing up, girls literally right now trying to slay these streets, a possible road map to follow — or one to not follow because I was sometimes too sloppy.
Where is the title from?
It came from my queen, Audre Lorde, one of my heroes. She created a blueprint for me to write myself into history. In “Sister Outsider,” she talks about the sacrifices that come when speaking up: “And at last you’ll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.” “Surpassing certainty” means there is a sense of us knowing ourselves without any compromise, knowing unapologetically we’re something that goes beyond just being here. There is something even more certain in the world, and sometimes that is just us speaking our truth and showing up as our full selves.
In the book, you write openly about sex work and being a stripper. Why?
For me, it’s about resisting and unlearning the things I was told I needed to be silent and ashamed of. It started with my identity and growing up as a trans girl. I [was told I] needed to be silent about this and grapple with it in the corner. There’s a similar stigma attached to sex work. So often we dismiss, objectify, push and marginalize women and folk who are engaging in this work when oftentimes it’s the only work available to low-income people, particularly queer and trans people and women of color. We tell them that we don’t have any other opportunities for them, but the way in which you know how to use the only resource you sometimes have, your body, we’re going to throw on this layer of stigma and shame and tell you you’re not worthy of existing. For me, it’s about ensuring that I don’t forget that I came from that world and I was built by that world. I will not forget my people. I have a firm stiletto planted in the streets and in those clubs with those girls.
What do you hope people take away from the book?
For so long, I guilted myself for not being more active and vocal and visible during those years that corresponded with my 20s, but I hope it inspires other people to take time for themselves. We have this pressure, specifically within the LGBTQIA movement, where we tell people to “come out, come out wherever you are. That’s your first political act.” I came out at 12 years old and I lived my truth and [figured] out who I was. I wanted to have access to all those things my peers had access to — leaving home, going to college, going to grad school, getting my first job and starting my journalism career.
I think the greatest lesson would be to take the time for yourself. You’re deserving of that time and every single fantastical, outrageous dream you have that you want to accomplish. I hope it gives people a road map that they can possibly follow, or show them someone who did that and lived enough to tell it.