TRANSCENDENT

A four-time Emmy-nominated actress and transgender rights activist, Cox elaborates on a journey that’s been filled with joyful and challenging moments and, ultimately, liberating experiences. The book is split into three parts, each representing an era in the author’s evolution. She was raised in Mobile, Alabama, by an exasperated single mother. Even playgrounds became unsafe spaces, as Cox was bullied by classmates: “I couldn’t help the lilt of my voice, hide the natural fluidity of my wrists, the balletic expressiveness of my hands as I talked….Everybody was telling me I was a boy, but I knew I was a girl.” After being shuffled off to an orphanage at age 10 and attempting suicide many years later, Cox hardened her “armor,” reclaimed her footing, and embarked on an identity “reinvention.” Together with her brother, Lamar, she enrolled in the Alabama School of Fine Arts and honed her dance and performance skills as well as academic acumen. The book smoothly moves through Cox’s young adulthood as she resisted her queerness until experiences on both coasts (New York City club life and the actress limelight in Hollywood) changed the way she perceived her Black transgender identity and visibility. As her star rose with an award-winning role in Orange Is the New Black beginning in 2012, it opened the door for additional acting roles. Cox is an engaging storyteller and excels at reanimating anecdotes with candor and wry humor. Toward the end of the memoir, she intimately details a relationship with a Republican New York City police officer who’d kept her identity hidden from his public life. Though she fell deeper in love with him, she ended things when she realized there had to be more for her in romance than to be treated like a secret. Saturated in themes of resilience, empowerment, and Black transgender pride, Cox’s confessional will resonate with queer readers and anyone who has had to struggle to find and reconcile the true essence of themselves.