Everyone should read this book, just for the perspective it provides. Far too often we’re taught by popular culture that queer community doesn’t exist outside of the western world and that, if trans people existed before 2000, they led repressed lives without access to community or care. These are vast oversimplifications which are challenged and dismantled in Geena Rocero’s biography. I’ll admit that I myself had fallen into these traps, so I was honestly amazed by the stories Rocero told – of the popularity of trans pageants in the Philippines even decades ago, of her transition from a relatively young age, of how the makeup counter at the Macy’s she worked at was known to be where the trans Filipina women worked. This biography provides a window into a world that many of us aren’t aware of – that, in fact, has been deliberately obscured and hidden from us by a culture that wants to teach us that to be queer, especially trans, is to be alone, that we have no history, that we should be grateful for the scraps that western culture is willing to throw us because to live anywhere else is to experience these mistruths tenfold. Rocero certainly doesn’t pretend her life was perfect anywhere, and she is unflinching when she discusses the legal erasure she faced in the Philippines and the social erasure she faced in the U.S. But she also exposes the inaccurate, colonialist ways we’ve been taught to think, simply by sharing her story. Now, to be honest the writing style of this book wasn’t quite right for me. I don’t know why, exactly, it just didn’t quite click and I often found my mind drifting or wanting to go to bed. That’s the only reason this wasn’t a perfect five stars. But I think that was more of a personal preference than a serious problem with the writing, and I still stand firmly by my belief in the importance of this book and the belief that everyone – queer, straight, trans, cis, white, not white – should read it.
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