A short book reflection by Shira Devorah 

Just a few moments ago I finished Janet Mock’s memoir, Redefining Realness, My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More. I’m still stunned. I’m not much of a memoir reader, but I’m pretty sure this book has changed that.

here’s a link to buy the book on Amazon!

Thanks to a generous donation from UMBC’s LGBTQ Faculty & Staff Association, I was able to snatch up this book from the Women’s Center’s very own lending library! Over the past couple of days, I have been relishing every moment of Janet Mock and her story. Mock, a trans woman of color, takes her readers through her life from early childhood until now. In a whirlwind of wit and poignancy, she shares herself with us.

I am not ashamed to admit that I cried a whole bunch throughout this book. Mock fought tooth and nail to become the woman she is today, and though she has been through a lot of pain and oppression, she never falters in her stance as an activist. Every personal recollection comes with a lesson Mock has for her readers. She challenges us to be better people, to see others more complexly, to  be critical of systems of inequality and injustice that exist all around us. Mock allows her readers to peak into incredibly sensitive parts of her, and trusts us to learn from the barriers she faced in her girlhood and adolescence.

I think this memoir is a wonderful introduction to intersectional identities and social justice. Any person who picks up this book will be gently introduced to many concepts that they might not have been privy to beforehand.  While I feel like I know a bit about many issues touched upon in this book, I have been changed  by her discussions. Mock pushes readers to confront poverty, trans issues, multiculturalism, drug use, sexual abuse and sex work. White, middle-class people like me  are made to confront our privilege and come out of this book with a better understanding of other’s lives. I am so lucky to get a chance to grow with Janet through the pages of her self discovery.

I highly suggest this book to anyone and everyone. As a trigger warning, Mock discusses her personal experiences of sexual abuse and sex work, so please practice self care if you plan to borrow this book from the Women’s Center after I return it.

If you’ve already read Redefining Realness and need more Janet Mock in your life, check out her awesome blog!

If you want more  info about the book itself, here’s a quick interview she did with Slate back in 2014.

I first learned about Janet Mock through Her Story, an awesome web-series  written by and starring trans women, so you should totally check that out.  Here’s an Interview with Janet and Jen Richards, co-creator of HerStory.

So go out there and read, friends! I’ll be updating periodically on the rest of my summer reading books from my summer reading challenge. Happy Reading!

This blog is part of an ongoing project to catalog and describe The A.O.K. Library’s Special Collections’ Photography Collections.  This unknown actor’s album may be found in the Special Collections at A.O.K. (room 104) as: Actor’s Portfolio-Cartes de Visite, Collection 237. The post was written by Austin Kibler, an intern in Special Collections for the summer of 2016 and a graduate student in UMD’s HiLS program.

Look at these two photos below, one is of an infamous fellow and the other could be:

The members of the UMBC Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) Faculty and Staff Association are horrified, grieved, and heartbroken in response to the hate crime/mass murder in Orlando on Sunday. We send our love and support to the Orlando LGBTQIAA+ Latinx community, the LGBTQIAA+ Muslim community, and the broader LGBTQIAA+ community. Those of us who are able are donating to LGBTQIAA+ organizations in Orlando to provide tangible help as those communities continue to grieve.

To the LGBTQIAA+ students, staff, and faculty members who are not members of the LGBTQ Faculty and Staff Association, we want you to know that you are not alone. We are here with you (you can contact us at lgbtfsa@umbc.edu), to grieve, to provide support, and to plan for the next steps in the social change that must happen. Acts of hate and terror will not bend our community’s resolve to continue our teachings about love in the face of years of violence against our communities. We are firm in our belief that violence, whether from a terrorist act, or from a homophobic individual, will not defeat us or our hard earned freedoms. We are also planning a vigil, and will soon announce details.

We recognize that our strength comes from our collective power to engage in conversation and to reach out to others. We condemn the exploitation of the Orlando hate crime to spread further hate and violence towards Muslims. We express solidarity with LGBTQIAA+ Muslims who may be feeling unsafe due to the intersection of their identities, and with the Muslim community more generally, whose safety is threatened every time sensationalized reporting immorally generalizes from the acts of a single, violent person to an entire group of people.

To our allies: We appreciate your support, and ask that you continue to listen to members of our community for the types of help that are most needed. Many in our community are feeling outraged, and it is very good to have visible allies who remind us that there are others who are also fighting for our safety and dignity. We have included a list of specific action steps at the end of this statement.

The members of the LGBTQ Faculty and Staff Association span the generations, and many of us have experienced the long history of violence and institutionalized homophobia and transphobia in this country. As we listen to the news coverage of the murders in Orlando, we have never been more convinced of the importance of our work as teachers, researchers, advocates, and allies to our LGBTQIAA+ colleagues and students. The media has not done a great job of including experts in the fields of gender or sexuality in their coverage, or explaining the history of violence directed toward LGBTQIAA+ people of color at gay bars. That this attack happened during gay pride month only adds salt to the wound. Gay pride is a time for celebrating the start of the modern gay liberation movement that was kicked off by the 1969 uprising at the Stonewall Inn in New York’s Greenwich Village where LGBTQIAA+ people (many of whom were also from the Latinx community) had been routinely harassed and assaulted by police, and for the first time, fought back. The Orlando hate crime is only the latest chapter in a long history of violence against LGBTQIAA+ people who have come together in bars and clubs to congregate in safe spaces, only to become the targets of violence.

We have also seen substantial social change/progress and an astonishing expansion of legal protections in our lifetimes. A year ago this month, the U.S. Supreme Court guaranteed LGBTQIAA+ people the right to marry all across the country; but our struggle is not over. We actively resist the complacency that can come from progress, because we see that not all members of our communities have benefited equally from these social and institutional changes. In addition to the Orlando murder of a shocking number of Latinx members of our community, there has been a recent rash of “bathroom bills” across the country targeting transgender and gender non-conforming people, many states still lack legal protections for employment and housing discrimination against LGBTQIAA+ people, and there is an epidemic of murder and violence particularly directed at people of color in our community (for example, the majority of the 31 transgender people murdered in the U.S. in 2015-2016 to date were people of color; of the 802 reported hate crimes against lesbians and gay men in the U.S. in 2015, nearly 60 percent were people of color).

It is very clear: we must continue to fight for the lives and dignity of all members of our community. And there are specific steps we can take to press forward at this time. Some suggestions from members of our community are:

• amplify the thoughts of LGBTQIAA+ people on social media (by sharing posts written by LGBTQIAA+ people) rather than sharing your own statements directly
• attend the UMBC vigil to demonstrate your support (details to be released soon)
• offer to listen to and support your LGBTQIAA+ friends if they want to talk, and cook them a meal or keeping them company if they think it would help
• write to your elected officials demanding legislation to protect LGBTQIAA+ people from discrimination in employment and housing, to control access to automatic weapons, to end the ban on gay and bisexual men donating blood, and to ensure access to bathrooms for people of all gender identities (information about contacting your elected officials is here: www.usa.gov/elected-officials or www.mgaleg.maryland.gov
• donate money to LGBTQIAA+ organizations in Orlando that are doing the work to help the communities in Orlando cope and support each other  (for example, Equality Florida (link:http://www.eqfl.org/), Planting Peace (link: https://www.crowdrise.com/we-stand-with-pulse-fund), and the GLBT Community Center of Central Florida (link:http://www.thecenterorlando.org/)