Staff Pick
This book isn't just for fans of Laura Jane Grace (although anyone who loves Against Me! will delight, as I did, in the details of the band's history). LJG's story is about gender identity, punk music, and fighting for your dreams no matter how many people are (or aren't) behind you. Recommended By Emily F., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
"If I could have chosen, I would have been born a woman
My mother once told me she would have named me Laura
I would grow up to be strong and beautiful like her."
—The Ocean
A searing account of her search for identity and true self, Tranny reveals the struggles and victories that Laura Jane Grace, the lead singer of the cult punk rock band Against Me! experienced in her quest for gender transition.
Illuminated by Laura Jane's never-before-published journal entries reaching back to childhood, Tranny is an intensely personal and revelatory look inside her struggles with identity and addiction. Grappling with everything from sex, drugs, failed marriages, music, and soul of a punk rock star, this memoir paints a vivid portrait of one of the most revolutionary transgender icons of our time.
Review
"In 2012, Grace, the founder, guitarist, singer, and songwriter of the Gainesville punk band Against Me!, came out as transgender, a secret she’d kept for some 30 years in the spotlight. In this riveting and at times harrowing biography, Grace recounts in unflinching detail her path to self realization. In many ways Grace’s story follows the arc of many rock bios—plenty of drugs, sex, broken marriages, lots of time spent in dingy vans on exhausting tours that left the band penniless and at each others’ throats, and eventually a major label record contract that left the band disillusioned and in tatters. That story would be enough for a compelling book, but Grace’s gender dysphoria adds a remarkable twist to the tale. Bolstering the narrative with years’ worth of journal entries, Grace intimately shares her difficult journey—a story not for the faint of heart—as the she deals with her own personal transition along with the scorn of a reactionary punk scene that resents the band’s success and a music industry that wants only to cash in. She survives, and today Against Me! has entered a new chapter. This brutally honest soul searching memoir reads like precisely that—one chapter in a life story that has many more to come. (Dec.)" Publishers Weekly Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Synopsis
ONE OF BILLBOARD'S "100 GREATEST MUSIC BOOKS OF ALL TIME"
The provocative transgender advocate and lead singer of the punk rock band Against Me provides a searing account of her search for identity and her true self.
It began in a bedroom in Naples, Florida, when a misbehaving punk teenager named Tom Gabel, armed with nothing but an acoustic guitar and a headful of anarchist politics, landed on a riff. Gabel formed Against Me and rocketed the band from its scrappy beginnings-banging on a drum kit made of pickle buckets-to a major-label powerhouse that critics have called this generation's The Clash. Since its inception in 1997, Against Me has been one of punk's most influential modern bands, but also one of its most divisive. With every notch the four-piece climbed in their career, they gained new fans while infuriating their old ones. They suffered legal woes, a revolving door of drummers, and a horde of angry, militant punks who called them "sellouts" and tried to sabotage their shows at every turn. But underneath the public turmoil, something much greater occupied Gabel-a secret kept for 30 years, only acknowledged in the scrawled-out pages of personal journals and hidden in lyrics. Through a troubled childhood, delinquency, and struggles with drugs, Gabel was on a punishing search for identity. Not until May of 2012 did a Rolling Stone profile finally reveal it: Gabel is a transsexual, and would from then on be living as a woman under the name Laura Jane Grace.
Tranny is the intimate story of Against Me 's enigmatic founder, weaving the narrative of the band's history, as well as Grace's, with dozens of never-before-seen entries from the piles of journals Grace kept. More than a typical music memoir about sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll-although it certainly has plenty of that-Tranny is an inside look at one of the most remarkable stories in the history of rock.
About the Author
Laura Jane Grace is a transgender musician best known as the founder, lead singer, songwriter and guitarist of the punk rock band Against Me!. Since coming out as transgender in a 2012 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, she has become an outspoken advocate for transgender awareness. She has a daughter and lives in Chicago. Visit Againstme.net for more information about her music, her current tour, and the new album.
Dan Ozzi is a New York-based writer and has served as the editor of VICE's music site, Noisey.