What Do Black Trans Stories Teach Us About Domestic Violence?
In an effort to understand trans people’s relationship to violence, it is important to engage in scholarship created in our voices—by us, for us. Two books I deem vital in fostering this understanding are Redefining Realness and My Life is No Accident. Both memoirs include themes of community, advocacy and justice while highlighting the impacts of physical, emotional, and mental abuse on trans youth and trans people more broadly.
In the memoir Redefining Realness, Janet Mock details her time living in poverty as a multiracial trans person in Hawai’i. She frames her experiences, some of them challenging and outright violent, with accessible language and grounding themes of sisterhood, radical acceptance and advocacy.
As a youth who experienced sexual harm and was exposed to the impacts of substance abuse, she found healthy kinship through her connection with another young trans girl in grade school. She details the intersectionality/ies of eventually navigating higher education at University of Hawai’i whilst engaging in survival sex work. Through community, self-advocacy and—simply put—nerve, Janet not only gains a sense of her identity as a transgender woman, but a sense of herself overall. According to The Center for Disease Control, self awareness, or being “aware of your own feelings, responses, and sensitivities is essential for violence prevention.
This book is a sweet offering—one which serves as evidence of endless possibilities for young trans folks who may also experience similar circumstances.
My Life Is No Accident is another memoir I adore! Model Tenika Watson provides a tender retelling of a span of five decades of her life. In March of 1982, when offered a ride home by R&B singer Teddy Pendergrass, they crashed into a tree, paralyzing Teddy for life. In the media frenzy following the accident, Tenika was thrown into a downward spiral when it was publicly revealed by a female police officer that she had been born male.
Similar to Janet, Miss Tenika is no stranger to violence, having also been abused as a child and even abducted by a family member at one point. Throughout the book—which is truly an easy read given its authentic, conversational essence—she embodies vulnerability, sharing her struggles navigating substance abuse and survival sex work. According to the World Health Organization, victims of child physical or sexual abuse or neglect are estimated to be 1.5 times more likely to engage in illicit drug use. Miss Tenika instills hope in the reader, detailing how she achieved her sexual reassignment surgery in the late 1970s and worked on building her modeling career, despite the trauma she endured as a child. While she mentions how she came to know Teddy Pendergrass, and even provides peaks into what her connection to him and his mother was like, it is clear that it is not her entire story.
What this memoir does is humanizes Tenika Watson and other trans women, especially Black trans women, who have felt tokenized or sensationalized by society when all they ever wanted was just to be.
Overall, both reads demonstrate how impactful it is for trans folks to have the support of family (biological and chosen). Being loved for who you truly are, as a trans person, creates the opportunity for healing and minimizes the risks of violence individuals in our communities face.
Meet the Author
Mercedes Loving-Manley
Mercedes is an artist and community curator born and raised in Dorchester, MA. The stories she creates are worlds of reimagined urgency and possibilities for Black people, especially Black trans folks. Her documentary film 'The World and Then Some’ highlights the experiences of Black LGBTQ+ folks from her hometown. Her favorite genre of film: documentary with music videos coming in a close 2nd place.