Redefining Realness
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Redefining Realness
''Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More'' is a memoir and the debut book by Janet Mock, an American writer and transgender activist. It was published on 1 February 2014 by Atria Books. The book has been praised by Melissa Harris-Perry, bell hooks, Laverne Cox, and Barbara Smith. It debuted in 19th position on ''The New York Times'' Best Seller list for Hardcover Nonfiction. The book's original title was ''Fish Food''. The memoir follows Mock's journey as a transgender girl and young woman in Hawaii. Summary In ''Redefining Realness,'' Janet Mock describes her life as a transgender woman from childhood to adulthood. Mock opens the book with a scene from 2009, where she starts to tell her boyfriend Aaron that she is transgender and then starts telling her story from childhood. Part One In 1989, as children, Mock's friend and neighbor Marylin dares Mock to take her grandmother's dress down from the clothesline and put it on. After being caug ...
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Janet Mock
Janet Mock (born March 10, 1983) is an American writer, television host, director, producer and transgender rights activist. Her debut book, the memoir '' Redefining Realness'', became a ''New York Times'' bestseller. She is a contributing editor for ''Marie Claire'' and a former staff editor of ''People'' magazine's website. Early life and education Mock was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, the second child in the family. Her father, Charlie Mock III, is African-American, and her mother, Elizabeth ( Barrett), is of half Portuguese descent, part Asian descent and part Native Hawaiian (kānaka maoli) descent.Stated on ''Finding Your Roots'', October 24, 2017. Mock lived for most of her youth in her native Hawaii, with some time spent in Oakland, California and Dallas. Assigned male at birth, Mock began her transition as a freshwoman in high school, and funded her medical transition by earning money as a sex worker in her teens. At the age of fifteen, Mock was introduced to the wor ...
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Beyoncé
Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter ( ; born September 4, 1981) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. Beyoncé's boundary-pushing artistry and vocals have made her the most influential female musician of the 21st century, according to ''NPR''. Her success has led to her becoming a cultural icon and earning her the nickname "Honorific nicknames in popular music, Queen Bey". Beyoncé performed in various singing and dancing competitions as a child. She rose to fame in the late 1990s as a member of the R&B girl group Destiny's Child, one of the List of best-selling girl groups, best-selling girl groups of all time. Their hiatus saw the release of her debut album ''Dangerously in Love'' (2003), which featured the US Billboard Hot 100, ''Billboard'' Hot 100 number-one singles "Crazy in Love" and "Baby Boy (Beyoncé song), Baby Boy". Following the 2006 disbanding of Destiny's Child, Beyoncé released her second solo album, ''B'Day (Beyoncé album), B'Day'', which contained s ...
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Ralph Ellison
Ralph Waldo Ellison (March 1, 1913 – April 16, 1994) was an American writer, literary critic, and scholar best known for his novel ''Invisible Man'', which won the National Book Award in 1953. He also wrote ''Shadow and Act'' (1964), a collection of political, social, and critical essays, and ''Going to the Territory'' (1986). ''The New York Times'' dubbed him "among the gods of America's literary Parnassus." A posthumous novel, ''Juneteenth'', was published after being assembled from voluminous notes he left upon his death. Early life Ralph Waldo Ellison, named after Ralph Waldo Emerson, was born at 407 NE 1st Street in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to Lewis Alfred Ellison and Ida Millsap, on March 1, 1913. Oklahoma City's 407 East First Street buzzed with excitement as Ida Ellison, whom close friends called “Brownie,” neared term in early 1913. She and her husband Lewis lived in an apartment in a large rooming house owned by J. D. Randolph and his family. He was the second of ...
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Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde (; born Audrey Geraldine Lorde; February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) was an American writer, womanist, radical feminist, professor, and civil rights activist. She was a self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," who "dedicated both her life and her creative talent to confronting and addressing injustices of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia." As a poet, she is well known for technical mastery and emotional expression, as well as her poems that express anger and outrage at civil and social injustices she observed throughout her life. As a spoken word artist, her delivery has been called powerful, melodic, and intense by the Poetry Foundation. Her poems and prose largely deal with issues related to civil rights, feminism, lesbianism, illness and disability, and the exploration of black female identity. Early life Lorde was born in New York City on February 18, 1934 to Caribbean immigrants. Her father, Frederick Byron Lorde (known as Byron), hai ...
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Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou ( ; born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was an American memoirist, popular poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Angelou is best known for her series of seven autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, ''I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings'' (1969), tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim. She became a poet and writer after a string of odd jobs during her young adulthood. These included fry cook, sex worker, nightclub performer, ''Porgy and Bess'' cast member, Southern Christian Leadership Conference coordinator, and correspondent in Egypt and Ghana during the decolonization of Africa. She was also an actress, w ...
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Alice Walker
Alice Malsenior Tallulah-Kate Walker (born February 9, 1944) is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist. In 1982, she became the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which she was awarded for her novel ''The Color Purple''."National Book Awards – 1983"
National Book Foundation. Retrieved March 15, 2012. (With essays by Anna Clark and Tarayi Jones from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.)
Over the span of her career, Walker has published seventeen novels and short story collections, twelve non-fiction works, and collections of essays and poetry. She has faced criticism for alleged antisemitism and for her endorsement of the conspiracist

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Toni Morrison
Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford; February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019), known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist. Her first novel, ''The Bluest Eye'', was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed '' Song of Solomon'' (1977) brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for ''Beloved'' (1987); she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. Born and raised in Lorain, Ohio, Morrison graduated from Howard University in 1953 with a B.A. in English. She earned a master's degree in American Literature from Cornell University in 1955. In 1957 she returned to Howard University, was married, and had two children before divorcing in 1964. Morrison became the first black female editor in fiction at Random House in New York City in the late 1960s. She developed her own reputation as an author in the 1970s and '80s. Her work ''Beloved'' was made into a film in 1998. Mor ...
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Their Eyes Were Watching God
''Their Eyes Were Watching God'' is a 1937 novel by American writer Zora Neale Hurston. It is considered a classic of the Harlem Renaissance, and Hurston's best known work. The novel explores main character Janie Crawford's "ripening from a vibrant, but voiceless, teenage girl into a woman with her finger on the trigger of her own destiny". Set in central and southern Florida in the early 20th century, the novel was initially poorly received. Since the late 20th century, it has been regarded as influential to both African-American literature and women's literature. ''TIME'' included the novel in its 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923. Plot synopsis Janie Crawford, an African-American woman in her forties, recounts her life starting with her sexual awakening, which she compares to a blossoming pear tree kissed by bees in spring. Around this time, Janie allows a local boy, Johnny Taylor, to kiss her, which Janie's grandmother, Nanny, witnesses. ...
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Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891 – January 28, 1960) was an American author, anthropologist, and filmmaker. She portrayed racial struggles in the early-1900s American South and published research on Hoodoo (spirituality), hoodoo. The most popular of her four novels is ''Their Eyes Were Watching God'', published in 1937. She also wrote more than 50 short stories, plays, and essays. Hurston was born in Notasulga, Alabama, and moved with her family to Eatonville, Florida, in 1894. She later used Eatonville as the setting for many of her stories. In her early career, Hurston conducted anthropological and ethnographic research while a student at Barnard College and Columbia University. She had an interest in African-American and Caribbean folklore, and how these contributed to the community's identity. She also wrote fiction about contemporary issues in the Black community and became a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Her short satires, drawing from the African-America ...
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What My Twenties Taught Me
What or WHAT may refer to: * What, an interrogative pronoun and adverb * "What?", one of the Five Ws used in journalism Film and television * ''What!'' (film) or ''The Whip and the Body'', a 1963 Italian film directed by Mario Bava * '' What?'' (film), a 1972 film directed by Roman Polanski * "What", the name of the second baseman in Abbott and Costello's comedy routine "Who's on First?" * "What?", the catchphrase of professional wrestler Stone Cold Steve Austin Music * ''what.'', a comedy/music album by Bo Burnham, 2013 * What Records, a UK record label * What? Records, a US record label Songs * "What" (song), by Melinda Marx, 1965 * "What?" (Rob Zombie song), 2009 * "What?" (SB19 song), 2021 * "What?", by 666 from ''The Soft Boys'' * "What", by Bassnectar from ''Vava Voom'' * "What?", by Corrosion of Conformity from ''Eye for an Eye'' * "What?", by the Move from ''Looking On'' * "What?", by A Tribe Called Quest from ''The Low-End Theory'' Science and technology * Web H ...
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Respectability Politics
Respectability politics or the politics of respectability is a form of moralistic discourse used by some prominent figures, leaders or academics who are members of various marginalized groups to consciously set aside and undermine cultural and moral practices thought to be disrespected by wider society, especially in the context of the family and good manners. The concept is a subject of social science, politics, and race, and therefore attracts healthy debate, and some level of controversy. Academic origin The concept was first articulated in 1993 by Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham in her book ''Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920''. In the context of black American history, respectability politics was practiced as a way of attempting to consciously set aside and undermine cultural and moral practices thought to be disrespected by wider society, especially in the context of the family and good manners. Concept When these figures prom ...
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Heteronormativity
Heteronormativity is the concept that heterosexuality is the preferred or normal mode of sexual orientation. It assumes the gender binary (i.e., that there are only two distinct, opposite genders) and that sexual and marital relations are most fitting between people of opposite sex. A heteronormative view therefore involves alignment of biological sex, sexuality, gender identity and gender roles. Heteronormativity is often linked to heterosexism and homophobia. The effects of societal heteronormativity on lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals can be examined as heterosexual or "straight" privilege. Etymology Michael Warner popularized the term in 1991, in one of the first major works of queer theory. The concept's roots are in Gayle Rubin's notion of the "sex/gender system" and Adrienne Rich's notion of compulsory heterosexuality. From the outset, theories of heteronormativity included a critical look at gender; Warner wrote that "every person who comes to a queer self-un ...
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