Janet Mock Talks Progress, Process and Patience
by Leigh Altshuler
Last week, I got some of the best advice of my life. In the midst of a crazy day at Strand, after a busy and crowded commute, between emails and phone calls, Janet Mock told me to take my time. During an interview with the writer, TV host, advocate and author, I felt firsthand how moving, inspirational, and wise Janet Mock truly is.
As Strand excitedly prepares to host Janet Mock for the launch of her second book, Surpassing Certainty: What My Twenties Taught Me, I had the pleasure of speaking with her about her memoir, Redefining Realness. The iconic book broke ground as the first biography written from the perspective of a trans girl, including amazing insights on her journalism career as an editor at People.com and her work as “trailblazing leader” championing the rights of America’s marginalized.
She gave a rousing speech at the Women’s March on Washington; founded #GirlsLikeUs and #TransBookDrive; hosts the interview podcast Never Before with Lenny Letter; and helms the column “Beauty Beyond Binaries” for Allure, where she serves as a contributing editor.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Leigh Altshuler (Communications Director, Strand): Your stories are very personal and intricate. How do you go about getting these stories on paper?
Janet Mock: For me, with Surpassing Certainty, it came out in the sense of answering questions. I do a lot of college talks. Often, young feminist groups and LGBT groups invite me to talk with them, and I noticed a trend during the Q&As. People would me questions about my career, the choices I made, dating, navigating corporate media, being able to be heard on national platforms. When I was answering their questions, I put myself in their place, when I was 18, 19, 20, 21 and seeking advice. The stories came from the back and forth Q&A process, and I realized, oh, there’s another story I want to tell. There’s another memoir about being a young woman in process. It doesn’t mean that there weren’t enough coming of age stories about a young woman in the city, leaving her home, but I did think there was room for something about a unique experience of being a young woman of color and a young trans person who wasn’t necessarily open about being trans and who didn’t really know what she was going to do next.
When I started sitting down with myself and crafting the chapters of the stories that made up Surpassing Certainty, my process started with me and my yellow legal pad. I was writing to myself: vignettes and stories, moments that kind of triggered me and brought my back to spaces. I was thinking about the friendships that I had that meant everything at one time but no longer are a part of my life now and what made them mean so much. That’s what built the architecture for this memoir.
I was writing to myself: vignettes and stories, moments that kind of triggered me and brought my back to spaces.
LA: I love that. Particularly that you used your personal stories as answers to questions for those seeking advice from you. Now that you’ve spent time looking back on your life and putting yourself in their shoes, what advice would you give to yourself when you were in your 20s?
JM: Oh god [laughs], let me see. The number one thing would be: Take your time. Be patient. I was always in such a rush to get there, from Point A to Point B and then C and then D. In a way, it really aided my survival and my success but at the same time I don’t think that I was present and enjoying the process and also the time it took to be a young person. To be a young person in college, in a classroom, debating with other people, sharing and swapping ideas, sitting across from someone and interviewing them for an article, all of that stuff that I just thought was heavy lifting work that would get me from one point to the next point toward my destination. I didn’t really enjoy the journey. It sounds so corny to say that, but I really wish I would have taken my time.
I write in Surpassing Certainty about rushing through grad school. If I would have known that that would have been the last time I would have been in a classroom setting, the last time I would be able to just sit, and read, and write, and talk with people, I probably would have extended that a lot longer. But because I was such an impatient young person who was hungry to start my career, to start my “real life as an adult,” I never enjoyed just being a young person, a student, a person who was learning, when my only job was to sit and to learn. I wish I would have soaked up that last bit, those last six months in grad school.
LA: Definitely. You’ve been involved in so many different forms of media: journalism, film, television, etc. and you continue to write books and I wonder why that is. Why is writing books important to you as a storyteller?
JM: Number 1 is I’m a reader. I love books. I also feel the process of sitting down and creating a text, a long narrative that is not reacting to a certain cultural or political event, sitting with something for a year’s time and thinking about “what do I want to build here?” That work is important to me. Also, wanting to contribute to a more inclusive, affirming and diverse bookshelf and bookstore(s). Knowing that I have been able to make it past certain traumatic experiences, and hopping certain hurdles, I want to give readers who are craving to see and hear themselves a slice of that. I also think that the texts speak to them, but they are mirrors. I was looking for mirrors when I was in libraries and bookstores when I was a young person. That doesn’t mean I don’t also engage in creating television or a podcast or that I’m not on social media or writing a column — I still do all of those things as well. But there is something about the commitment of picking up and buying or borrowing a book from a library or bookstore and enjoying it and turning off your phone and being with yourself and this other person who is bearing their testimony of their life experience. There is something so powerful about being a reader. Because I love that experience and know what it has given me and my life, I love engaging with it as an author.
There is something so powerful about being a reader. Because I love that experience and know what it has given me and my life, I love engaging with it as an author.
LA: Who were the authors that gave that experience to you? Or give that to you now?
JM: For me, it’s always been Maya Angelou. Her work, her memoirs, have always been building blocks for me. She’s also been a blueprint to go out and say that #1: My life story is worthy of being heard, #2: I can write it myself, I don’t have to give it to someone else, and #3: There’s more than one book about my life experiences and yes, you can be a memoirist and you can do it in a literary form that is also accessible. She was super important to me.
The work of Zora Neale Hurston, specifically with Their Eyes Were Watching God, was monumental for me. It is one of the texts that I return to whether it’s in audiobook read by the late Ruby Dee, or it’s through the text in the copy that I hold really, really close to me that I got when I was in 11th grade English class and read it for the first time. I love how the book is so different every single time, and I learn something new every time I engage in Janie Crawford’s world.
Audrey Lorde has continued to be an inspiration to me and continues to teach me through her legacy and her body of work. As she was a black, lesbian, feminist, writer, poet who was so powerful and so ahead of her time, she offered us maps for our own liberation through the breaking away of silence and shame, and she helped me build the confidence to say that my silence won’t protect me. The truth of my experiences will enable me a sense of freedom and contentment in the world.
Those three women were monumental to me.
LA: So lovely, as are you. I feel like your work is that for so many people, definitely for myself, and speaking with you is kind of a “pinch me moment.” After all of your successes in life, and all of the hurdles you have overcome, what has been your “pinch me” moment?
JM: I haven’t really even processed this yet but, being interviewed by Oprah Winfrey. That [laughs] is still a surreal moment. Sitting with her in her home, I still don’t have words for that. It was such a “pinch me” moment.
LA: I cannot imagine. And, of course, we always want to know what you’re reading right now.
JM: Right now, I’m reading my editor, Rakesh Satyal’s novel called, No One Can Pronounce My Name. I just finished reading The Mothers by Brit Bennett. I loved it. I also read This is Just My Face by Gabourey Sidibe. I’m reading Life’s Work: A Moral Argument for Choice by Dr. Willie Parker, I’m making my way through Stamped from the Beginning by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, which won the National Book Award last year. What else am I reading? [laughs] The poetry collection by Morgan Parker, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce.
LA: Last question! As such a strong voice as an activist, who else do you think is out there making waves?
JM: I love the work of Elle Hearns. She is a trans woman who works with the Black Lives Matter movement. I also love the women who founded the Black Lives Matter movement Alicia Garza, Partisse Cullors and Opal Tometi. Raquel Willis who is a young trans woman. We were the only two trans women to speak at the Women’s March on Washington. We were able to support each other through that process, and she’s an amazing voice.
Her new memoir, Surpassing Certainty, offers a mirror for those on a journey toward a career, self-acceptance, success, survival, and more. Needless to say, Janet Mock not only has a vision, but is a vision for our future.
Check out Janet Mock’s Author’s Bookshelf and see her discuss her new memoir Surpassing Certainty at Strand Book Store below.
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