Tranny

Starred review from November 14, 2016
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.