“Transcendent: A Memoir” by Laverne Cox, c.2026, Gallery Books, $30.00, 238 pages
People tell lies every day. Sometimes it’s a matter of survival. At other times, lies are used to exert power or control, avoid punishment or even gain an advantage. Lies and falsehoods originate from familiar sources and unexpected places. They’re repeated as if true, but they’re still lies.
In her new memoir, “Transcendent,” actress and advocate Laverne Cox lays bare her struggle to stop lying to herself.
Sissy.
The bullies in Cox’s Mobile, Alabama, neighborhood often called her that derogatory term, and so did her mother. “Sissy” was just one word, though. Other words were worse, and more painful. The boys would call her ugly names while they beat her — when they could catch her. Her mother yelled cruel words at her gentle child who refused to participate in “boy” activities.
Even at 8 years old, says Cox, “I was a prim and proper lady.”
Despite the verbal abuse aimed at what others saw as feminine behavior on her part and a failed attempt at conversion therapy, Cox’s mother sent her and her identical twin brother to the Alabama School of Fine Arts, where Cox learned to dance. It was a lifeline for her, and the talent she cultivated at the fine arts school helped her get into college in Indiana. From there, she had hoped to find fame and fortune in New York City.
Yet, the abuse she suffered as a child held Cox back. One decidedly negative thought, “There is something wrong with me,” became her daily mantra. “I didn’t know how to say it,” says Cox, who was born male, “I’m a girl.”
But therapy sessions helped Cox learn the language to speak her truth. Developing a sense of style helped, as did her brother’s support, a handful of friends, and happy scent-infused memories of her mother’s makeup table. Every step along the way, Cox says, “I was expressing myself, I was also allowing myself to edge closer to my girlhood.”
“Transcendent,” released this month by Gallery Books, an imprint of Gallery Publishing Group, a division of Simon & Schuster, is a difficult read — not because of style, but the intensity of its substance.
From her earliest memories of being sexually abused as a toddler to verbal and physical abuse throughout her childhood, Cox glosses over nothing. Get ready for pages and pages of disturbing recollections that will feel like a bad roller-coaster ride, making you cringe and wanting to hide your eyes. But doing so would be a mistake. The best part of Cox’s memoir is its wholesale surrender to the truth, unfiltered and unashamed.
As the book progresses, Cox’s story does, too. We see a child who knows the truth, but has no words for it. The child becomes a teen with a burgeoning sense of self, then a young adult who craves love as she stretches her wings. By the time Cox begins to chronicle her history-making career in Hollywood — becoming the first transgender person in 2014 to be nominated for an acting Primetime Emmy Award — and the abuse has (mostly) ended, readers will breathe a well-deserved sigh of relief. Surviving such a harrowing tale will be satisfying for readers, but incomplete, because her story is still unfolding.
Fans of Cox’s television and film work will want to read “Transcendent,” as will anyone who has transitioned or is thinking about transitioning, or loves someone who has transitioned. It’s a rough read, but a necessary one. And that’s no lie.
