A memoir of resilience and triumph by transgender advocate, communications professional, and public speaker Precious Brady-Davis, who grew up as a biracial, gender-nonconforming child, shuttled between abusive homes in the Omaha foster care system. She found purpose and friendship in the Pentecostal faith—until that faith rejected her for apparent “homosexual” urges and gender nonconformity. While still in high school, though, Brady-Davis also discovered a love of theater and social justice, which helped set her on a new path. She found her way to the drag community and to Chicago, where she came into her identity as a trans woman. She worked with homeless youth at the city’s LGBTQ center, where she launched a large HIV prevention and education initiative. She then took a position as assistant director of diversity recruitment initiatives at her alma mater, Columbia College Chicago, where she met Myles Brady-Davis, a trans man, whom she later married. The two of them had a child, whom Myles carried, at the end of 2019.
Some reviewers of this book at online bookstores have criticized the book because Brady-Davis spends little time on her actual decision to transition and what that process was like. I say it’s her choice as a trans person to choose how much, if at all, to focus on that part of her life. Not that stories of transitioning can’t be inspiring and informative—but not every story of a trans life has to center on that. Her story as she chose to write it—of determination, growth, and success against the odds—is gripping, revealing, and ultimately celebratory, offering an inspiring model of what Black trans excellence can be.
