Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is Ira Glass. On This American Life, one thing we like is a good mystery. Sometimes about really big things, but most times, the little mysteries are the best.
Our lost and found is currently filled with pants. I don't know, I've never seen this happen.
Wait, this is true?
This is true. Mysteries of every size, each week. This American Life, wherever you get your podcasts.
From WHYY in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley in Los Angeles. Today, Laverne Cox. For over a decade, she's been one of the most visible trans women in America. In her new memoir, Transcendent... She writes about growing up in Mobile, Alabama, and the bullying and harassment she faced as a feminine child who could not conform to what was expected of her.
She writes about how she got through it by, in a way, leaving her body and going somewhere else in her mind. A lot of the time, that place was music and dance.
I just loved pushing the grocery cart and then dancing with the grocery cart as if it was like a partner.
Did you have headphones on, a Walkman?
No, darling. The music was in my head, and the groove is in the heart.
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Chapter 2: Who is Laverne Cox and what is her memoir 'Transcendent' about?
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Laverne face growing up in Mobile, Alabama?
I'm Tanya Mosley, and my guest today is Laverne Cox. Chances are you met her the way most of the world did, as a transgender woman in prison, doing hair and fighting for her right to gender-affirming care in the Netflix series Orange is the New Black.
Listen, doc, I need my dosage. I've given five years $80,000 in my freedom for this. I'm finally who I'm supposed to be. Do you understand? I can't go back.
Look, I'd like to help you. Unfortunately, you have elevated levels of AST and ALT, which could mean liver damage.
That's bull that could mean anything.
Chapter 4: How did Laverne use music and dance as a coping mechanism?
We're going to take you off your hormones entirely until we can schedule an ultrasound, get a clean read.
But that could take months.
I can offer you an antidepressant.
That's Laverne Cox as Sophia Bursette in 2014. The role made her the first openly transgender person nominated for a primetime Emmy in an acting category and put her on the cover of Time magazine next to the words, the transgender tipping point. For a decade now, she's been one of the most visible trans women in America.
But the woman on that magazine cover was carrying things she'd never told anyone, not even her therapist. She's written a new memoir titled Transcendent, and it arrives at a moment when her right to simply exist is being debated in state houses across the country. But the book makes clear that for Cox, none of this is new. Long before she had the words for it, she was bullied for who she was.
Her very existence, as she writes, was an affront to the order of things. And she's been fighting for the right to simply be her entire life. Laverne Cox, welcome to Fresh Air. It's such an honor to have you.
Thank you so much for having me. I have not heard. It's rare that I just hear the clip from Orange, and it's been so long. And I, gosh, it brings back memories. And it's really, what's interesting is even for actors out there, often when I watch a scene that I've done, it's hard for me to have distance. I immediately am in the character again, and I'm in the emotion again. of the scene.
And so I'm immediately like feeling what I was feeling when we shot this. This is 2012 that we shot it. So it was funny. I was just like.
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Chapter 5: Who is Ali Siddiq and what is his background?
Yeah, did you laugh? Why did it make you laugh?
No, at the end when, I mean, the writing is so fantastic. Maybe I can offer you an antidepressant. It's hilarious.
Well, Orange is the New Black was revolutionary for the time. And your character, I was very surprised to learn from the book that you weren't a regular reoccurring character. You were a guest star.
Yes. And I mean, that's really a contractual thing. So I was in, I think... I don't remember how many episodes I was in the first season, but I remember it was a day-to-day thing. I didn't have, like, a contract the first season. I was literally a day player, guest star, day player. But I was kind of making day player rates. I wasn't making, like, guest star rates.
The second season, my salary was, like, a guest star rate, and I had, like, I think a seven-episode guarantee, and they ended up using me for nine episodes. So... I was there a lot and they wrote generously for me. I think because that my backstory episode came, it was the third episode of the show that people thought.
Felt like you were a cast member.
Yes.
Yeah. I think people think because so much of the work that you have done feels so true to life that so much of that show might be your life. And I think it's part of what makes this book really eye opening because we're learning things about you that we didn't know before. I want to start with the beginning of your book. Because you're eight years old.
You decide to start at a moment when you're eight years old. You are at a park near your family's apartment in Mobile, Alabama. You're doing your kid thing and just playing out. And there are these boys that come up to you, the caraway boys. And they begin teasing you. And then it gets violent. Can I have you pick up the story from there?
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Chapter 6: How did Ali's past influence his comedy and storytelling?
My mother finding out, and instead of having an impulse to protect me or care for me or ask if I was okay, she made it my fault. And it just, in a way, it sort of epitomizes that kind of feeling of not feeling protected, not feeling safe. It sort of encapsulates a lot of... A lot of the childhood. I'm reading that again. I have to say, it's still difficult to read. It's still difficult to...
You grew up inside of people's reactions to you. Yeah. An effeminate child, a gender nonconforming teenager, a trans woman, and everything that you received, it was like race, gender, and class converging into one person. What really struck me from that very first story throughout the entire book is – The shame and hatred that people carried, they took it out on you.
And it even happened in your home.
Chapter 7: How does Ali reflect on his relationship with his father?
Mm-hmm. Yes. I'm just trying to gather my resilience. And, like, I guess I'm, like, having... There's, like, reading that, I'm just, like, I'm emotional. I'm angry. It's, like, it's hard to read that. Obviously, I lived it. But it's hard to read about it again. I guess and understand as an adult. Like, I'm angry at the boys. I'm angry at my mother. I want to protect... That little child.
I'm just so... I'm so angry. And I think like... Yeah, I don't know if I can be able to read excerpts from this book again. We'll see. I'm just... I'm so pissed. I'm so angry and I'm so hurt and I'm so...
What are the words – the anger comes from you having to experience it.
And it's – there's also, like, the anger of all the kids that I've met who are trans or queer who are still experiencing this. And the anger of knowing that – in states that have passed anti-trans laws that the percentage of bullying is skyrocketing in those states. You hear a lot of stories. A lot of stories, but those are statistics.
Those are the anecdotes, but those are the stats from the Trevor Project. Because to manufacture the consent to pass anti-trans laws that would ban gender-affirming care for kids and And all the minutes of trans girls in sports, all like two of them. There's the rhetorical piece that happens in the media that is dehumanizing and stigmatizing trans people. And it creates a permission structure.
It's like your, you know, governor and your state legislators are doing if you're, you know, your teachers and, you know, pundits on TV are doing it, then like, of course, kids are emboldened to do it. And that makes me so angry. And, you know, it's like the sadness is like, you know, it's just the loneliness. And I couldn't process it fully as a child. And I don't know. It just really sucked.
Yeah.
This was so, it was torture to write this. And the reason I wrote it is to tell the truth. I just don't think it makes any sense to write a book and to clean stuff up and to not be honest and not be raw.
Our guest today is Laverne Cox. Her new memoir is called Transcendent. More of our conversation after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air Weekend.
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Chapter 8: What lessons does Ali share about his life experiences?
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I want to go back to your home and your mom and your decision to write all of this down because the majority of the book takes place in your childhood. Tell me about Mobile, Alabama and that home that you grew up in. How would you describe it?
Mobile, it's interesting. I go back now and I find it quaint and way too hot in the summer. But like the azaleas, there's lots of beautiful things about it. And there are all these antebellum homes that still exist on like Government Street. And there's something quaint about parts of it.
And there's just a lot of trauma, though, literally on the streets, particularly in the old neighborhood where my mom still lives. There's trauma on those streets for me.
Is that a part of town? What part of town is that?
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