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Janet-mock Quote by Janet Mock

““Though we came from our native Hawaiian mother, Chad and I were perceived and therefore raised as black, which widely cast us as outsiders, nonlocals - and being seen as local in Hawaii was currency. When we first returned to Oahu, we spoke with a Texas twang that also got us teased. Chad has strong emotions surrounding those first few months; he was traumatized by his apparent blackness, which was a nonevent in Dallas and Oakland, where we were among many black kids. In Hawaii, we were some of the few mixed black kids around. And both our parents taught us that because the world would perceive us as black, we were black.””

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Janet-mock Parenting People-of-colour Poc Strong emotions

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Like many teens, I struggled with my body and looks, but my despair was amplified by the expectations of cisnormativity and the gender binary…

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Throughout the day, I like to spritz my face with a rose water for extra moisture.

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In the evening, I use a cleansing oil - coconut oil also works - to remove makeup.

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“she cleaned, scrubbing to the staticky rhythm of Hawaiian music playing from her silver clock radio.”

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Hawaii was so integral to my journey. I was just there at the right time.

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I was a mixed black girl existing in a westernized Hawaiian culture where petite Asian women were the ideal, in a white culture where…

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Trans folk, especially of color, should not be obligated to help cis folk play catch-up on our experiences. The effort can detract from our…

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I grew up at a time in Hawaii where there were trans women around, so there were visible role models for me. At the…

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We have to take care of our people. That's our work now. And it's going to be a lot harder than it would have…

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“The misconception of equating ease of life with “passing” must be dismantled in our culture. The work begins by each of us recognizing that cis people are not more valuable or legitimate and that trans people who blend as cis are not more valuable or legitimate. We must recognize, discuss, and dismantle this hierarchy that polices bodies and values certain…

This pervasive idea that trans women deserve violence needs to be abolished. It’s a socially sanctioned practice of blaming the victim. We must begin…

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“The crux of our conflict lay in the fact that we each couldn't be who we wanted the other to be.”

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“The crux of our conflict lay in the fact that we each couldn't be who we wanted the other to be.”

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“Rationalizing him and the glass pipe, Dad smoked crack, but he was not a crackhead; it was just something he did. To do something didn't define you, I thought. I saw Dad through a dusty lens that distorted our relationship, as tarnished as his pipe. He was no longer just our father; he was his own person, with an identity…

“My grandmother and my two aunts were an exhibition in resilience and resourcefulness and black womanhood. They rarely talked about the unfairness of the…

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“In Hawaii, family showed itself in the way that my siblings never dared to call one another "half" anything. We were fully brothers and…

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