Laverne Cox's Transcendent: survival against the odds
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- Laverne Cox was pulled from class at age eight by a teacher who objected to her using a Japanese geisha fan at school in Mobile, Alabama, prompting her mother Gloria to sign her up for conversion therapy, which failed and was followed by a suicide attempt three years later.
- Gloria Cox once abandoned her twin children Laverne and Lamar at their father's house, where the father called them "fucking freaks"; the children spent a month in an orphanage before Gloria collected them.
- Cox spent more than 20 years in New York living hand to mouth while taking acting classes and attending endless auditions before landing the role of Sophia Burset in Orange Is the New Black.
- Cox describes the chronic vigilance of being gender nonconforming in public, recalling that she would start running if anything felt off because "my life was in danger," with that street-level tension turning into despair once she reached the safety of her apartment.
- Gloria is portrayed not just as an abuser but with context — she endured severe financial hardship, grew up in an abusive household, and sent both children to the Alabama School of Fine Arts, where Cox specialised in dance and Lamar in visual art.
- Transcendent is framed by the reviewer as a genuine attempt by Cox to understand her mother's tyranny rather than "get even," with Cox's eventual career success described as her "ultimate revenge" for decades of rejection.
Why it matters: The memoir lands as a detailed firsthand account of what it costs to survive conversion therapy, family rejection, and 20-plus years of industry discrimination as a Black trans woman, with Cox crediting her mother's one key decision — sending both twins to the Alabama School of Fine Arts — as the launchpad for two creative careers out of deep-south poverty.
