Reflecting on Success and Identity

It's consider this from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang. Every other week we bring you a bonus episode of the show where we share a really great interview that we didn't have time to include in the podcast, you get to hear the conversation right here as a thank you for your support. In twenty thirteen, when the Netflix series Orange is the New Black came out, the world met the character Sophia Burset , a black trans woman serving as the resident hairstylist in prison. And for much of the audience, it was also the first time they met the actress Laverne Cox, who landed the role of Sophia at the age of forty just when she was thinking she was going to quit acting altogether. I don't have any test osterone left to replace the estrogen that you've taken away from me . What do you want from me? I want to see a doctor. You can't go to the clinic unless it's an emergency. This is an emergency. Suddenly, Laverne Cox was a breakout TV star, and with that came the expectations and responsibilities of another role, leader and advocate for trans people everywhere. That is really my job to continuously invite people to see trans people as human beings in a world that deeply dehumanizes us. In her new memoir called Transcendent, Cox talks about the challenges that she fac ed long before Netflix ever came knocking , a mother who withheld love, a father who was never around , and the brutal denigration she encountered growing up black and trans in the deep south. I feel so blessed and grateful to be who I am and to have fought to be who I am to fought. The demons inside myself, the demons that have internalized from systems and structures and from my mother and teachers and other kids . I sometimes feel like it's a miracle. Some of these memories you share are so deeply painful and it made me wonder as a writer , how did you get yourself to revisit these experiences in your past so unflinchingly one after the other? I mean, that could not have been an easy process for you. You're quite right. It was excruciating. It was yeah, it was in therapy speak, it was triggering and re traumatizing But I don't even know it's not a butt, it just that's just what it was and yeah, it was just really hard and it didn't stop being hard. There were a few moments in rewriting some chapters and some of the rewrites where I found a sense of resolution or agency . And then there were just a lot of moments where it just was like, you know, I would cry again . The audiobook was kind of was slightly torturous . I imagine so. Yeah, it was yeah, most of it was not fun I imagine that and I hope this interview doesn't reinforce some of that pain. May we talk about your mother? Because so much of this book is centered on her and your relationship with her, how your whole life, you know, Laverne as you were trying to be who you are , you talk about how cruel she could be to you. Can you tell me first why did you decide to build so much of this memoir around your mother? My mother is just this key figure in my life . I was desperate for her love and approval as a child and as a young adult , and then I had to let go of that And then I've like come to a place of deep compassion for her as I've understood my own sort of healing journey , just how a lot of her own trauma has not been processed and has not been healed. And there's something kind of remarkable the things that she's accomplished despite all of that. If I may, I want to be specific for people who haven't read this book . You know, there was one line that really hit me. This is when you were at the fine arts school in Alabama and you wrote, I had always known that I couldn't come out to my mother then because I still needed a place to stay in the summertime and on breaks. And I thought, my God, I mean, Laverne, you literally felt like you had to choose between suppressing the truth about yourself or being homeless for a few weeks or a month, right? Yes . Well, my mother would always sort of, I guess, threaten us and say if you don't act right, I'll put you out. And when we were in third grade, an incident happened and we ended up . My mother dropped us off at our I call him the sperm donors house because he's never a father . But dropped us off at our biological father's house who we never met . And there was a woman there who we didn't know and the next day the woman takes us to the police station and we ended up in an orphanage for a month . So I know your mom remembered it only as a week, but you and your brother remembered, no, we were there a month. Yeah, absolutely. And so when my mother would say, you know, if you don't act right, I'll put you out. After that, the orphanage, it was a threat that felt quite real. And it was that I mean, yeah, that was it that was awful. I'm trying to keep myself together. Thinking about it. No, it's no you wrote like you talk about how may be your mom she could care for you, she could provide for you at times, but maybe she never loved you. She never saw you because she just didn't have the capacity to see you. And that's the compassion and generosity and empathy that I'm sensing in you now looking back years later. It's extraordinary how much work you've done. Thank you. But have to be honest that, comes from Belle Hooks in her book All About Love. She introduces this concept of distinguishing between care and love . When you love someone, love shouldn't hurt. Love is not supposed to hurt. You don't physically abuse someone that you love. You don't emotionally abuse someone that you love . You don't threaten someone you love . That's not what love is. I understand now that again, my mother did the best that she could . You know , it's never too late to have a happy childhood. And as an adult , even if we are deeply traumatized by our parent s, once we're adults , it is our responsibility to care for our mental health, to reparent the inner child , to love ourselves and give ourselves the things that our parents may be didn't have the capacity to. So that's beautiful . I'm struck by listening to you because there has always been the way you've described it in this book, a strong inner voice in you, like even as a child , you were bullied severely, beaten, ridiculed for acting like a girl, for talking like a girl, but you always told yourself that you would not retaliate against them, sink to their level. And where do you think that comes from this I will rise above mentality? Because you seem to have had this for so long . Well, the I will rise above mentality is why I call the book transcendent. When I read Walden, when I was a freshman in high school, I was just sort of like transcendentalism, but this is like this is what I wanted to do my whole life. I've wanted to transcend how people see me because I was assign male at birth and because I'm black and poor in the south, I want to transcend its body. I want to transcend like time and space. I finally had a word for what I longed to do and what I felt like I was here to do. I was so moved by the way you explain transcendence the way that you longed to escape the life you were born into with fantasy like whether it was changing the pitch of your voice or transforming your body through dance , you always try to transcend, if you will, the boundaries you were born into . And that makes me want to ask about acting more because you've alluded to this in our conversation earlier. How does your love of act help you transcend even further and get closer to the person you want to be? You think? Well , I would say it's less about transcendence for me acting. Like I think if wonderful performance can transcend , I think a wonderful performance when the actor has gone to a deeply human place. And I think what is most human is how we struggle, you know? Yes. The transcendence is really about those things happen , but I'm not defined by them. I'm not reacting to this.. I see Sometimes acting forces you to return to pain in a way that's not just healthy. You're not transcending. You're actually being confined by the boundaries of the past. And being human and like getting to like sometimes do things that I don't feel I have quote unquote permission to do in real life. You know, I guess, you know, you want to give yourself permission, but like the character gives you permission and disappearing into that character gives you permission to do things that I probably wouldn't do as Laverne. And so it's less about transcendence and more about getting to be messy and getting to be flawed It's even more human. Yeah. Amazing. You want to be an actor . It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool when you get to like be selfish, be self centered, be like whatever, you know, the character that I just played with David Decophani in this movie called Soapbox . She was like her ambition, she was very idealistic, but her ambition just drove her so far away from her values and it like it just went it went out of control in a way that was like intense and kind of scary and fabulous and messy like it's yeah great feathered like that you had yeah it's the best Imagine so . As we mentioned, you were cast in Orange as the New Black when you were forty years old. And when you look back on it, you say, You're glad that opportunity came later in life for you youth. Can say more about that? Like what does it mean to you to be ready for success ? Well , you know , because I always believed I was supposed to be a star. I was convinced that when I moved to New York in nineteen ninety three that it would be happening two or three year talks and year after year I would be like, Is this the year God? What's going on? What's happening? And nineteen years later . nineteen years after I moved to New York, I turned forty and I hadn't had a breakout moment that would change my life and I was still in student loan debt and rent arrears. And I said to myself, I think maybe God is this the little TV things I've done, maybe this is what God wants for me and I'm supposed to go and do something else. And so I let it go . And a friend who had just gotten into Columbia sold me his GRE study material s at a discount . No, he y, this happened. And so I started studying for the GRE and I started like, you know, getting graduate school applications . And then like I turned forty in may twenty ninth and then the orange audition happened in early September, late August, early September of that year . And in my twenties, I was not secure my inself and I would have used the fame to say oh I'm going to show everybody. It would have been about showing people and proving that I was worthy, improving that I was lovable. That's what the fame would have been about in my twenties. But in my forties , I was on the path, the journey of learning that I was worthy , not because of something I did, but because I'm a child of God, because I am born. What would you love to tell the young Laverne when she was back in Alabama in Mobile , just beginning to find her dreams as a kid? Watching Cheryl Lee Ralph on good times and just in awe of her. And then , you know, you would end up meeting Cheryl Lee Ralph, sharing red carpet moments with Cheryl Ralph. The first time I met her, I told her like how I would pretend to be her that's moved by she was so gracious and she was just Cheryl, Cheryl is she was just in her anointed goddess nest that she just always carries . Oh black women are everything. I know, you know, I love women, but there it's I, you know, not romantically , but like , but I think there's just something wonderful about black women. And I think there's something wonderful about trans people , especially when we allow ourselves to be in that anointed space that is really ours to cl aim . I really feel that . And so I would say to Little Levern that every single impulse that you have is good and right and that you are beautiful , you are lovable, you are wanted and you deserve the very, very best in life and in the world and don't worry , don't worry, you will be the person that you know you are . You will become the woman of your dream s and fantasies and you will exist in that anointed transcendent space that you long to. Well Laverne in writing a book like this , you have created the space for others to step forward and share their stories too . I want to hold that little Laverne Cox girl in my arms too . I wish someone talked to me like that as well . Thank you so much Well, it's never too late it's that little girl still exist inside of you. She's still there she needs your attention, she needs she needs to play She needs care, she needs luck shey's still there . So it's never too late. You can start to start right now talking to her. I love that . Laverne Cox's new book is called Transcendent. Thank you so much, Laverne for coming in and speaking to all of us. This was really special . My pleasure, thank you so much . And before we go, don't forget you can email the show with your feedback and questions at Consider this at nprot org. We would love to hear from you. And a reminder that as an MPR plus supporter, you get other great perks, including a discount to the MPR wine shop. Learn more about that and your other benefits at plus dot nprot org. I'm Elsa Chang. Thanks for listening to and supporting consider this from NPR