Worth a Read Most Definitely
Length 304
Quick Review Sarah McBride is a transgender woman active in politics living her life to the fullest. I was in happy and sad tears the whole book!
I believe change happens when people are moved by people’s stories. There is power in a story. Sarah McBride opens up in Tomorrow Will Be Better about her story as a trans woman, a person, a wife, and an advocate. People are more than one adjective; they’re many. Sarah is more than a trans woman. She is a woman with a beautiful, uplifting, and heartbreaking story. If you read this without being moved you’re a gargoyle. I was in happy/sad tears the entire book.
The book starts with a forward by Joe Biden, which is very touching.
Sarah McBride grew up in Delaware and is a “stateriot.” I just love that term because I feel a little bit like a stateriot for my home state: Iowa. She fell in love with politics at a young age and worked on the governor’s campaign before graduating high school. In college at American University, she won student president. Before her senior year of college, she came out to her campus as transgendered. The university embraced her for who she really is. To officially mark the birth of Sarah, she threw a party asking everyone to bring things to fill her brand new closet. (This is such a smart idea! A complete wardrobe change is expensive. Especially as a woman.) After college, she stayed in Washington D.C. working for trans and human rights. She fell in love with the man who would become her husband. Tomorrow Will Be Better is an apt title for a book full of hardship dripping in hope.
The book focuses on two major parts of Sarah’s life. The fight for trans rights in Delaware and her journey with her husband, Andrew.
Sarah fought and helped pass the marriage equality bill in Delaware. In an unprecedented move a bill to include and protect trans people was passed a month after the marriage equality bill. Sarah was an integral part of passing that bill and bringing other trans people to Delaware’s Congress so their voices could be heard. I remember hearing about this in the news, and it was moving then.
Sarah and Andrew fell in love during her senior year at AU after meeting at a White House dinner. They dated for a year, when they found out Andrew had cancer. Sarah stood by and helped him through the journey. It is a heartbreaking story proving the power of love.
More than anything, I appreciated Sarah’s honesty and her voice in Tomorrow Will Be Better. Being a white, trans woman is a unique perspective. She went from being perceived as a white man with all the privileges that implies to living as her true self, a woman. The experience was incredibly jarring, “I never realized just how disempowering, unsafe, and unsettling it would feel to have a stranger assume they were entitled to comment on my appearance or my body.” The implications of being a woman in the world and being a trans woman in the world are complicated and ultimately dangerous. Transphobia combined with toxic masculinity are dangerous.
Trans rights are incredibly misunderstood if they’re understood at all. For the people who do accept people for who they are, it can come as a surprise the absolute lack of right trans people have. For the people who don’t accept them, it’s (hopefully) from a lack of education. Sarah explains the hurdles trans people face and how it compounds when they are not accepted, a minority, in poverty, etc. Sarah explains so many aspects of the trans experience without anger or judgement. She is patient and kind with a general attitude and hope that Tomorrow Will Be Better. She touches on privilege, names, documentation, medical awareness, and so much more.
This is an incredible story. Sarah McBride is an inspiration. I highly recommend the beautiful memoir, Tomorrow Will Be Better, to anyone who wants to learn, feel, and strive for hope.
Memorable Quotes
“”If we cannot change our college, then how can we expect to change our country.””
“There is a unique kind of pain in being unseen.”
“Somehow society manages to treat women like both a delicate infant and a sexualized idol in the same moment.”
“I felt a moral responsibility to use that privilege and those relationships to subvert the power of prejudice.”
“For many of us [trans people], though, we are reluctant to give out that information because it often becomes weaponized against us, invoked instead of our chosen name to ignore and deny our gender identity.”
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Title: Tomorrow Will Be Better
Author: Sarah McBride
Publisher: Three Rivers Press (Penguin Random House)
Copyright: 2018
ISBN: 9781524761486
