What a powerful, emotional, necessary story. Sarah brings a beautiful storytelling voice to the critical trans rights movement she has spent so much of her life fighting for.

Really, the thing I kept saying to myself as I read this was, this is so important. Sarah tells her story, in her voice, about her own experience as a young trans woman. She weaves in facts and stories about the progress being made towards LGBTQ equality throughout the book since she is a political activist and advocate for LGBTQ rights, particularly for transgender people's rights. She manages to make the very political (in this sense in terms of legislative and campaigning) aspects clear and easy to understand, while also sharing deeply personal experiences that she's had throughout her life, especially around her transgender identity.

Tomorrow Will Be Different is a memoir by Sarah McBride, a transgender woman and political activist. It deals with her own coming out story, her relationship with a transman who passed away due to cancer, and her experience with lobbying for gender identity nondiscrimination bills in her home state of Delaware and in DC.

I was moved to tears several times while reading. I can easily see a biopic/documentary being made of Sarah’s experiences, especially her success in pushing the Gender Identity Nondiscrimination Act of 2013 through Delaware’s Congress. Those chapters were so gripping, I could picture it as a courtroom drama as I was reading it. It was interesting to get an inside look at the political process of drafting, lobbying, and presenting a bill.

One of the best things about this book was McBride’s attention to intersectionality and awareness of her own privilege. Though trans, she’s also white, mid-upper class, and able-bodied. She is quick to point out that things are much worse when other identity factors come into play along with being trans:

My privilege and experiences limit my perspective. It’s easy to express—and genuinely feel—empathy for a young, white, conventional-looking trans girl; it’s another to maintain that empathy when your differences are compounded by race, gender expression, class, religion, or circumstance. (63)

And she talks about how her transitioning resulted in a change in perspective about misogyny:

I finally had come out of the closet, only to find myself stuck in the kitchen. (41)

She addresses many of the misconceptions about the transgender community and individuals. She rebukes the erroneous beliefs behind “bathroom bills”, and chides those politicians who argue that it is “too soon” and that the country “isn’t ready yet” for trans equality.

Transgender people shouldn’t be treated with dignity because of how some of us look; we should be treated with dignity because we are human beings. (103)

“When you ask transgender people to allow a conversation to occur before you grant us equal rights, you are asking people to watch their one life pass by without dignity and respect[.]” (123)

Near the end of the book, McBride focuses a lot on the up and coming generation, in which kids are being accepted as transgender sooner and at much higher rates than even just a decade ago. She sees such great hope in the next generations, despite the unfortunate rollbacks of trans protections from Donald Trump’s administration.

When young people participate in politics, they can speak from a place of history. I don’t mean the history of the past, but rather the history that remains to be written. Young people will be the ones who write the history books of tomorrow… That is a powerful tool. And if there is one thing I’ve learned throughout the last few years, it’s that our voices matter. (263)

Overall, this book was a roller-coaster of emotion, and packed full of interesting insights to the politics of fighting for trans equality. I definitely recommend it.

I actually don't think I've cried this much over a book in a long time