PrideSource.com – By Imani Williams
Author and self described lesbian Cris Beam does a ‘keep it real’ job in her book “Transparent: Love, Family and Living the T with Transgender Teenagers”.
Beam lets readers in on her personal relationships with trans youth who have unabashedly let her into their intimate world. These teens have the battle scars from being homeless, searching for definition and self love in a universe that often renders them invisible. Young, poor, mostly black and latino, these youth form bonds to protect themselves from becoming statistics of hate crimes in American cities that are supposed to embrace diversity but often fall short.
Vivid in her descriptions of Los Angeles’ Santa Monica Boulevard just east of
La Brea, where fast food is cheap and plentiful and trans girls hang in groups ‘clocking trade’ and getting the ‘T’ on how to shoot up the black market hormones that they pick up at the local swap meets in East LA.