Shauna Marie O’Toole’s memoir bears a charmingly honest subtitle: “A more light-hearted look at what happens when you transition from your birth-sex to your true gender. And, no, you can’t shave in a minimart bathroom, the soap isn’t slippery enough!” This playful quip captures the book’s tone: candid, witty, and filled with the real-life messiness and practicality of transition.
At its heart, the memoir is a profoundly human narrative, seen through a lens of humor and empathy. It chronicles Shauna’s decision to start writing on November 1, 2003, shortly after coming out, an “accidental” moment that sparked a diary-like record of identity, family dynamics, and personal growth. Across its 256 pages, readers meet a woman grappling with shifting names, pronouns, and intimate reflections, a journey that is both deeply personal and universally resonant.
Shauna doesn’t shy away from the less glamorous parts of transition. She describes everything from waking up and relearning how to present in a mirror, to navigating bathrooms and social spaces, notably that infamous minimart, with refreshing honesty. Her pragmatic note that those bathrooms aren’t exactly equipped for a clean shave is a small moment with outsized symbolic weight about the discomfort and awkwardness of early transition.
While its tone is breezy, the memoir addresses many serious themes: self-acceptance and agency, resilience through upheaval, and finding chosen family.
Shauna urges readers to look beyond superficial markers, mirrors, surgery, societal validation, and instead define themselves from within. She vividly recounts couch-surfing homelessness, strained family ties, and financial precarity that accompanied her transition. Though biological family frayed, a network of affirming friends, fellow trans individuals, and future advocates rallied around her, a thread she emphasizes in interviews.
Shauna’s lighthearted storytelling married with hard-earned wisdom isn’t accidental, it reflects the woman behind the book. As Monika Kowalska notes from her Heroines interview, Shauna is “a woman whose backbone was forged in steel” and yet who approaches her journey with wit, humility, and warmth. This gift of duality, being fiercely determined yet gracefully honest, shines through every chapter.You Can’t Shave in a Minimart Bathroom is more than a personal memoir; it’s the opening chapter of Shauna’s decades-deep work in activism, writing more books, founding the We Exist Coalition, and running for NY State Senate. Her stories remind us that every passport we earn, be it legal recognition or emotional peace, starts with honoring our own lived experience.
This book bridges theory and reality, bringing scholarship and activism into living rooms via authentic storytelling. Shauna proves that courage isn’t always loud; sometimes it simply speaks its name. She inspires us to reimagine how we discuss identity, whether you’re early in your journey or well into advocacy work.
Shauna Marie O’Toole’s memoir is a refreshing blend of the mundane and the monumental, from shampoo suds in a minimart to the profound reclamation of self. If you’re seeking a story that is human, hopeful, and full of hard-earned laughs, look no further. And yes, bring a travel razor, but maybe skip the minimart bathroom.
Available via Amazon
Photo via The Heroines of My Life.
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