Full title: "Growing A Pair: My Life, My Way, My Words" by Shandi Strong.
In Growing A Pair: My Life, My Way, My Words, Shandi Strong peels back the layers of a life marked by rebellion, heartbreak, humor, courage, and growth. The memoir is as bold as its title suggests, offering readers an unflinching account of a transgender woman’s path to self-realization through trials that are both intensely personal and universally human. It is not just a trans story, or a survivor’s story, it is, at its heart, a human story.
Shandi Strong, writer, rocker, advocate, and aspiring politician, has worn many hats. But as she explains in her 2017 interview with The Heroines, none has fit quite so snugly as the one she wears today: a proud, visible trans woman who refuses to let anyone else define her worth or trajectory. She has taken every twist in the road and turned it into a stepping stone, sometimes bruised, but never broken. From the opening chapters, Growing A Pair charts Shandi’s evolution from a self-conscious child who learned early that conformity would be safer than authenticity, to a tenacious adult unafraid of discomfort. Assigned male at birth and raised in a world that told her she was “ordinary,” she dared to believe she could be something more. The book’s early sections are a raw exploration of identity and shame, of trying to navigate the treacherous tightrope of social expectations with a secret lodged deep in her core.
