“I knew that I wasn’t being fucking honest with myself,” says the punk rocker and trans icon in “Black Me Out,” an Audible Original.
By Sam Manzella, September 2, 2021
It’s hard to imagine punk rocker Laura Jane Grace as anything other than a transgender icon, but there was a time when she didn’t even know what to call herself.
When Grace rose to fame in the 2000s as the lead singer and founder of Against Me!, she was closeted and navigating gender dysphoria privately, although it had begun to seep into her songwriting. She came out publicly in 2012 and later incorporated her experiences into albums like 2014’s Transgender Dysphoria Blues and 2016’s Shape Shift With Me, as well as Tranny: Confessions Of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout, her debut memoir. Almost a decade later, Grace has joined forces with Audible’s Words + Music initiative to reflect on her journey in Black Me Out, her new audio memoir, out today (September 2).
Narrated by Grace herself, Black Me Out blends conventional memoir with stripped-down recordings of the Against Me! songs that soundtracked her transition, including “I Was A Teenage Anarchist,” “Walking Is Still Honest,” and “The Ocean.” (Savvy Against Me! fans will note that the Audible project is named after the closing track from Transgender Dysphoria Blues.)
