In an interview with gay glossy Out,
Laura Jane Grace, the lead singer, songwriter and guitarist of
Against Me!, talks about her upcoming album and memoir.
Grace, who came out transgender in a
2012 Rolling Stone interview, told Out that her first
memoir, Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock's Most Infamous Anarchist
Sellout, goes back to her childhood and is mostly about her
wrestling with her gender identity.
“[The book] starts at the beginning,
giving context to where I was born and my upbringing,” Grace said.
“I grew up in a military family and went from army base to army
base until my parents moved to Florida when I was 12. But with that,
the book talks heavily about my experience with gender dysphoria and
growing up closeted.”
“The new Against Me! Album, Shape
Shift With Me, wrestles with love,” Out
noted, “which is not exactly a familiar topic for the band..”
“All I could really focus on was
writing love songs,” Grace responded. “A lot of that had to do
with going through a three-year-long divorce and being single after
having been married for seven years. Like, who am I right now? How do
I relate to people when I’m dating? People throw around 'promising
forever' pretty easily. What does it fucking mean? [The album] also
examines the power dynamics in relationships and how that’s based
on gender, especially how it’s perceived when singing about it as a
transitioning person. Do people perceive my voice as male, or female,
or androgynous, and does that influence how they’re perceiving what
I’m singing about?”
Grace added that German director Werner
Herzog should provide the narration for the audio version of Tranny,
which arrives on November 15.