Transcendent by Laverne Cox review – success against the odds

The actor and activist tells the story of her brutal childhood in the deep south with eloquence and defiance When Laverne Cox was eight years old and growing up in Mobile, Alabama, she saved up her pocket money and bought herself a fan decorated with Japanese geishas. The fan became her favourite plaything, a prop to be used while dancing in imaginary music videos or recreating scenes from Gone With the Wind in which she cast herself as Scarlett O’Hara. “I lit up, animated, whenever that fan was in my hand,” she recalls in her memoir. But when Cox, who was raised as a boy, began fanning hersel

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