Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Raquel Willis is a writer, editor,

and transgender activist. And being an activist in this era means you have to be able to navigate

organizing, both online and in the, well, I don't want to say real world because the internet is

very real.

But let's say like physical space.

She's got a memoir out called The Risk It Takes to Bloom, and she spoke about it with

Britney Luce, host of NPR's It's Been a Minute.

And they talk about how Willis was compelled to do her work after a transgender teenager

killed herself in 2014.

And yet, they touch on the importance of visibility and representation.

But Willis has some really interesting things to say about the limits of those things.

Because what good is having a few transgender people on TV if there's no support for the rest out there?

That's after the break.

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So in your memoir, you talk about living openly as a trans woman in college, then rethinking that after you graduated following the deaths of Trayvon Martin

and Ilan Nettles, a trans woman who was murdered by a catcaller. But a tipping point that made

you decide to share your origin story more publicly was following the death of Layla Alcorn,

...