Horse Barbie: A Memoir (Unabridged)
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4.7 • 7 Ratings
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
“A moving chronicle of trans resilience and joy” (Vogue) from one of Out100’s Most Impactful and Influential LGBTQ+ Storytellers
“Groundbreaking . . . [Rocero] quite literally models what triumph can look like.”—Glamour (Women of the Year)
WINNER OF THEM’S AWARD FOR LITERATURE • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Book Riot, Elle, Esquire
As a young femme in 1990s Manila, Geena Rocero heard, “Bakla, bakla!,” a taunt aimed at her feminine sway, whenever she left the tiny universe of her eskinita. Eventually, she found her place in trans pageants, the Philippines’ informal national sport. When her competitors mocked her as a “horse Barbie” due to her statuesque physique, tumbling hair, long neck, and dark skin, she leaned into the epithet. By seventeen, she was the Philippines’ highest-earning trans pageant queen.
A year later, Geena moved to the United States where she could change her name and gender marker on her documents. But legal recognition didn’t mean safety. In order to survive, Geena went stealth and hid her trans identity, gaining one type of freedom at the expense of another. For a while, it worked. She became an in-demand model. But as her star rose, her sense of self eroded. She craved acceptance as her authentic self yet had to remain vigilant in order to protect her dream career. The high-stakes double life finally forced Geena to decide herself if she wanted to reclaim the power of Horse Barbie once and for all: radiant, head held high, and unabashedly herself.
A dazzling testimony from an icon who sits at the center of transgender history and activism, Horse Barbie is a celebratory and universal story of survival, love, and pure joy.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Geena Rocero’s memoir tells the exhilarating story of how she became one of America’s first wildly successful trans models. The audiobook gives us a full and vibrant picture of Rocero’s experiences, from the contradictions of her early life in the Philippines—where Catholicism was everywhere but trans pageants were treated like a national sport—to her early days in America, where hiding her identity was part of the job. Rocero doesn’t shy away from ugly tales of transphobia, but she also shares many moments of unabashed joy, especially once she finds her chosen family. Her storytelling makes this emotional journey all the more beautiful, capturing the sights, sounds, and smells of her childhood in her Filipino village and her young adulthood in the Bay Area. And there’s no better narrator for this story than Rocero herself, whose gentle voice conveys both her passion and pain. For an inspiring tale about learning to love yourself, look no further than Horse Barbie.
