She grew up in the Brooklyn housing projects in the sixties, boxed with her older sisters to survive the streets, and once turned down the chance to meet The Beatles because her dad didn't know who they were.
She was also inside the South Tower on September 11, 2001, wearing a borrowed breathing mask, running through the rubble, wondering if she'd ever see solid ground again.
That's just the first third of 1's Pursuit of Happiness.
1's Pursuit of Happiness is a raw, unflinching, and darkly funny memoir by Miranda Rights - a trans woman whose life has been anything but simple. From the Albany housing projects of Brooklyn to the skies above Panama during Operation Just Cause. From the streets of lower Manhattan on the worst morning in American history to the cafeteria of a Far Rockaway treatment facility, waiting for a meal she couldn't pay for.
Miranda has run toward disaster all her life - and spent decades running from herself. Her story is one of addiction and recovery, of faith lost and slowly rebuilt, of a gender identity suppressed for half a century that kept resurfacing no matter how deep she buried it. It is the story of an extraordinary ordinary life: a kid from Brooklyn who went to war, served as a first responder, battled addiction across two decades, survived institutions and street corners alike - and through all of it, never stopped asking why.
This is not a polished redemption narrative. It's a roller coaster ride, told in Miranda's own voice - irreverent, literary, heartbroken, and oddly hopeful - through all the wrong turns and impossible moments that shaped who she is.
Loved the honesty of David Carr's The Night of the Gun. Were moved by the scope of LGBTQ+ memoirs that refuse to tell a clean story. Want a firsthand perspective on 9/11 from someone who was in the building, not watching from a TV screen. Are themselves in recovery - or love someone who is - and need proof that it's possible to keep getting up after every fall.
"The greatest accomplishment is not in never falling, but in rising again after you fall." - Vince Lombardi
Miranda has fallen more times than she can count. She keeps rising.
Fasten your seatbelt. 1's Pursuit of Happiness is the ride Miranda promised - and it doesn't stop until the very last page.
