A Girl Named Josh: A Memoir of Survival, Secrets & Becoming
By Andi Jay Boykins
 
They tried to silence her, erase her, bury her. But she lived,  and now, she’s telling it all.
 
From the moment her mother died, everything changed. Thrown into chaos, shipped across states, blamed, betrayed, and abandoned by family, Andi Jay Boykins had to fight for her name, her identity, and her life. This raw, unfiltered memoir follows the journey of a Black trans girl growing up in the South,  navigating poverty, religion, queerness, abuse, grief, and rebirth.
A Girl Named Josh is more than a coming-of-age story,  it’s a spiritual reckoning, a love letter to resilience, and a powerful account of what it means to survive when the world wants you gone. Through sex work, scams, survival, and sacred moments of grace, Andi finds a way to keep going — to become.
 
Inside these pages:
A fearless truth-telling of family betrayal, street survival, and spiritual growth
Life after loss: being displaced, erased, and discarded
Living femme in a world that hates softness — and learning to rise anyway
Finding home through chosen family, faith, and fire
 
This is the memoir they hoped you’d never write. But you did. And now the world will know what it took for you to bloom.
 
Triggering. Unapologetic. Healing. And necessary.