Jump to ratings and reviews
Rate this book

Burn the Page: A True Story of Torching Doubts, Blazing Trails, and Igniting Change

Rate this book
An inspirational memoir-meets-manifesto by Danica Roem, the nation's first openly trans person elected to US state legislature

Danica Roem made national headlines when--as a transgender former frontwoman for a metal band and a political newcomer--she unseated Virginia's most notoriously anti-LGBTQ 26-year incumbent Bob Marshall as state delegate. But before Danica made history, she had to change her vision of what was possible in her own life. Doing so was a matter of during her campaign, Danica hired an opposition researcher to dredge up every story from her past that her opponent might seize on to paint her negatively.

In wildly entertaining prose, Danica dismantles all the stories her opponents tried to hedge against her, showing how through brutal honesty and loving authenticity, it's possible to embrace the low points, and even transform them into her greatest strengths. Burn the Page takes readers from Danica's lonely, closeted, and at times operatically tragic childhood to her position as a rising star in a party she's helped forever change. Burn the Page is so much more than a stump it's an extremely inspiring manifesto about how it's possible to set fire to the stories you don't want to be in anymore, whether written by you or about you by someone else--and rewrite your own future, whether that's running for politics, in your work, or your personal life. This book will not just encourage people who think they have to be spotless to run for office, but inspire all of us to own our personal narratives as Danica does.

320 pages, Hardcover

First published April 26, 2022

58 people are currently reading
1699 people want to read

About the author

Danica Roem

1 book16 followers

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think?
Rate this book

Friends & Following

Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!

Community Reviews

5 stars
215 (38%)
4 stars
213 (38%)
3 stars
112 (20%)
2 stars
15 (2%)
1 star
4 (<1%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 102 reviews
Profile Image for Nev.
1,451 reviews220 followers
May 3, 2022
Danica Roem’s book feels very different from what you might typically expect to see in a political memoir, which I really appreciated. She didn’t show a super sanitized version of her life and there was a lot of humor and personality in her writing. I loved all her different stories of being a metalhead, playing in a band, figuring out her gender identity, coming out as trans, being a journalist, and running for office in Virginia to beat a homophobic/transphobic man.
11.4k reviews197 followers
April 22, 2022
A must read. Much has been made about Roem being the first openly transgender legislator in Virginia but those who remember the campaign will also remember that she was one of the few candidates that year (at any level) who ran on an actual issue that was important to her constituents- traffic. And she's worked hard in the legislature on that issue and others. This memoir expands on the details those of us in the region know and it does it in her own words and on her own terms, while still keeping parts of her life private. She's got some pointed and funny comments about being a journalist following local issues (great prep for her campaign) as well as about being a metal head. Despite it's breezy approach, this doesn't skip the hard parts. Thanks to Edelweiss for the ARC. And she's still working the traffic issue!
Profile Image for laurel [the suspected bibliophile].
2,054 reviews757 followers
May 8, 2022
Danica has been one of my favorite politicians since her run in 2017 and has continued to be a favorite with the way she approaches her constituents and fights for issues that genuinely help people. This book was incredible, and I am so glad she was reelected.
Profile Image for b (tobias forge's version).
916 reviews21 followers
July 3, 2022
The parts of this book that don’t work for me don’t work because I’m very far left and very much a lesbian, so I do not share Danica’s faith in the Democratic party, nor do I understand her decisions re: what to do when a guy follows you to your car and asks to make out with you. (That anecdote was incredibly stressful for me to read because it seemed obvious to me that Danica was in danger, and I think it could be distressing to other readers, too.) The parts that do work for me prompted me to give Lacuna Coil a listen.

Profile Image for Jenn.
Author 3 books26 followers
April 29, 2022
There are a lot of subgenres of memoirs out there-- political memoirs, music memoirs, lgbtq memoirs, and more-- and this book mashes up so many of those subgenres incredibly successfully. The very difficulty of categorizing the book speaks, I think, to its most powerful message: that the journey between Points A and B doesn't have to be the most direct route. Life presents both challenges and opportunities that encourage us to take the less beaten path, and perhaps a more circuitous route, towards our goals. And that's okay! Danica Roem's memoir is thoughtful, honest, perceptive, brave, touching, and often hilarious-- in short, as impressive as all her other achievements in journalism, music, and politics alike. It was an honor and a pleasure to go on this journey with Danica.
Profile Image for Finnoula.
367 reviews2 followers
June 27, 2022
So Danica is more of a badass than I realized! She is a metal head and a lawmaker who just oozes the best energy! Great book
Profile Image for Nicole.
176 reviews30 followers
July 8, 2023
⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

What Danica has accomplished is nothing short of amazing. It's definitely a story and perspective that needs to be told. I really enjoyed the first 1/3 of the book, but I almost didn't make it through the middle 1/3 of the book. I'm not into heavy metal, but I can usually read books about things I'm not really into. Metal is a big part of Danica's life, but I think it was just too many minute details about travel itineraries and getting passports, etc for me. I understand she was trying to show she could organize and how she learned, but this part was really a struggle for me. I'm glad I made it through, though. The last 1/3 of the book was excellent. Danica seems like a truly authentic person. She knew the odds were entirely stacked against her, but she confronted every ghost from her past and present head-on. I really appreciate that quality over denying and refusing to admit mistakes. Rather than showing weakness, I think this shows growth, which is important to me in a leader. She ran on the things that she knew were actually important to her fellow constituents, rather than the "moral" issues her predecessor seemed hyperfocused on for almost 30 years, and has been reelected twice since. She is not only an inspiration for the LGTBQ+ community but for all of us.
Profile Image for Audrey Melillo.
122 reviews3 followers
March 7, 2023
Danica Roem is a delight. So eloquent, funny, thoughtful- I’m so glad I read this.

I read just a few pages before bed every night (hence why it took me so long to finally finish this) but I found her words to always be the perfect end to my day.

Highly recommend
Profile Image for Katie.
171 reviews1 follower
June 16, 2022
1) I’m devastated that more folks haven’t picked up this memoir. It’s funny, entertaining and very uplifting. With everything going on in the world right now, reading Danica’s story gave me the hope I need to approach tomorrow with courage. I will be ruined for all future political memoirs…and not just because she said fu@k and co$k a lot. 👍🏼

2) The audiobook. 🥰 How do I know when my current audiobook is a banger? I get annoyed with my family when they try to talk to me while I’m listening to it. 🤫 Danica narrates it and her voice is incredible. Her writing voice is already strong, so listening to the book with her inflections and accents just gave it a certain something. 🤔 I also love that she sang the title and credits as the metal frontwoman she was always meant to be. 🤘🏼

3) Her sister’s name is Katie, so obviously she’s good people. 🙏🏼

4) I appreciate that Danica was so HERSELF in this book. Memoirs, by nature, are fundamentally vulnerable experiences for the author. A memoir will become an instant favorite if I see in the writing that the author held nothing back. ❤️
Profile Image for Rachel.
651 reviews13 followers
June 10, 2022
An inspirational memoir-meets-manifesto by Danica Roem, the nation's first openly trans person elected to US state legislature⁣.

For those who know me, I am a political junky, so I was super excited to pick up Burn The Page: A True Story of Torching Doubts, Blazing Trails, and Igniting Change. This memoir was bursting with inspiration, humor, personality, and honesty. It was so refreshing to have a politician not sugarcoat life experiences to fit the status quo.

For those unfamiliar with Danica, she made national headlines as a transgender former frontwoman for a metal band and a political newcomer who unseated Virginia's most notoriously anti-LGBTQ 26-year incumbent Bob Marshall as state delegate 💪🏳️‍⚧️

Burn the Page is so much more than a stump speech: it's an extremely inspiring manifesto about how it's possible to set fire to the stories you don't want to be in anymore, whether written by you or about you by someone else--and rewrite your own future, whether that's running for politics, in your work, or your personal life.

I HIGHLY recommend this book to all my followers! As part of my Little Free Library's PRIDE MONTH celebration I have added my copy front and center! Enjoy!

Thank you @vikingbooks for my gifted copy.
Profile Image for Kat V.
1,207 reviews10 followers
December 28, 2023
Danica Roem 5/5
This Book 3/5
Ok so she’s not a writer but she a great activist and this is a great story. It’s a bit repetitive but I still like it. I think the concentrating of Manassas is incredibly important here. I hope this book is an inspiration to someone who needs it. This is a classic and relatable queer story. Ok I just do not care about heavy metal so this chapter kinda sucks for me. I wish this book was more political, honestly. Some of the gender in here hits personally but generally I’m realizing that I wanted a book more about her political career and what drives her than her life. OK now we’re getting into the campaign and I love it. She’s such a brilliant candidate and legislator. I wish the whole book had been like the last few chapters. 2.7 stars
421 reviews2 followers
April 29, 2022
Picked this one up to share with my daughter. Told myself I was only going to read the introduction before letting her read it first. 100+ pages later decided she’d have to wait her turn (at least it wouldn’t be along wait…).

The primary point of curiosity for me had been the election related stuff (recovering political junkie) but the early biography, and especially all the stuff on her life as a metalhead, was just incredibly engrossing. She really knows how to spin a good story, building a connection and empathy with the reader.
211 reviews4 followers
June 29, 2022
A somewhat standard but compelling political memoir. However, in this time of renewed transphobia from the right, the importance of Danica's work and visibility as the first out trans state legislator cannot be understated. Not a must read, but a lovely, earnest, and meaningful addition to any Pride Month reading list.
Profile Image for Joe Kessler.
2,391 reviews70 followers
June 22, 2022
Danica Roem makes it all look easy. As the first openly transgender person to be elected to a U.S. state legislature, the Virginia delegate has faced considerable transphobia (and misplaced homophobia) lobbed against her, as well as opposition dirt based on her time fronting a heavy metal group and its accompanying party lifestyle. And yet she seems to take these difficulties in stride, citing her experience as a journalist for her ability to dissociate from the cruelty of personal attacks and remain laser-focused on the issues that matter to her constituents. People in her district -- or a neighboring county, like me -- know her as a tireless advocate for expanded school lunch programs, LGBTQ+ rights, and improvements to local transportation, particularly that bugbear of Northern Virginia traffic that is State Route 28. She's also remarkably accessible to voters, forging strong connections in her door-to-door individualized campaigning and even giving out her private cell phone number with an earnest request for folks to call her if there's any way her office can help.

(And she liked and replied to my untagged tweet that mentioned I was starting this book, so I assume that she either has automated alerts set up or is regularly searching for her name online, and that she will thus at some point be reading this review. Hi, Danica! Love your work, truly.)

In this memoir, the author shares an extensive look at a past she acknowledges is messy, as well as the moral outlook that has guided her time in politics. It's like no politician's autobiography I've ever read before, simply because Roem herself is so distinctive electorally (although thankfully growing less so as the number of elected trans officials continues to rise). She is forthright about her coming-of-gender story, her sexual history, and her indiscretions with alcohol, which is refreshing not only for someone in an often-sanitized public position, but also as a reader in the same approximate age cohort whose own life is documented on the internet in a way older generations have never had to face. Not everyone would be this brave, but the writer's approach is to own it all, some parts even proactively, and trust that her platform and track record of results will count more for anyone turned off by anything in her background. It's honestly not the worst lesson that the left could have learned from the unexpected success of Donald Trump in 2016, a year before Roem entered her first race.

This particular publication is organized by theme rather than chronology, which means that the timeline periodically loops back on itself in a way that's a little difficult to follow and introduces artificial divisions among various elements in the delegate's career. There are sections on coming out as a woman, going to therapy, meeting her partner, touring with the band, reporting on local corruption, challenging the bathroom-bill bigot who held his seat for a quarter-century before her, and so on, and it's sometimes hard to remember / track exactly what happened for her when. But Danica's voice shines loud and clear throughout, and makes me proud to support her both in her present role that she's won thrice now and as a newly-announced candidate for the state senate. While she gives no mention here of any dreams of even higher office, I see only bright things ahead in her future.

[Content warning for suicide, domestic abuse, and sexual assault.]

Like this review?
--Throw me a quick one-time donation here!
https://ko-fi.com/lesserjoke
--Subscribe here to support my writing and weigh in on what I read next!
https://patreon.com/lesserjoke
--Follow along on Goodreads here!
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/6...
--Or click here to browse through all my previous reviews!
https://lesserjoke.home.blog
Profile Image for Todd Dennis.
31 reviews
September 2, 2022
Learning of Danica from Jose on SiriusXM’s Liquid Metal back when she first was running for Delegate made me a fan of her as a person due to the shared love of metal she brought to the satellites. I’ve somewhat followed her from afar as she has served a couple terms and returned to the satellites a couple times. When I heard her promoting this book with Jose earlier this year I knew I had to check it out. Her journey and the journeys to see and play metal shows didn’t disappoint.

While many people write a memoir that strains to reach 200 pages, Danica’s biography is almost 300 pages and could have been longer. If she writes a follow up in the future, she is currently running for the state Senate seat for her district in Virginia, I would definitely check it out.

In an age of hyper-polarization it is nice to hear from a politician that puts the interests of their constituents first.

One addition that would be great would be a playlist to listen to while reading the book or anytime made by Danica.
Profile Image for Shannon.
8,401 reviews429 followers
March 30, 2025
Another memoir that's been on my to-read pile for a while now about a trans woman politician and their experiences coming out and running for elected office. This was different than I was expecting ( a lot of the book details their experiences in heavy metal bands/journalism) and the audio narration by the author felt a bit manic at times. That said, Roem's story is still very inspiring and a bright light to see what's still possible with enough heart and determination in American politics - something needed now more than ever!!
Profile Image for Shelley.
167 reviews
July 5, 2023
First of all, listen to the audio version - it makes an already awesome book even awesomer. Second, this book is wildly entertaining, interesting, enlightening and inspiring! Such cliche words but Danica is all of those things! And a metalhead! I love her and I love that she defeated that ass Bob Marshall in 2017.
Profile Image for Melinda Kramer.
114 reviews1 follower
July 11, 2022
I was excited to read this memoir and glad I did. (I did audio version.) I often judge a memoir by whether I want to learn more after reading it and this made me do that. I found the first half of the book too long and detailed on Danica’s early days, pre-politician. It could be edited down. I enjoyed the second half much more and was inspired by her natural instincts, strength, perseverance and development as a young journalist and ultimately a dedicated politician. I will be following her for a long while to see where the story goes from here.
5 reviews
September 6, 2023
Fascinating and inspiring true story. Danica writes with passion and honesty. Her heavy metal days were not relatable to me but it did paint a picture of who she is. Great read for LGBTQIA allies.
Profile Image for Deanna.
2,745 reviews65 followers
April 30, 2022
I bought the hardback and the audible editions. Listening to Danica Roem tell her own story is amazing. Her drive, challenges and emotions are evident.

I must state that I know Danica Roem and am privileged to be her friend. I was one of those at the school board meeting. I was also one of the leaders of the People's Caravan for Medicare Expansion. I canvased for her elections. She is a force for the people. She is an amazing woman. This book is good. It is worth your reading time.
322 reviews
June 17, 2022
Super fun listen as an audiobook. I don't read a lot of political memoirs, and this one like all of them is written in a strategic way, but the feeling I got as a reader is that Danica Roem's personality really comes through, in a way that is quirky and dorky and fun, and I got a better sense of her life story than I had from random press coverage. It made me want to meet her and canvass for her.
52 reviews
June 18, 2022
I honestly didn't know much about Danica Room before reading this. As a matter of fact, I had seen her interviewed exactly one time! I'm a fan now! Love the honesty and the "real" human factor. I love her family and I love her commitment to her community! I'm not even a heavy metal fan at all but I didn't get annoyed by the multitude of references to heavy metal.
Profile Image for Krissy Ronan.
898 reviews11 followers
June 18, 2022
Not a typical political memoir from not a typical politician. Seemed really authentic and open.

Thank you to Libro.fm and Penguin Random House Audio for the audiobook.
Profile Image for James.
777 reviews37 followers
May 18, 2022
Clearly, this is a book for readers who are already at least somewhat familiar with the author's career in politics.

I picked this one up because my state may also be electing a trans woman to the state house this year. Hopefully, anyway.

The writing is good - the author is a journalist, so not too surprising that she writes really well - and generally follows a narrative trajectory. Sort of. Just a little more loosely than a traditional memoir.

More ordinary than salacious (although very funny), which is what's really needed in trans narratives right now. Roem is incredibly multifaceted and does great representation.

The music parts were boring. Sorry not-sorry. The state-level politics stuff, very neat.

Overall, enjoyable to read; maybe could have been shorter.
Profile Image for Jess Brown.
18 reviews1 follower
June 20, 2022
Danica Roem is a tremendous force for good in Virginia. This story is a sweet, funny, and deeply inspiring story of how a prodigious talent discovered her true calling in life when she ran and was elected to public office in the aftermath of President Trump’s election. I enjoyed every page of this beautiful and heartfelt autobiography.
Profile Image for Sarah Jamieson.
296 reviews3 followers
January 3, 2023
Danica Roem's story in 2017 ignited my passion to become myself. Hers was a story that was not the typical run for politics. It was freshly needed and continues to be why I have no choice but to stan her.

Her book is what I have loved about her: honest, relatable, and down and dirty in the best ways. She doesn't spare us any detail. And I love that each chapter is framed beginning with opposition research and why each point of that research is false. It's a brilliant narrative device that pays off dividends so wonderfully.

Danica's voice is vitally needed as this nation continues to attack the LGBTQ community, because her voice and her story is what our community needs vitally: brutal honesty and compassion.
Profile Image for Marianne.
211 reviews3 followers
November 18, 2022
Such a sweet story told with sincerity and a unique voice. Listening to Danica read it herself was a real pleasure, and while her politics are more mainstream liberal than mine, it's clear she knows her shit and is a hard working legislator. All the metal references throughout were also a lot of fun.
12 reviews
September 4, 2022
Totally support this person and really wanted to like the book but just couldn’t relate to her life experiences around heavy metal bands, etc. Took too long to get to the political stuff. Did not finish.
Profile Image for Addy.
277 reviews3 followers
Read
December 30, 2023
repetitive and not what i expected based on the description, but had lots of interesting stories and the queer joy was amazing to read
Displaying 1 - 30 of 102 reviews

Can't find what you're looking for?

Get help and learn more about the design.