Note: The author of this work uses gender neutral Spivak Pronouns.
Topping the list of banned and challenged books for 2022 Kobabe's graphic memoir explores how e discovered eir identity as a nonbinary person starting as a toddler.
Although a late bloomer as a reader, as a teenager Kobabe discovered queer books at the library and began to read voraciously. E describes a feeling "as if lightning was coming from the pages...Electricity flowing directly into my palms" when reading gay sex scenes in the Fake Series of books by Sanami Matoh; and the Last Herald Mage Trilogy by Mercedes Lackey.
Like Alison Bechdel (who also wrote a queer graphic memor - Fun Home) Kobabe worked in eir college library, where e came out as bi-sexual for the first time. The college library is also a space where e tries sexting for the first time. Libraries are safe spaces to try new things.
As a cartoonist Kobabe taught one-day comics workshops to junior high students at local public libraries. Keenly aware of the current political climate, e ultimately decides not to share eir pronouns, nor share that e is nonbinary with the students. E questions this decision and wonders if e is doing a disservice to them, especially as e recognizes how much it would have meant to em if e had had a nonbinary or trans teacher in junior high. The importance of representation is a crucial theme of this work, and is one of the reasons censors want to keep others from reading it.
By far my favorite part of the book is a scene in which Kobabe meets eir cousin's new baby for the first time. Cousin Josh, and his wife, Faith ask what the baby should call his grown nonbinary relative. Kobabe responds "I don't know a good gender-neutral term for 'aunt'...Can I be his librarian? Or cartoonist?"
Find out more about this book at its author from the New York Times.
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