Gender Queer
2019
- literature
- lgbtq biography and memoir
- stonewall book awards
- collectionid:texchallenge2021
- collectionid:kellerchallenge
- collectionid:alpinechallenge
- collectionid:conroechallenge
- comic books, strips
- gender-nonconforming people
- biography
The story
In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia's intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears. Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity―what it means and how to think about it―for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.
What it’s like
Hand-drawn, loose ink panels, mostly black and white with the occasional flash of color, so the pages feel like a personal notebook rather than a polished graphic novel. The voice is candid and wry, moving between self-deprecating humor and raw, slow-building honesty as it traces adolescence, awkward crushes, and the work of finding words for oneself. Pacing is conversational and episodic, with quiet pauses on small domestic moments and sharper beats where the story turns uncomfortable. The emotional register is intimate and earnest, warm without being saccharine, and the arc follows a young person learning to speak about their body and identity on their own terms. Content is frank: sexual themes and explicit drawings appear, including a clinically rendered and distressing medical scene, and the mood can turn heavy in places. It suits a slow afternoon or a late night read in one sitting, and it is best for readers who want a direct, unflinching first-person account of nonbinary and asexual experience, or who want a thoughtful guide to thinking about gender and family.
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