I always give memoirs, especially graphic novel memoirs, 4 stars or higher. This is because I don't feel like I have the right to assign a score to someone's personal truth, based on things like how engaging I found it, or whether it impressed me. And in a graphic novel, where the way language is used doesn't even necessarily play into the overall quality of the narrative, a score feels especially redundant. 

I read this book for a PopSugar prompt - "a book that has been banned or challenged in any state in 2022". Originally I'm from Russia, and my life experiences have shaped me into a person who is staunchly against censorship (it's a practice that only backward governments will implement, you can't change my mind!) - if a book is banned somewhere, it's going to the top of my reading list. But all in all... I almost found this one underwhelming?

Make no mistake, I related to parts of "Genderqueer" on a deep and personal level. I, too, am nonbinary, and have gone through many of the same revelations about my gender identity as Kobabe. But even at eir most vulnerable and raw, e sounds... borderline clinical. To think that someone would read this book and think it profane enough to ban is absurd to me. A few scenes feature sexual content, but so do many other memoirs. So do many fictional works I had to read in high school! Truly, in contrast to what the Facebook mommies will have you believe, it's really not anything world-shattering, which isn't a bad thing. Maybe that's because it's a story with which I'm painfully familiar. Reading it, I felt, more than anything, understood. 

The ending was abrupt, which makes sense to me since it isn't really an end. How does one, after all, end a description of one's ongoing experience of transness? Overall, this was an immensely relatable journey through Kobabe's discovery of eir gender identity and sexuality. It's not always profound, and it doesn't have to be. It feels very similar in tone to two other graphic memoirs I've read this year, "Blankets" by Craig Thompson and "Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic" by Alison Bechdel. The speculative tone, the back-and-forth timeline, the meandering pacing, the open-ended conclusion. I liked it a lot. 

Maybe if enough trans people write deeply personal explorations of coming to terms with their gender identity, revealing painful truths about themselves and really digging around in their past, society will start realising that we're people too! I love literature that humanizes me in the public eye :)

Read banned books, y'all.