Amanda Darrow, director of youth, family and education programs at the Utah Pride Center, poses with books that have been the subject of complaints from parents in recent weeks on Thursday, Dec. 16, 2021, in Salt Lake City. (Rick Bowmer/AP)
Maia Kobabe grew up in an idyll. Cow fields threaded by a dirt road. No TV. Almost no internet. Nights fell over hills, stars shone bright, and Kobabe read fantasy novels, imagining other universes while searching for an identity, a glint of self to carry into the world.
“I lived in a shire,” said Kobabe, whose father and mother carved beads, weaved and sewed in a rustic community not far from this Northern California town. “I wish every kid had so much space to wander in. I wish every kid could walk out their door in any direction and be perfectly safe to catch snakes and frogs and pick berries.”
The pull of tides and the sway of nature were easier to decipher than the riddle within. Born with female anatomy, Kobabe didn’t feel like a girl, which became apparent in third grade when wading shirtless in a river during a class trip drew a reproval from the teacher. But boy wasn’t right, either. Kobabe was between two places and didn’t know where to stand. Was there anybody else in the world who felt like this? It was a mystery.
Kobabe’s insightful and moving coming of age discovery of identifying as nonbinary (using the pronouns e, em and eir) is told in the 2019 graphic memoir “Gender Queer.” Two years after its publication, the narrative, notable for its startling honesty and explicit drawings, became the most banned book in America, a target of school boards, conservative candidates, preachers and parental groups who condemned it as pornography aimed at impressionable children. Supported by librarians and vilified by Moms for Liberty, Kobabe was tugged from the writing life into the nation’s cultural wars.
Read more here.
Related: “Controversial ‘Gender Queer’ will remain on the shelf at Barrington High, school board decides”
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