No rating because I don't think any number would really make sense for this book.

In Gender Queer, Maia Kobabe has created a heartfelt, introspective, beautifully-illustrated memoir about eir journey with gender (and sexuality, to a lesser extent). It is deeply personal book, and it is of course also the most banned book in the country right now for the usual bigoted reasons.

I related deeply to a lot of Kobabe's experiences, from going to Waldorf school (and having Waldorf teacher parents) to some of the fandom and gender stuff.

The rest of eir experiences felt familiar to me simply because I have been a queer person on the internet for the last decade, and unfortunately, that knowledge of things like the One Direction fandom ran directly counter to my enjoyment of the book and my respect for the author as a person.

Don't get me wrong, I respect Maia Kobabe a lot as a storyteller and artist. I appreciate how absolutely fucking raw and honest this book is. I also don't think I would like em very much if we met in literally any context, and I spent a lot of the book judging em. Real person fanfiction? Wincest? REALLY? We're just admitting to fetishization with absolutely zero acknowledgment that that's what it is in our PUBLISHED MEMOIRS? Wild.

Anyway, that panel of Alanna was absolutely perfect and made me feel a lot of kinship with someone I will likely never meet, even if I did end up judging a lot of that person's choices in what to discuss in eir book.