Set in 1999, this book focuses on gender-questioning teen Jet. They cultivate a long-haired, Kurt Cobain-esque grunge look that is still read as female by most of society. Jet attempts to explore various aspects of their gender in the cramped environment of a Danish boarding school for international students; they try binding and steal boys' underwear from the laundry room but have to hide their experiments from nosy teen neighbors. Luckily, Jet has a friend, Sasha, who shares their love of music and mild rebellion. Sasha seems able to see Jet for who they are when no one else can. Drawn in a scratchy, lively art style, this book really pushes into questioning aspect of queer and trans identities; nothing here is clear cut, and even at the end of the story Jet doesn't know where transition will fully take them. I had the pleasure of reading an advanced reader copy of this book; look forward to it's release in May! 

This is Radtke's second long, melancholic graphic novel mixing nonfiction and memoir. This one is an examination of loneliness and it's damaging and isolating effects. The author bares her own loneliness, which seems inherited from her reserved Midwestern family; she also weaves in quotes and research from scholars and scientists who have studied the topic, most prominently Harry Harlow, an American phycologist who bred rhesus monkeys and raised them in horrifying conditions. I remember reading an article about his research in a National Geographic magazine as a teen, so I was vaguely familiar with his work, but not the sadist extent of it. Radtke lays out the griefs and traumas of Harlow's personal life, which might have been what pushed him to raise animals in solitary confinement and watch it destroy them. Radtke does not attempt to excuse this behavior, noting instead what it says about human beings who are similarly separated from society. There was an opportunity here to talk about the damaging nature of prisons, but that does not come up in this book. It is a very solid and well-researched essay, thematically cohesive, and with poignant illustrations colored in a range of muted, moody tones. It's also very sad, which will probably land with some readers as cathartic and others as upsetting.

 

Helvig, the teenage daughter of a Swedish robber king, haunts the frozen winter roads hoping a rich merchant will fall into her grasp. Instead, she captures someone more intriguing: a beautiful young woman traveling alone who claims to be a witch. Helvig brings her back to the robber hideout and begs her father to be allowed to host her for a while. Gerda, the witch, seems driven by an urgent, foolish, and dangerous errand- she wants to keep traveling North in the dead of winter in search of a brother who went missing years ago. Helvig convinces her to stay with the robbers until she's regained some strength. And so the two begin a winter of uneasy cohabitation, building a friendship and sharing a bed at night, but both keeping back secrets of their pasts and fears. A delightful, Sapphic retelling of "The Snow Queen" fairytale by Hans Christian Anderson as a young adult novel. This is a story I heard several times in my childhood, so I was familiar with all of the elements and it was a real pleasure to see how they had been reworked and transformed. Beginning the story with the meeting of Gerda and the Robber's daughter (an event that takes place in the middle of the original story) was a smart choice, and the amount of deeply queer yearning woven through kept me on the edge of my seat. 

A short, powerful essay written in the form of a letter to the author's six year old daughter. Following in the footsteps of James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates, Julietta Singh writes to a young person of color growing up in America, with all of its racist and colonial history. This book weaves Singh's memories of a painful childhood injury into thoughts on body trauma and recovery, harassment by TSA into surviving political and ecological disasters, attending protests in her home city of Richmond, Virginia with an anti-racist counter-education for her child. Singh lives her feminist politics every day in a queer family experimenting with communal living, folding ethics into pedagogy, building human connection under extractive capitalism. I loved this book. Reading it expanded my thoughts in a similar way as some of my favorite podcasts Secret Feminist Agenda and Witch, Please. It made me think about how I'd like to live in relation to others in the future, it gave me hope, it confronted me with new ideas and underlined others I had already encountered. I soaked in the 150 pages in just two days and was left wanting more. 

A literary exploration which mixes nonfiction and memoir surrounding the theme of love letters. The author's parents met, fell in love, and then courted through a series of letters all in one whirlwind summer of 1966. Years later- after her parents divorced, after her father came out as gay, and contracted HIV- the author's mother passed on the series of 20 letters from 1966. The author, who also grew up to be queer and an artist, weaves in memories, quotes, and research to build a story of a relationship beginning and ending, of her father's illness and eventual death, and his creative and destructive impulses. Many other famous love letters are discussed including those written by Emily Dickenson, Radclyffe Hall, Janet Flanner, Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West. The book itself is full of collage elements and interesting use of handwriting and ephemera in the design. It made me want to re-read Nigel Nicholson's Portrait of a Marriage, another book written by the child of queer artists (Vita Sackville-West's son) and also catch up on my correspondence. 

Welcome to the book I will be shouting about all year!! I read this book in two days and I loved it! The main character, Sol Katz, is trans, and Jewish, and works in archives. He also happens to be a vampire. In this book, vampirism is like a chronic illness, and indeed, Sol didn't become a vampire via a bite but via a medial intervention when he was dying of tetanus. Throughout the story he has to regularly visit a blood clinic to get transfusions, and it is as underfunded and grim as any part of the US healthcare system. Sol is also a fan; he was an active member of the fandom for a 90s sci-fi TV show called Feet of Clay, a kind of X-Files/Star Trek/Twilight Zone mix. When the lesbian showrunner of Feet of Clay passes away her widow donates all of her papers to the historical society where Sol works. He is very excited get to read drafts of an unfinished novel included among them. He also has an immediate spark of attraction with the widow and they develop a deeply trans and queer relationship that is so satisfying. It hits so hard. And also... the papers might be haunted? I don't want to say anything else about the plot because this is quite a short book actually, with TV scripts, email threads, and text messages mixed in with the prose making it read even faster. I can't recommend it more highly. Everyone go read it! 

Winifred is a talented artist, a lover of comics and fantasy, who struggles with loneliness, low-self esteem, a borderline eating disorder, insomnia, and depression. Her two closest friends both left her high school at the end of the previous year, and she starts sophomore year with a sense of dread. Luckily, a friend she had drifted apart from in middle school takes Winifred under her wing, and she also makes two new friends in her creative independent study class. Rich, rebellious April is always ready to pull people into her orbit and her projects; quiet, queer Oscar is her willing sidekick. Together, the three begin working on a fairytale zine series which Winifred finds a powerful outlet for the emotions she feels unable to share. But her secrets begin to separate her from her friends, who in turn don't share the real depths of their own struggles. This is a soft, slow, gentle story of a queer fat artist slowly coming out of her shell and into the power of her own creative voice. I really enjoyed the nuanced portrayals of friendships, and watching Winifred grow. Some of the information at the start of the book was revealed in a slightly awkward order, which made the first 1/3 a bit choppy; however, the story settled down by the middle and finished strong. 

Lu is a happy, cheerful child of the Field Commune, a utopian community of scientists and artists who travel around the edges of the universe to avoid the massive conflict in the center- a war between the Ever-Blossoming Empire and the Firebreak rebels. Lu encounters Fassen, a war orphan, on a neutral planet on the wreck of a cruiser, helps them summon a rebel ship, and gives them a communication device which allows them to stay in touch. As young adults, Lu conducts solo scientific surveys, while Fassen trains as a soldier in the rebel army. The second meeting of their life occurs when Fassen flees with stolen technology, and brings the war right to Lu's doorstep. This is a rich, diverse, and extremely queer sci-fi story which I had been highly anticipating! In an interview, I heard the author call this the story of "a long distance friendship between a kid from a Star Trek world and a kid from a Star Wars world" and that summary does capture some of the book's flavor. I loved the extreme contrast of the two societies, and how clearly they shape the choices each teen makes, and the things they are capable of imagining. The art is gorgeous, full of beautiful and thoughtful colors, and the characters and ships are all grounded in solid design up satisfyingly unique. Definitely recommend.

 

An excellent series of interviews with authors who have faced book bans and challenges in the past. In the current surge of book censorship, it was helpful to remember that waves of book challenges arise up every few years, and authors and librarians continue to face them and in the majority of cases, the books are returned to the shelves. The editor, Leonard S Marcus, is a skillful and well-researched interviewer who drawn out stories of the authors own childhoods, their inspirations, and what actions they decided to take when their works were challenged. These actions varied greatly: some authors wrote letters of support for every community facing a challenge and traveled and spoke widely. Others chose to do nothing, deciding that the defending of books was not the business of a writer of books. RL Stein in particular states "Early on, I learned that the number one rule is: never defend yourself. I was taught that lesson by a media coach when I was getting ready for an interview with the Today show." Angie Thomas best summarized the feels I have been having as I see Gender Queer being banned and challenged: "When you ban a book, what you are essentially doing is telling the kids who see themselves in that book that their story makes you uncomfortable. That they make you uncomfortable... you're saying I don't want to know more about you. I don't want to know you. That is the message that censorship sends." 

The author and narrator, Eun Ji, was born in California to Korean parents. When she was 15 and her brother 18, her parents decided to move back to Korea for a temporary job which was only meant to last three years. Instead, they were gone for seven years and Eun Ji struggled with anger, isolation, and loneliness through her teenage years. This pain sent her searching for family stories: of her grandmother Kumiko who survived WWII and the Jeju Island Massacre; of her grandmother Jun who survived years of her husband's infidelity's until she died seemingly of a broken heart. Of her own mother, orphaned early, and her decisions to be present for siblings rather than her children. Eun Ji moved through identities-- a student, a traveler, a dancer, a poet-- and through languages-- Korean,  English and Japanese-- trying to find her place in the world and a why to forgive her parents for leaving her. There's a lot of pain in this story, but the ultimate message seems to be that the only way to move past it is to face it and name it.