Continuing with Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge, I read Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe for "a book that’s been challenged recently in your school district/library OR read one of the most-challenged/banned books of the year by a queer and/or BIPOC author." Gender Queer, as you might suspect, is an autobiographical comic of the author's coming to terms with eir gender identity and sexuality. Especially relevant to me were the stories of eir childhood and feeling othered (hence the quote title of this post).
I feel like it's a common problem for little kids to feel strange and isolated from their peers, especially if they don't fit into one or more social boxes. Everyone seems to be going one way and you're left to the side going, "That looks awful, why does everyone else like this? What's wrong with me?" Even with a supportive family structure, it's a lot to deal with when your peers expect you to have absorbed the same messages in the same ways.
I couldn't help grinning at Maia's book collection and adolescence being defined by fanfic; I'm a decade older than em, but same. I always think it's funny how many queer people I know that will point to Mercedes Lackey's The Last Herald Mage as a formative gay text. I've tried to think back to the first positive portrayal of a gay relationship that I can remember in any form of media, and I can't really point to one. But in fairness, being straight, it possibly never occurred to me to mark it as different. "Oh, this character likes boys, aight."
As to why this book was challenged so much, I'm honestly at a loss. It seems to be a cute coming-into-yourself book, relatable, and there's a minimal amount of nudity, not used for titillation. I know on a rational level that any level of queer content is too much for people who try to ban books, and it's always absurd. Chances are just the title was enough to set off the homo/transphobes without ever having opened the book. The idea that someone could be happy being in any way different is threatening to people who benefit from the status quo.
And I also read a second queer comic, heyyyyyy. For "a graphic novel/comic/manga if you haven’t before; or read one that is a different genre than you normally read," I read Our Dreams at Dusk by Yuhki Kamatani. I'd apparently had it on my TBR from waaaaay back under it's untranslated name (Shimanami Tasogare), but didn't realize it'd been localized. It's a pretty manga with a teenager trying to come to terms with being gay, and finding a cool group of people to support him. Especially liked the Drop-In Center and the renewal projects they do, looking forward to picking up the next volume. It's definitely the first book in a series, so a bit rough, but I like where it's going, and I'm willing to come along for the ride.
And with that, I'm what, 8% of the way through the challenge and it's not even the end of January. Nice!