Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe

“At the time of writing this, parents in Texas and other states have pushed to have Gender Queer banned from school libraries. It’s not enough for them to rigorously restrict what their own children read, as my parents did; they insist that they have the right to make that choice for everyone. I understand—more, I think, than they think I do—why they want this. It’s a last, desperate attempt to hammer an infinitely complex world into a small, unthreatening shape; to enforce a fantastical reality where challenging subjects simply don’t exist; to hole themselves up in a crumbling fortress as the floods come in and let their own children pay the price.”

-ND Stevenson, 2021