United States: Author of oft-banned Queer memoir speaks out
NBC News reported on December 19 that nonbinary author Maia Kobabe (e/em/eir) has responded to controversy around eir award-winning book, Gender Queer: A Memoir, which has been criticized for its presence in US schools for allegedly containing "pornographic imagery." The memoir tells the story of Kobabe's life from adolescence to adulthood, and how e grappled with coming out and the trauma of living in a binary-minded society. Kobabe acknowledged that some of the book's images may be inappropriate for children in elementary school, but that the accounts were meant to be frank. "It's very hard to hear people say 'This book is not appropriate [for] young people,'" Kobabe said, "when it's like, I was a young person for whom this book would not only be appropriate, but so, so necessary."