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Gender Queer: A Memoir

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by Victoria James Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer: A Memoir offers readers a look into self-discovery and what it means to grow up without the language to describe gender. The memoir unfolds through moments of friction and curiosity. It probes the kinds of questions that surface long before anyone is introduced to terms like nonbinary or genderqueer. “Why are girls supposed to shave their legs but boys don’t have to?” (p. 42). Questions like this appear throughout the memoir, capturing the subtle but persistent ways that gendered expectations shape a child’s understanding of what is “normal.” Kobabe describes these pressures as… Read More

Sunhead

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By Carrie Forbes, MLS The graphic novel, Sunhead, is written and illustrated by Alex Assan and is set in Tel Aviv around 2008. Rotem (she/her, the protagonist,) is a teenager currently attending high school. The primary theme in the book is Rotem’s journey of self-discovery. Assan’s illustrations are magical in how he was able to capture the vast range of Rotem’s emotions and feelings as she navigates the difficult passage into adulthood, her own sexuality, gender, physical identity, and romantic feelings. Other important themes included are living with unidentified medical issues and having to endure medical appointments that may not… Read More

A Quick & Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns

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guest review by A. David Lewis A Quick & Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns is a not a work of Graphic Medicine; it is a work for all audiences, regardless of field, thereby making it perhaps just as vital to, if not targeted for, Graphic Medicine. Whereas sex-positive informative works like Oh Joy, Sex Toy! or women health-focused anthologies like Graphic Reproduction clearly announce their relevance to gender and medical concerns in the comics form, A Quick & Easy Guide… could easily get overlooked, dismissed as a narrow exploration for linguists, activists, or youth educators. And that would be Graphic… Read More