Gender Queer: A Memoir

Gender Queer: A Memoir is a groundbreaking graphic novel by Maia Kobabe, detailing eir personal journey of self-discovery as a nonbinary and asexual individual. The book candidly explores experiences from childhood through adulthood, including adolescent crushes, coming out to family and friends, navigating medical appointments, and understanding eir own gender and sexual identity. It serves as both a deeply personal story and a valuable guide for anyone seeking to understand nonbinary and asexual identities, whether for themselves or to support loved ones. While celebrated for its honesty and representation, it contains some sexually explicit illustrations and discussions of body image and medical trauma, making it best suited for mature teens (ages 14+) and adults.

"It’s also a great resource for those who identify as nonbinary or asexual as well as for those who know someone who identifies that way and wish to better understand." — School Library Journal (starred review) In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears. Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.