Common Sense Media Review
By Andrea Beach
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Moving memoir of gender identity search has explicit images.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 16+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Read
What's the Story?
In GENDER QUEER: A MEMOIR, Maia Kobabe recounts eir struggle to understand gender and why e doesn't feel like either a boy or a girl. Eir parents didn't impose any gender roles on themselves, Maia, or eir sister, but Maia picked up plenty of messages everywhere else that just didn't make sense for who and what Maia felt like inside. Looking back as an adult, Maia shows how events like getting eir period, having crushes, moving away for college, and even teaching art classes to elementary students affected eir identity, sexuality, and ability to find a way to exist peacefully and happily.
Is It Any Good?
This journey to find a comfortable identity is at different times painful, moving, surprising, and even funny. Author-illustrator Maia Kobabe's simple, straightforward drawings and open, honest accounts make Gender Queer: A Memoir an important resource for mature, gender-nonconforming teens and people who want to better understand them.
The ending doesn't provide a sense of closure, but maybe that's appropriate for what many people experience as a lifelong process. Importantly, the story does provide a lot of food for thought as well as a framework for talking about gender and sexuality with care and concern. Frank talk about, and specific illustrations of, sexual activity make it best for older teens and up.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the sexual content in Gender Queer: A Memoir. It's been challenged or banned in a few school districts as inappropriate for school libraries. Do you agree? Why, or why not?
What about the strong language? How much is too much? Is reading it different from hearing it in videos, games, movies, etc.?
How do the characters in the book model communication and empathy? Why are these important character strengths?
Did you know much about nonbinary genders or asexuality before you read this book? Did it change your ideas or opinions? What did you learn?
Book Details
- Author :
- Genre : Autobiography
- Topics : Family Stories ( Siblings ) , Friendship
- Book type : Non-Fiction
- Publisher : Oni-Lion Forge
- Publication date : May 28, 2019
- Publisher's recommended age(s) : 15 - 18
- Number of pages : 240
- Available on : Paperback, Hardback, Apple Books, Kindle
- Last updated : September 29, 2025
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