Book Review: Genderqueer: Maia Kobabe (2019)

by Abbigale Kernya, ​for The 44 North

Managing Editor

The book cover of Genderqueer by Maia Kobabe

Genre: Memoir, Graphic Novel, Queer Literature

“Some people are born in the mountains, while others are born by the sea. Some people are happy to live in the place they were born, while others must make a journey to reach the climate in which they can flourish and grow. Between the ocean and the mountains is a wild forest. That is where I want to make my home.”

― Maia Kobabe, Genderqueer

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This 2019 memoir by author, advocate, and storyteller Maia Kobabe (e/em/eir) is a tender journey through childhood to adolescence, exploring gender expression and the anxieties of growing up. It’s a beautiful walk with time and acceptance of oneself—a teacher, a guide, and at times, a friend. 

It’s also been banned in Alberta schools. 

Genderqueer follows Maia Kobabe from infancy to adulthood, where the first memories of gender confusion and dysphoria peak through the pages. This is a memoir where self-love, kindness, and acceptance of the people around you are seen as radical and sexually explicit. When I first heard that Alberta was banning over 200 books from public school libraries, alarm bells immediately started going off. In my research to not only read a banned book, but also to recommend it to my readers, Genderqueer climbed to the top of my list after Alberta’s Minister of Education, Demetrios Nicolaides, released a list of “sexually explicit” and “harmful” books found in school libraries on X.

Imagine my shock, then, when I began reading this graphic novel and found that the only sexual red flag was the conservative projection of homophobia and transphobia that turns a peaceful recount of gender exploration into sexually explicit content.

Kobabe shares a story that is full of hope—one that is importantly what eir needed when eir was younger. The frustration and self-hatred of not having any non-binary or asexual representation when Kobabe was growing up cost eir friendships, relationships, and peace within eirself. I found the most important part of this novel to be when Kobabe—after years of thinking eir were “wrong” or “broken” for not fitting traditional masculine or feminine gender roles—finds eirself in a teaching position looking out onto the sea of students and realizing this is eir’s chance to be the change eir needed when eir was young. 

On the flip side, this story that beautifully recounts childhood innocence and welcomes in a new wave of kindness and “radical” acceptance has been constantly demonized by right-wing parties as sexually explicit. In flipping through these pages, I had a hard time coming up with examples to fit their narrative. 

Is it sexually explicit to talk about periods and pap smears?

Or talking about sex in a natural and relatable way?

Perhaps dismantling gender roles and the sexualization of young girls is too “radical?”

Or maybe it was too sexually explicit to depict gender dysphoria in a raw and honest way that not only acts as a refuge for those needing representation, but also as a learning opportunity for those looking to understand their neighbour. 

Kobabe’s journey from a fanfiction writing tween struggling to understand why eir can’t move through life equal to eir’s peers, to an adult on a mission to ensure no other transgender children feel the alienation or sense of “wrongness” that filtered through eirs childhood is as memorable as it is raw. One particular scene that really drove this message home for me was an earlier recount of when Kobabe transitioned from homeschool to public school, and feeling like eir was eons behind social norms than eirs female classmates for not understanding why women have to shave their legs, why they cannot swim with their shirt off, or why girls were so obsessed with boys. It was this novel’s transition from a sense of other to togetherness that filled this story not with sadness, but instead a profound message of hope. 

Maia Kobabe’s Genderqueer opened my eyes to a new perspective—the end goal of any great novel, I am so bold as to claim. Yet, it is hard to understand how a government could remove this teacher from shelves in the act of “protecting children” when unrestricted internet access and the normalization of extremely harmful actual pornographic content (found everywhere on Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube) are left out of the conversation. How is this novel—detailing the journey from self-hatred to self-love—harmful?

I’ll save you the trouble: it’s not. 

The fearmongering of queer spaces through the right-wing dog whistle of “protecting the children” isn’t about children at all: it’s about enacting harmful narratives to raise a generation that fears each other and anyone who dares to live authentically. The most important role we have now as an audience is to read and surround ourselves with as many “radical” perspectives as possible, ensuring everyone is given the same right to go through this life with peace, kindness, love, and respect.