(7-4-23) The National Education Association (NEA), the largest teachers union in the United States, is recommending that educators read “Gender Queer” this summer, a book that has been removed from schools nationwide due to its sexually explicit contents.

Many Stateline area school teachers are represented by OEA/NEA.

“Gender Queer” a memoir written by Maia Kobabe, has topped the American Library Association’s (ALA) list of most challenged books nationwide in recent years. The book, which accounts Kobabe’s own exploration with gender identity, has been widely criticized by parents and school officials who feel its sexually explicit imagery is inappropriate for children.

Despite concerns from both parents and teachers, the National Education Association (NEA) is recommending that educators read “Gender Queer” this summer. The book is featured under a section devoted to “banned books” on NEA’s summer reading list released earlier this month.

Book description–

2020 ALA Alex Award Winner
2020 Stonewall — Israel Fishman Non-fiction Award Honor Book

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.