All Boys Aren’t Blue Review
By Cole Beehn
According to an NBC News article from April, “Of the 13 books that made the American Library Association’s list of ‘Most Challenged Books’ last year, seven titles — including three of the top four — were challenged for having LGBTQ content.” (1) A daunting figure for a community that is well-versed with the struggle for acceptance and basic human rights.
In the lead up to June, I wanted to take up one of the books facing bans in classrooms and libraries across the country. I chose All Boys Aren’t Boy by George M. Johnson, the second most challenged book of 2022 since I recalled a particularly explicit section of the book being read aloud at a Milan school board meeting a few months back. All Boys Aren’t Boy is the memoir of a Black nonbinary queer American who, like me, was born in 1985 and grew up in the 90’s and early 2000’s. It is a story full of both trauma and joy. The vast majority of the book highlights George’s deep love and affection for their family, and theirs in turn for George. Many of the chapters of the book are letters to the various people in George’s life and how they shaped who they would become: brother, cousin, Dad, Mom, and Nanny.
In addition to learning how to navigate the world like any other adolescent, George also learned to code switch, not only as a Black American in predominantly white spaces, but also as a queer person in a largely heterosexual and cisgender society. Although they had the support of their family, George did not feel safe admitting that they were queer or that they had questions about their gender. They didn’t have the vocabulary or knowledge to describe what they were experiencing, so George spent a long time in trial and error figuring out who they really were.
“You don’t know what you like or who you are if you allow yourself to be fit into a box that society has made for you. Learn what you like and don’t like. Create the sexual environment that works best for you. Sex is a part of growth for a human regardless of gender and sexual identity. No one has the right to deny us the resources we need to properly engage with one another. I wish I had known then what you know now,” George writes. This is the reason they wrote the book: to share their experience with adolescents who may be searching for their own place in the world.
It is a shame that people use the most vulnerable parts of this memoir to further their far-right agenda instead of reading the book as a whole. Book banning is a threat to our democracy and a dangerous call for queer people to be erased from our society. George imparts, “There is truly something to be said about the fact that you sometimes can’t see yourself if you can’t see other people like you existing, thriving, working.” Read more banned books and make your own conclusions.
