Reviews with content warning for Bullying - How to Be Ace: A Memoir of Growing Up Asexual

Reviews tagging 'Bullying'

How to Be Ace: A Memoir of Growing Up Asexual by Rebecca Burgess

37 reviews

mockingjayx16's review

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emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted relaxing fast-paced

4.0

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londonfog_13's review

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emotional hopeful informative reflective fast-paced

4.0

One artist’s journey exploring and coming to understand their asexuality. Almost equal time and space seems to be given to their experience as a person with OCD and how they managed the symptoms of anxiety and panic.

There were some pages or scenes within a chapter where there was a quick transition and I went looking for the missing page or whatever I missed, but I had in fact not missed anything.

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mfrisk's review

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emotional informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

This graphic novel was a good read on both asexuality as well as how for the author this experience intersected with other aspects of their identity including their mental health journey.

At times the book felt like it was trying to tackle a lot all at once but I still do think it’s well worth the read.

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unluckycat13's review

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challenging emotional funny informative inspiring fast-paced

5.0

It's really rare that I relate to a character so much, even when there's so many differences. If I had read this when I was younger it'd probably be very special to me, but even now I enjoyed it greatly. The art is super cute, the story is told well, it's got some cute informational snippets for anyone who needs them.

Minor things like trigger warnings in the front and resources in the back are also very nice touches.

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mir_frog73's review

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emotional funny informative lighthearted sad fast-paced

5.0

This was really nice to read because it was a real person with the same identity as me learning how to accept themself.

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ashylibrarian's review

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emotional informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

A moving graphic memoir about growing up in a sex-obsessed world and discovering asexuality.

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gemstonejasper's review

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hopeful inspiring reflective fast-paced

3.75

Great memoir about growing up ace (and with OCD and a severe phobia, which I didn't expect). I recommend it to anyone who feels like they are different but don't know why. Overall, I think this book does a good job demonstrating why diversity is so crucial in media, especially media targeted toward kids. She perfectly describes the feeling of not having words to describe your experience and the only people in media that represent this aspect of you are sociopaths and serial killers. She also describes how she felt the first time she saw this part of herself represented in the media and how more representation will lead to more education and more accepting societies. Anyway, it was a great, fairly quick read

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wardenred's review

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emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

Whoa, weird. There's an actual word for how I feel? Does that mean I'm not just really broken??

I loved a lot about this book: the art style, the thoughtfulness, but mos of all, how viscerally relatable I found a lot of the author's experience. That one moment of fake-gushing about the Gravitation manga? OMG, literally been there! And there was an anime based on it, too, and my friends were so sad that it never properly showed the "hot scenes," so I pretended to be sad, too, even though *whispers* I absolutely didn't care, I was in it for the drama, and whether the drama was "hot" and "sexy" or not was irrelevant.

Also: that entire feeling of being the odd one out, then finding your crew of fellow weirdos, and still being the odd one out when it comes to romance and sex. The conviction that everyone else finds these things just as hard at the beginning and everyone is pretending they're as interested in sex as the movies and books tell us to be, and then the realization that no, actually, everyone else is dead serious. Waking up with headaches after night-long anxiety attacks. Connecting to people through text role-playing games. That huge epiphany of finding a word that means who you are. So much stuff, big and small, that made me nod along as I read, because yeah, I've been there too.

What I weirdly didn't like were those educational snippets at the end of each chapter. On one hand, they're great and useful and I agree with what's said in them! On the other hand, with a title like this and with how the book looked generally, I expected it to be aimed more at fellow asexuals, and instead it kept turning into an after school special that was like, "Hey, allo people, here is what you need to know about us." That vibe occasionally creeped into the regular chapters, too, and there was something... idk, awkward about it? Especially since some of those additions were rather heavy-handed, and one was factually wrong. Aromanticism is a separate identity and not part of the asexual umbrella. There are plenty of allosexual aromantic people, just like there are plenty of alloromantic ace people! Romantic and sexual attractions can be wholly separate, and the book does actually spell it out, but still somehow shoves aro people under the ace umbrella.

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faithfulcat111's review

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inspiring relaxing medium-paced

4.75

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chelseamisquith's review

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emotional funny hopeful informative reflective fast-paced

4.0

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