A review by wardenred
Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe

emotional informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

 I began to think of gender less as a scale and more as a landscape. 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. This is where I want to make my home. 
 
I think this is the first graphic memoir I've ever read, and I absolutely loved it. As an AFAB non-binary person, it made me feel incredibly seen. My experiences with the complicated thing that is gender and everything that surrounds it haven't been identical, but there are so many things in this graphic novel that are still familiar, from all the embarrassing physicality of it, to the deep unease of asking people to use my pronouns along with the deep unease of hearing the wrong ones, to constantly trying to find the right balance in a world that presents you with two types of boxes to sort yourself into—and none of them fits. 
 
It was strangely fun to see the common bits of cultural context the author and I share. All the slash fanfiction. Familiar bands. The mentions of NaNoWriMo. All of it made reading this memoir feel like sitting down for a chat with a friend. That's probably a big part of the reason I devoured it in a single evening. 
 
I should also mention the artwork: I found it lovely and unobtrusive. None of it was unpleasant to look at, except the several things that were supposed to be, none of it clashed with the writing, and none of it made me linger on it studying the details instead of turning the page to read on. That last one is part of the compliment. I think there are comics where you want the reader to pause and admire the art, and then there are the ones where you want the art to be just enough to keep them immersed in the story. This is clearly an example of the latter, and the art does its job beautifully. 
 
All in all, highly recommended to all my fellow genderqueer folx and to anyone who wants to gain a better understanding of what it can be like outside the gender binary. 
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