Rainbow Reading: August 7

Bite-sized reviews of the LGBTQ books I’ve read in the past week. All titles are linked to their Goodreads page.

Between August 1st and 6th, I read:

Cinders and Charming by Mette Bach (2019)
Genre: fiction
Audience: young adult
Queer rep: The two MCs are lesbian
Thoughts: Cinders and Charming are hi-lo (high interest, low reading level) companion novels loosely based on the Cinderella fairy tale. Ash – screen name Cinders – is recently orphaned and living with two obnoxious step-siblings, who bully her at home and online, but she is a genius coder and develops an app to help combat cyberbullying. On the app, she develops a friendship with the rich and, well, charming Charming, which turns into a crush. When they discover they go to the same high school, they decide they have to meet in real life – but their worlds are so different, they aren’t sure they’ll be able to find a happily-ever-after. The concept was cute and I liked that we got both perspectives on the story. However, I think it would’ve worked better to have one single book told in alternating POVs, because I don’t think there was really enough depth to carry the storyline for two independent books.

Trans Kids: Being Gendered in the Twenty-First Century by Tey Meadow (2018)
Genre: nonfiction
Audience: adult
Queer rep: Focuses on trans and gender non-conforming kids and teens
Thoughts: This was a really interesting ethnographic study of how parents and doctors relate to and interact with gender non-conforming kids. It compares past attitudes to present ones, looks at the process of gender acquisition, examines the changing attitudes in society at large, and features a lot of frank and fascinating interviews with parents of trans and GNC kids. Parts of it are fairly dense (it is published by a university press) but overall it’s very accessible. I would have liked to see more follow ups; most of the kids are presented at one point in time, even though Meadow’s research took several years. A lot of discussion has to do with when gender non-conformity is a sign of a transgender identity and when it’s not, so it would’ve been interesting to see more about the kids’ teenage or adult identities. There were some interesting generalizations drawn, though, and I thought it especially interesting that GNC behavior in AMAB kids was recognized and addressed much, much earlier than GNC behavior in AFAB kids. AMAB kids saw intervention as early as age 2, while AFAB kids’ non-conformity was generally not recognized, not thought to be serious, or simply ignored or dismissed until puberty or later. (Which says a lot about the “rapid onset gender dysphoria” nonsense). A very interesting book.

Not Your Backup by C.B. Lee (2019)
Genre: sci-fi
Audience: young adult
Queer rep: The MC is aro- and ace-spec; the other primary characters include a trans boy and a bi girl; and most of the broader secondary cast is queer as well, including at least one character who uses they/them pronouns
Thoughts: This is the third book in the Sidekick Squad series, and I liked it just as much as the first two. I don’t want to go into too much detail about the plot for fear of spoiling the earlier books, so I’ll just give an overview of the series. It’s set in a post-Disaster world, where the Collective carefully controls all aspects of citizens’ lives as the world continues to rebuild and recover. The Disasters also awoke the meta-human gene in a small percentage of the population, and superpowers are common enough for there to be a Heroes’ League and a Villains’ Guild. Teenage friends Jess (MC of Not Your Sidekick), Bells (MC of Not Your Villain), Emma (this MC), and Abby (MC of forthcoming Not Your Hero) each have their own feelings about heroes and villains, the Collective, and the League – and together they discover that not everything is what it seems.

~Bonus books:Things I Should Have Known by Claire LaZebnik (2017) has a secondary lesbian character and Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee (2019) has a secondary character who uses they/them pronouns