In the rush to create diverse stories, some children's books treat trans identities as a metaphor. What would happen if we wrote about trans kids as kids?
as a kid, I decided that it was about anti-Semitism. I knew that Jews were a minority, given that I was always the only one in my entire class and my classmates often didn’t even know what Jews. Since I didn’t have any other books about Jews , it makes sense that I would do the work necessary to connect the dots between the star-less Sneetches, kept out of the best beaches and hot dog parties, with my rudimentary grasp of Jewish history.
Launched in 2014, the We Need Diverse Books movement helped contribute to a growing number of children’s books that focus directly on marginalized identities. My own career has benefitted enormously from this new openness in publishing, which, to be clear, still has a long way to go. My first novel,is about a trans kid being haunted by the ghost of his drag queen uncle, and it won a Newbery Honor.
It’s a common anti-trans taunt to identify as an attack helicopter, or to argue that little kids might identify as dinosaurs but grow out of it. While there’s little strategic value to being on the defensive against opponents who change the rules to suit their will to power, I think that using books that rely on metaphors to teach about identity contributes to that transphobic ideology.
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