Maia Kobabe Wrote 2022's Most Attacked LGBTQ+ Book
Over the past year, Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer has been at the center of the culture war. The unassuming but wonderfully written and illustrated memoir is the American book facing the most attempts to remove or restrict access to it, with conservatives and bigots calling it “grooming” and “child pornography.” They are even trying to defund libraries that carry it.
So far, it has been banned in at least 41 districts across the U.S.Initially, the 2019 graphic memoir garnered nothing but praise.
It received a Stonewall Book Award and won the American Library Association’s Alex Award in 2020. It soon started appearing in libraries and schools nationwide.
That’s when conservatives found it. Now, the book has been challenged in at least 11 different states.When Kobabe (who uses ‘E’ as a pronoun) wrote the book, E was honestly worried that people would find it a little boring. “Almost all of my conflict, and what I talk about in the book, is very internal,” Kobabe explains. “I was really left alone by the world for a long time to just quietly think about my identity, my gender, and my sexuality on my own terms and at my own pace.
