This week we're taking a closer look at Powell's Pick of the Month A Quick and Easy Guide to Queer and Trans Identities by Mady G and J. R. Zuckerberg.
As welcoming as it is informative, this joyful guide celebrates both the questions you may have and the answers you might find. Read this book to approach a sometimes thorny topic without shame or shade. —
Keith M.
A slim graphic novel,
A Quick and Easy Guide to Queer and Trans Identities features humorous, borderline psychedelic illustrations of people, snails, and fantastical forest creatures having intimate talks and cavorting with friends in safe, idyllic natural settings. It’s a gentle, joyously weird celebration of the many ways that people can identify in terms of sexuality and gender that emphasizes the beauty in self-acceptance and individual expression.
Guided by a perky, baseball cap-wearing pet snail named Iggy,
A Quick and Easy Guide to Queer and Trans Identities walks the reader (and a group of curious wild snails) through excellent tutorials on subjects like gender identity, asexuality, and relationship basics. The panels employ clear text and trippy but literal illustrations that highlight the physical diversity among people and help to convey the complex emotional and psychological issues that arise when people feel — or are made to feel — othered by how they experience sex and gender. The tutorials are sporadically interrupted by Sproutling vignettes, microcomics that delve into the lives of the Sproutlings, forest creatures who model healthy ways to engage internally and interpersonally to resolve tensions arising from issues of gender and sexuality.
Engaging and swift,
A Quick and Easy Guide to Queer and Trans Identities can be read in less than an hour, but it’s well worth revisiting when you find yourself confused by a situation or person (your ever-changing self included), or when you need a cheerful reminder to practice self-love and acceptance. Indeed, although the guide’s personal advice is geared toward queer readers and their friends and families, it’s invaluable for everyone to be reminded that their appearance, feelings, and inevitable failure to live up to manufactured norms are just a part of being human. The fundamental kindness and openness at the heart of
A Quick and Easy Guide to Queer and Trans Identities is beneficial to all readers.
Check out the rest of our Picks of the Month
here.