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Genderqueer: Breaking The Barrier By Edward Kokobe

755 Words4 Pages

Valentine Meadows
5/5/23
Period 5

Genderqueer is a book by Maia Kobabe, which explains eir experience with gender identity, sexuality, and how e struggled with finding emself. The book starts with a venture between Maia and eir friend’s mom, Alexandria, where they both find a small snake, Alexandria then offered the snake to Maia, which sets the tone for a young Maia’s interest in things that don’t conform to the gender standards. The way the characters in this book are portrayed helps Maia along eir journey when e was a child and shows the supportive surroundings e grew up. Maia’s parents didn’t follow the strictest gender norms, which were modeled so that Maia and eir sister to grow up to be themselves.
Some problems arise when Maia felt disconnected from eir peers, due to feeling as if everyone else “had a handbook that I couldn't read”, which was true metaphorically and physically, as e hadn’t learned to read yet, which only made e feel more isolated from eir peers. Though when Maia picked up Harry Potter after hearing eir’s mom read it to eir’s little sister, Kobabe was infatuated …show more content…

Maia read about how Alanna “didn’t choose to be a girl” and how it “wasn’t fair” which probably led to the author’s extreme discomfort with eir period when e first get it. Though Maia knew about periods, e chose to hide it from eir parents because of what I assume to be shame in it happening to em. When Maia’s parents find out, they gave em a necklace to celebrate, which Kobabe never opened. This fear of periods is completely understandable considering how many AFAB transgender people have experienced this same extreme discomfort in their skin whenever their period stops. This theme of loneliness and shame manifested in Kobabe’s dreams where people would know that e were on their period, which terrified

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