by Skyla Allen
Maia Kobabe’s inspiring, creative graphic novel, Gender Queer: A Memoir, encompasses and embraces the uniqueness, versatility, and potential of mixed-genres and of gender. Gender Queer is a strong representation of how the blurring of genres, genders, and generalities can not only offer new spaces of exploration and progression in literature and gender studies, but also liberation for authors and readers alike.
The graphic novel, particularly when represented through a memoir, provides a versatility and openness that few other genres can provide. As it has been established, graphic novels are flexible and multi-faceted forms of art that can reach various audiences. Gender Queer delivers similar adaptability and multi-faceted concepts through its commentaries and explorations of gender within society.
A significant aspect of Gender Queer is the shared, or merged, representations of both the visual and the literary from the same individual. The subject of gender throughout the work is equally significant and enlightening in its dynamic depictions of Kobabe’s artistic representation and individual, raw memory. The evidently self-ekphrastic approach of Gender Queer presents themes of vulnerability and honesty by fostering a tone, and by extension, an environment, of open-mindedness through diversity and flexibility. The layers of relation and reality depicted between and for the author, characters, and reader, include a sense of community. As Kobabe explores eir gender, e does so by writing. Expressing frustrations through fan fiction, exploring eir sexuality and gender through characters based on real individuals, and helping cultivate a community of writers by asking friends to collaborate in eir work are all aspects of Gender Queer.
As Kobabe grows older in the context of the memoir, eir experiences with gender are revealed. Yet, visual representations are also provided, or drawn, by Kobabe. The same person who lived through the experiences offers a visual representation of moments – negative, positive, traumatic, and heart-warming moments – that give readers or viewers the opportunity to connect with the work, or Kobabe’s story, on a deeper level.
Several intense literary portrayals within Gender Queer expectedly come with beautiful and, sometimes, graphic images. However, the harmonious re-telling, or illustrating, of the story through images helps bridge the gap between the collective, shared experiences of the characters, and in this case, the author and readers. The visual, artistic space accompanying the text invites the viewer to connect imaginatively and even personally with the work, yet Gender Queer’s shared artist/author combination creates a grounded, potent sense of emotion due to its undeniable base in reality. As various forms of representation, in content as well as format, surround the viewer, they may be more inclined to empathize with and appreciate Gender Queer, as it is created through and by an individual’s life, passions, and identity.
Considering the significant, occasionally sensitive content of Gender Queer, providing another platform for audiences to engage with, such as a visual portrayal or representation of the author’s story, works particularly well for this memoir. Kobabe explores and portrays the difficulties of navigating aspects of daily life such as clothing, pronouns, and dating/relationships with a beautiful perspective:
As I pondered a pronoun change, I began to think of gender less as a scale and more as a landscape. Some people are born in the mountains, while others are born by the sea. Between the oceans and the mountains is a wild forest. That is where I want to make my home.
The open experience of Kobabe’s growth and exploration in eir gender provides glimpses of insight for those who may struggle to empathize. As the story ends with Kobabe’s realization, identification, and embracement of eir gender as nonbinary and eir exploration of pronouns and gender representation, not every person to come across Gender Queer may be willing to read it or be receptive to its content and/or structure.
In the continued vein of unexpected multitudes, John Pruitt appropriately comments in his article LGBT Literature Courses and Questions of Canonicity, “[T]hrough the lens of queer theory, reading practices become exercises in socialization shaped and constructed through educational systems capable of instilling such schools of thought.” Both graphic novels and LGBTQIA+ centered texts facilitate an increased opportunity and openness for diverse perspectives.
Kobabe’s Gender Queer thrives in the in-betweens of well-established, perpetuated literary and societal assumptions. The blurred lines and lack of limitations help invite, or even encourage, readers to cultivate feelings of safety and comfort in their own space and bodies. If a reader perceives the work in multiple ways, through text, images, or an established recognition of reality and personal memory, they may be more willing to interact with the text and expand their literacies and perspectives not only on genre, but gender as well.
The labels, restrictions, and societal pressures individuals, especially those within the LGBTQIA+, and even further within the nonbinary community, are compared to often, and experience daily, are detrimental and predominately adverse in their affects. Similar to the way limiting the concept of genre to law within literature, rather than as a guide to be explored and studied, can be constricting, the invisible notion of knee-jerk categorization extends into several aspects of daily life, including gender, with the same suffocating result. Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer: A Memoir is an insightful, moving intersect that both embodies and is embodied by the bravely explored and often eluded interspaces and voids of classification.
Skyla Allen (they/she) is an artist and writer based in southern Indiana. Their passions lie in the in-between spaces of genres and are often explored in their writing and artwork. They have recently graduated with their M.A. in creative writing, and continue to explore their work in a variety of styles and genres.
