New review in Literary Hub: Gender Queer
My review of Gender Queer, Maia Kobabe‘s excellent graphic memoir, has recently been published in Literary Hub as part of a review project that aims to redress omissions in the New York Times‘ books coverage.
The Times has long been notorious for its hostile coverage of trans people. Over the last decade especially, its coverage has frequently dehumanized us. As Assigned Media has reported, “On at least five prior occasions dating to 2022 medical groups, experts, advocacy organizations, and parents themselves have taken the extraordinary step of issuing public statements saying that The Times had distorted their positions.”
The problem became so pronounced that in 2023, more than 180 of the paper’s contributors signed an open letter condemning what GLADD characterized as its “irresponsible, biased coverage of trans people,” joined by more than 100 organizations, and more than 10,0000 subscribers. Yet, the newspaper refused to engage meaningfully with the serious concerns raised.
There are real consequences to misinformation and disinformation about trans healthcare and calls to limit or rollback human rights for trans people. In June 2025, The Objective reported that New York Times stories were cited 29 times in amicus briefs supporting a ban on healthcare for trans youth in Tennessee alone. The ban was upheld and, shamefully, the Times ran six separate stories celebrating the outcome, ignoring trauma these trans kids will now be forced to endure. This is just one example among many, but it illustrates how inaccurate reporting is harmful and has been fuellling anti-trans legislation that affects people’s real lives.
This anti-trans bias was also visible in the books section during the tenure of Pamela Paul, who served as children’s editor from 2011 to 2016 and then as editor of the entire review section from 2016 to 2022. During those years, coverage of books by trans authors was sparse, despite the publication of a number of landmark works, Gender Queer among them, and few — if any — regular contributors were themselves trans.
At the same time, Paul hired anti-trans opinion writer Jesse Singal to write a glowing review of an anti-trans book, and the section published a piece defending anti-trans campaigner J.K. Rowling. Following Paul’s depature as reviews editor, she continues to publish anti-trans screeds at the Times.
In response, Sandy Ernest Allen, working with Maris Kreizman, invited trans writers to review books that had been overlooked during Paul’s tenure. These essays were published by Literary Hub as part of a project titled “What Was Lost: A Queer Accounting of the NY Times Book Review, 2013-2022.” The collection gathers 13 reviews of literary fiction, memoir, history, and other nonfiction works that should have received critical attention in the US paper of record, but did not.
My contribution revisits Kobabe’s graphic memoir in a review essay titled “On the Power of Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer, One of the Most Banned Books of Its Era.” (Note: The title isn’t mine. It strikes me as funny to write about an “era” for a book published fewer than seven years ago, but such is the nature of headline writing in our current moment, I suppose.)
While doing researching on the book, I discovered that although Gender Queer has been mentioned in the New York Times at least 27 times, it has never actually been engaged with critically. Instead, it appears in articles and podcasts about censorship where it is framed as “controversial.”
But trans existence is not controversial; it is an inevitable part of human diversity, and it deserves thoughtful engagement — not dismissal or avoidance to placate bigots who find our existence distasteful.
If you would like to read my full review, you can find it at Literary Hub.
