Jesse On Youtube 's Reviews > All Boys Aren’t Blue

All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M.   Johnson
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it was amazing

"No amount of money, love, or support can protect you from a society intent on killing you for your blackness, and shows that a community that has been taught that anyone "not straight" is dangerous."

All Boy's Aren't Blue is Johnson's memoir-manifesto; designed to encourage queer black boys to uncrate the layers of their masculinity and racialized existence. All Boys Aren't Blue is an effervescent interrogation of compulsory heterosexuality and crushing gender-centric expectations, a kaleidoscope of intergenerational storytelling, and cultural connectedness. All Boys Aren't Blue is a testimony, a love letter, to black queer bodies and officially one of my most treasured books.

This work teaches black boys and gender nonconforming individuals to subsist in a world that seeks to build us out of it. It is the most powerful exploration of gender I have read next to Freshwater and the most touching memoir I have consumed next to In the Dream House. I state this praise with great care as both aforementioned titles are in my personal literature hall of fame. I related to the essays with a level of intimacy that I cannot name and maintain that the work itself exists as a powerful tool to fight marginalization and the ways we might internalize it.

George's writing is casual but engrossing as he fluidly explores a myriad of topics relevant to the black queer body through a critical lens while still managing to fill the pages with black joy, love, hope, and celebration. Preorder this book - it releases in April. I want everybody and their mama to read it.

Notes: Undoubtedly some elitists will denounce this book's casual teen-centric writing style, but George is able to deliver his messages without complex prose, proving that colloquial language is All Boy's Aren't Blue's strength, not its weakness.
Topics/themes: sex, consent, pleasure, trans/nonbinary, blackness, trauma, racism, homophobia, black boy joy, masculinity, sexual assault, molestation
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Reading Progress

Finished Reading
January 14, 2020 – Shelved

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