Your book has been banned in several school districts, were you surprised by this action?
I knew this was going to happen. I was more surprised it took this long. I’m shocked that they came for the parts about sex though. Before you get to those chapters, there are heavy critiques of Whiteness that I know would have made them angry more than the few sections on sex. But that just proves they didn’t read the book.
What was the issue that the Kansas City school district found with your work?
That it was too sexually graphic. Two chapters in the book describe sex. One talks about my sexual assaults in detail and the other about me losing my virginity in detail. What is being left out is that those chapters are also teaching sex education, agency, consent, and non-consent and how to handle all those experiences when they occur in a young adult’s life.
What do you say to people who have not read your book?
To read the book. You can’t even assess material you have not read. Reading two excerpts that are three pages long in a 320-page book just makes these people coming after it look as shallow as their attempts.
What will readers find surprising about the book?
That the book is about family. It’s about the love of a Black queer child from a Black family at its core. That the book will make you laugh and cry and by the end come out on the other side more learned and even more healed.
