‘Gender Queer’ graphic memoir banned by a Kalamazoo County school district

“Gender Queer: A Memoir,” written and illustrated by Maia Kobabe, is being removed from the Galesburg-Augusta High School library following a vote by the Kalamazoo County school district's board on Monday, May 15, 2023. (MLive file photo | Cory Morse)Cory Morse | MLive.com

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been updated to include a comment from school board president Diana Walker.

KALAMAZOO COUNTY, MI — A Kalamazoo County school district has voted 5-2 to ban the book, “Gender Queer: A Memoir.”

The book, an award-winning, yet controversial 2019 memoir written by Maia Kobabe about the author’s journey coming out as nonbinary, was removed from the library at Galesburg-Augusta High School earlier this year for review.

The review was done by a district review committee, which included the district’s library clerks and members of the district’s reproductive health committee. The school board voted Monday, May 15, to have the book permanently removed from its high school library.

The district is far from alone across the state and nation in scrutinizing whether to ban the book. MLive has published a deeper look at the book and its surrounding controversy. That story includes an interview with Kobabe.

In the Galesburg-Augusta Schools district in eastern Kalamazoo County, Board President Diana Walker was one of five board members to vote for the removal of the book at the May 16 meeting.

Walker told MLive that a motion was made to remove the book due to several explicit images that were considered “educationally inappropriate for school.”

Prior to the vote to remove the book, the board of education went into closed session to discuss an opinion letter about the book that had been written by the district’s attorney, she said.

The two board members who voted against the book’s removal, Christi Corsi and Krista Simmons, both declined requests for comment when reached by MLive. Both women deferred further communications to Walker.

While neither woman would elaborate on their decision to vote against the ban, Tracy Hall, Executive Director for OutFront Kalamazoo, the region’s leading LGBTQIA+ resource center, applauded both women for their decisions.

“It is disappointing to me that (the district) came up with this conclusion, but I’m not surprised,” Hall said. “I don’t know why some people are so afraid. People have taken to learning about someone different, or something different, as some form of indoctrination. I don’t know if people even really hear themselves.”

Hall called the book and books like it, which can be affirming of one’s identity, “lifesaving.”

“I know to some people it might seem hyperbolic, but it’s not,” she said. “Something my partner speaks a lot about, is that books that spoke to her and her identity as a young, queer human, those books did save her life.”

The board previously discussed the book at a public meeting on April 17, where community members spoke out for and against the book’s inclusion in the library. The committee has since convened for its review of the book.

Those saying “Gender Queen” should remain available said removal would be censorship. Multiple people said banning this single book, and not other works of potentially questionable literature, would send a dangerous message to the LGBTQIA+ community.

Those arguing against the book, meanwhile, said it was due to “pornographic images” within the book’s pages, with some saying they had no issue with the book’s message itself.

Superintendent Wendy Somers echoed the latter sentiment, saying “we want to assure the public that we are not a board that is interested in banning books. In fact, if there is a high school around where LGBTQ students come because of how inclusive it is ... it is this school.”

After the book eventually wound up being banned, Hall said she wished to take Somers to task on that statement.

“When she said at the last meeting that the district was among the most accepting in the community ... we hear otherwise from the younger people who go to Galesburg-Augusta,” Hall said. “We hear from some of the teachers too.

“And to take this book, which is an amazing book, to me speaks to the opposite of being a welcoming and accepting district.”

OutFront has purchased extra copies of the book, and those interested in it can check it out at the resource center’s library at 340 S. Rose Street in Kalamazoo. OutFront staff is also happy to give copies of the book away to those who would like to read it, she said.

Original link to the article: https://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/2023/05/gender-queer-graphic-memoir-banned-by-a-kalamazoo-county-school-district.html