This is not a queer-specific book, but just like Stevenson’s Kid Activists and Kid Innovators volumes in Quirk Books’ Kid Legends series, it includes queer people in its 16 short biographies. In each profile of roughly eight to 10 pages, we learn about people who have led the way in the categories of Standing Up for Democracy, Fighting for Black Lives, Protecting Our Planet, and Harnessing the Power of Art, with an emphasis on how their childhoods shaped them. Several are still teens. In accessible but never patronizing prose, Stevenson sketches her subjects’ childhoods and later impact, deftly setting the scene for each one and providing informative details, engaging quotes, and sometimes humorous anecdotes.
Three LGBTQ people are profiled: Elliot Page, Audre Lorde, and Patrisse Cullors. Stevenson correctly uses male pronouns and his male name for Page throughout the story, even when talking about his childhood, noting that “Elliot was assigned female at birth and given a girl’s name—but he always felt like a boy.” She later discusses how others saw him as a girl but “that wasn’t ever how he saw himself.” The profile is more than just a tale of his gender and transition, however, and also explores his childhood interests, such as sports and drama, how he first broke into acting, and how his career took off. Stevenson discusses his coming out, first as gay and then as trans, and quotes from Page’s own words on those subjects. She notes that he was the first trans man to appear on the cover of TIME, following in the footsteps of Laverne Cox, the first trans woman to be featured there and another advocate for trans equality. Page, she says, now uses his platform to encourage others to support trans and nonbinary people and to fight laws and misinformation that harm trans youth.
In Lorde’s profile, Stevenson introduces her with Lorde’s own words as a “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.” She shows us Lorde’s early love for words and writing; how she sometimes felt like an outsider as the only Black girl or the only lesbian in her circles; and her encounters with racism. She notes Lorde’s involvement with both the Harlem Writer’s Guild and the “gay community in Greenwich Village,” and stresses Lorde’s belief in the importance of community in working for change. She explains Lorde’s impact on “our understanding of racism, feminism, gender, and sexuality,” and quotes often from Lorde’s own words about her life and feelings.
In Cullors’ profile, Stevenson notes that she came out as bisexual during high school, supported by her friends and by “a small cluster of queer kids” who helped create a safe space. She also had a girlfriend, and illustrator Allison Steinfeld gives us a cute drawing of the two girls holding hands. Despite an unsettled family life, Cullors got involved with community organizing, went to college and graduate school, and co-founded the Black Lives matter movement after the killing of Trayvon Martin in 2013.
One of the other profiles is of television writer and producer Shonda Rhimes, who is not (to my knowledge) queer, but who Stevenson notes wanted to create televisions shows that “looked like the real world, with women, LGBTQ+ people, and people of color in important roles.”
Other profiles here are of Benazir Bhutto, Angela Merkel, Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams, Dorothy Pitman Hughes, John Lewis, Patrisse Cullors, Marley Dias, David Suzuki, Al Gore, Greta Thunberg, Mari Copeny, and Ai Weiwei. The volume is a worthy addition to the inspiring series and should find many fans in homes, schools, and libraries.
