The 14 American and Canadian women (cis and trans) and nonbinary people profiled in this volume are not as famous as those in many collective biographies or compilations about queer people. You will not find Marsha P. Johnson, Del Martin, or Phyllis Lyon here. Instead, the people here have created (and are still creating) change for the queer community on a smaller but no less important scale—they are known in their communities and areas of direct impact, but not always beyond.
We meet Susan Ursel, a lawyer and a lesbian who argued before the Supreme Court of Canada for the right to include queer-inclusive children’s books in classrooms; Sparkle Wilson, a self-identified queer Black femme who runs an LGBTQQ+ youth program in San Francisco; Patricia Wilson, a trans woman who is a musician and poet and who mentored queer young adults for years from her position as bartender at a queer theater in Toronto; Ali Charlebois, a queer family doctor with a focus on LGBTQ health and gender-affirming care; Suze Morrison, a bisexual woman who works in the Indigenous Friendship Centre movement and was a legislator in Ontario; Didi Charney, a straight, cis ally and actor who was a frontline volunteer during the HIV/AIDS crisis; Rachel Jean-Pierre, who started the Montreal chapter of Lesbians Who Tech; Itzayana Gutiérrez Arillo, a lesbian and advocate for queer tango; and more. Each person has several pages devoted to her or them, allowing for a reasonably in-depth exploration of her/their experiences, while still keeping things brief for young readers (though the amount of text and level of vocabulary puts this at the upper end of the middle-grade range).
While it is important for young people to be familiar with the internationally famous icons of the LGBTQ rights movement, I believe it is just as important for them to have role models whose achievements may seem a little more … achievable. Not that they shouldn’t aim for bigger, broader impact if that is what they want—but a) that is not for everyone; and b) sometimes creating change on a personal or community level can be just as vital. This volume offers important representation and engaging profiles of people who just might motivate readers to make their own significant contributions, no matter the scale or scope.
