In celebration of Pride month this June, I wanted to share some items that were recently displayed for a book talk at the John W. Kluge Center with Maia Kobabe, author of Gender Queer. Maia uses Spivak pronouns e/eir/em, and Gender Queer is a graphic memoir detailing eir path to understanding eir own sexuality and gender identity. In 2020, Gender Queer won the Alex Award from the American Library Association (ALA).
My colleague Meg Metcalf (LGBTQIA+ Studies Collection Specialist) and I selected over thirty items from the collections that included comics, graphic novels, and periodicals that were created by or created for the LGBTQIA+ community. In particular we chose to highlight additional comics by Maia as well as collection items focused on trans and gender non-conforming experiences.
The display (pictured above and below) took p