What a gift to all those who find themselves lost and alone in who they are.

A wonderful and important book that can open eyes and hearts

This book had me stressed (lol) but I was very connected to it from my personal experiences growing up. I definitely recommend to read this !! It’s powerful and it makes a lot of
great points about our society. ⭐️

I am not the target audience.

Found the author uninformed and insufferable. And a bit full of themselves. 

This is a good book, although definition written for teens. Reading it as an adult, the style felt a bit heavy handed. But adults are not the target audience. It's an emotional memoir with some sad and happy bits. I can see how a book like this could be a really important read for queer and black youth. 

I'm glad this book exists, but it does have some problems.

I'm not a big fan of his writing style. It's a bit too "tell, not show" at times for me. This tends to be the hallmark of YA prose lately, and I have to admit I've never been a fan of YA writing besides some outliers, so maybe it's just my preference.

Still, I was often thinking as I was reading, "Instead of telling me queer people are oppressed, please show me." (I'm saying this as a queer person myself.) The examples he gave, such as Chapter 11, are harrowing...but they are actually few and far between. Instead, there seems to be a lack of focus, especially in the first half. I found myself wishing I was reading something more akin to "Heavy" by Kiese Laymon instead.

But my biggest issue with this book is Chapter 11--not that he included it, but that he mishandled it. I do not at all agree with how he wrote that chapter. Instead of front-loading his experience with sexual assault as, you know, a bad thing, he used language that at first made it seem somewhat ambiguous as to whether what he experienced was actually assault! I came close to closing the book, thinking, "Oh my god, is this guy actually framing this experience as an acceptable or even good thing that happened to him??" Thankfully, he put in a paragraph after the account saying that what happened to him was assault, but it came way too late. I understand he was trying to disown the trauma's hold on his life, but in my opinion, you can do that *while also* framing that experience from the beginning as an assault. It was careless, subpar writing.

The second half of the book was significantly more polished and focused.