Generation Queer
Stories of Youth Organizers, Artists, and Educators
Kimm Topping’s heartening collection Generation Queer celebrates young LGBTQ+ activists who shifted cultural stereotypes about who is allowed to lead.
Centering organizers, artists, and educators whose work began prior to the age of twenty-four, this guide to LGBTQ+ rights activism shares the stories of thirty-one youth who fought against discrimination and for legal protections. Alongside their profiles are brief histories of LGBTQ+ events and policies, as with the Stonewall uprising, a timeline of the US’s adoption of antidiscrimination laws, and overviews of successful forms of protest, including walkouts and marches.
The book elevates activists who “became organizers out of necessity.” Dehkontee Chanchan, for instance, became an advocate for unhoused youth after her own arrest for truancy at sixteen years old. Gavin Grimm’s years-long battle to access the bathroom appropriate for his gender at high school, which resulted in a legal case won in state courts, illustrates that activism often begins as a form of self-defense. Other events elicit staggering awe, as with a 2022 Illinois law that Kaylyn Ahn helped pass about assaults that occur while the victim is under the influence, which made over 7,000 unaddressed cases eligible for prosecution.
Pointed questions about what a world without oppression might look like, and about how someone’s experiences with discrimination direct their activism, inspire subverting social hegemonies. Honoring these youth also deconstructs the ageist narrative that young people shouldn’t be taken seriously. At the same time, the book admonishes the pressure LGBTQ+ children are under to become organizers; as artist Ella McKenzie says, “there’s maturing that we should be able to do later in our lives that we’re being forced to do now … We are the future, but we’re also kids.”
Generation Queer is an inspiring intersectional portrait of powerful young people enacting social change.
Reviewed by
Aimee Jodoin
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
