Beyond Magenta
Transgender Teens Speak Out
Book - 2014 | First edition
"Author and photographer Susan Kuklin met and interviewed six transgender or gender-neutral young adults and used her considerable skills to represent them thoughtfully and respectfully before, during, and after their personal acknowledgment of gender preference. Portraits, family photographs, and candid images grace the pages, augmenting the emotional and physical journey each youth has taken. Each honest discussion and disclosure, whether joyful or heartbreaking, is completely different from the other because of family dynamics, living situations, gender, and the transition these teens make in recognition of their true selves."--Amazon.com, viewed February 12, 2014.
Publisher:
Somerville, Massachusetts : Candlewick Press, [2014]
Edition:
First edition
Copyright Date:
©2014
ISBN:
9780763673680
9780763656119
0763656119
9780763656119
0763656119
Call Number:
y 306.768 K9626b 2014
Characteristics:
182 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm
Alternative Title:
Transgender teens speak out


Opinion
From Library Staff
List - Multcolib School Corps Picks High Interest Nonfiction for Students Reading Below Grade Level [9-12]
SchoolCorps
Mar 19, 2013

Author and photographer Susan Kuklin met and interviewed six transgender or gender-neutral young adults.
List - Multcolib School Corps Picks High Interest Nonfiction for Students Reading Below Grade Level [9-12]
SchoolCorps
Mar 19, 2013

Author and photographer Susan Kuklin met and interviewed six transgender or gender-neutral young adults.
Includes interviews with six very different transgender, genderqueer, and intersex young adults who tell their stories in their own words. The author/photographer does a wonderful and the voices of these youth -alternately proud and fearful, defiant and subdued, thoughtful and exuberant - really... Read More »
List - Multcolib Homeworkcenter Picks: Equity and Social Justice
multcolib_homeworkcenter
Dec 21, 2017

Six transgender teens share their experiences including family dynamics, living situations, and gender issues.
Six transgender teens share their experiences including family dynamics, living situations, and gender issues.
From the critics

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This book highlights the lives of a handful of trans and non-binary teens, showing them to be like other teens in some respects, namely struggling to figure out who they are and what their purpose is. The uniqueness of their struggles to be accepted by family, friends, classmates, and strangers is what sets this book apart. Each teen shows their heart on their sleeve as they talk about the often crooked path to self-acceptance, the ultimate goal for many in the trans and enby communities.
It’s appalling that this sexually explicit book is available in our public library on the shelves for youth and marketed to our children at all, and it should be removed from every public library!
"Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out is an explicit book which is being promoted in the youth sections of local libraries.
The book contains explicit language, violent acts, and graphic descriptions of oral sex carried out by children as young as 6 years-old.
Written mostly in first-person, transgender people share their journeys without mentioning the illegal nature of their activities or the consequences of certain behaviours.
“From six up, I used to kiss other guys in my neighbourhood, make out with them, and perform oral sex on them. I liked it. I used to love oral. And I touched their you-know-whats. We were really young but that’s what we did.”
The account goes on to describe paedophiles masturbating. The author does not qualify that the acts were harmful or illegal.
Descriptions of violent behaviour include pushing over a pregnant teacher. The author writes, “I know it was wrong but….” – as if their anger were a justification for their actions.
Kirralie Smith, spokeswoman for Binary, found the book extremely disturbing.
“These stories are being promoted to young people who may not have the capacity to judge whether this is good or bad behaviour. And despite the illicit nature of their accounts, each concludes by celebrating their transition.
“Such material has no place in tax-payer funded libraries and should certainly never be promoted to children.” https://www.binary.org.au/transgender_book_describes_oral_sex_by_a_6_year_old
Informative book, I really liked it.
Not a favorite of mine. While I do think it was a great idea to highlight different transgender teens and show how fluid gender can be, I do not think this book was as great as it could be. I really felt as though this book was missing a lot of crucial pieces to people wanting to understand the transgender teen experience or even for transgender teens to see others like them. Overall, I really was not impressed.
A powerful book.
I loved this books deals with teens on that are transgender. each chapter is a story/interview about the teens and the lives. I like how it went beyond the basic FTM and MTF, stories and included other ways of being trans.
I thought this book did a great job of presenting a diverse group of trans young people - various racial and socioeconomic backgrounds were featured, as well as a variety of gender identities and sexualities. I also appreciated the respect it showed for the privacy of the people who were interviewed and the way transition was presented as self-actualization rather than transformation or performance. It manages to be personal but not voyeuristic.
This book highlights the fact that "transgender" means something different to each person who identifies with the word. There are so many types of trans and this book does a great job telling the stories of teens all over the "spectrum" of trans identities.
Excellent book on the personal experiences of transgendered teens.