100 books like Life Isn't Binary

I love stories crammed with internal strife and triumph in the end, especially ones about finding yourself.

In this YA contemporary, teen Ben faces the worst possible reaction from their parents when they come out to them as nonbinary. Fortunately, they round up some supportive family, but this marks the beginning of a long struggle to build up their confidence and come out to everyone, not just their family. Ben may know who they are, but being honest about it is hard, especially in certain places.

There are big differences in being nonbinary or trans in conservative states versus liberal states, and also between smaller towns and bigger cities. This book reminds readers that as long as you’re safe, being true to yourself is more rewarding than hiding yourself. 

I love stories about artists, and I loved the creativity of the whole idea behind this adult fantasy set against an Asian-inspired backdrop, where art is magic and can be used to make things happen in the physical world.

But even better is the fact that the main character—a skilled artist roped into working for a corrupt entity—is nonbinary, and this is nothing more than a mundane fact. It’s a clear reminder that gender is just one part of a person’s existence—and probably not the most important one. 

Reading this graphic novel just feels good. It’s so positive and full of all kinds of sweet relationships—romantic, friends, and family.

It’s also a fantastic portrayal of numerous people with something that makes them different from most others, including wearing hearing aids, lesbian grandmas, large bodies, and last but not least, being nonbinary. None of these things is an issue in the book, and instead they’re presented as being as normal as breathing.

I just love the normalization of human differences. Add to that the fun urban fantasy elements of magic and werewolves, and it’s a perfect mix.  

It’s always great to get a reminder to be true to yourself when you don’t fit in easily.

This dystopian YA novel has good worldbuilding and a rich lexicon of new words that gives it that idiosyncratic futuristic feeling. The protagonist is a barely fifteen-year-old girl “bender”—someone who doesn’t feel comfortable in their assigned gender and doesn’t hide that. She has been sent to a camp that will determine her future, making sure she doesn’t end up in the “Blight”, a huge concentration camp for society’s undesirables.

But for a good outcome, she must conform, and her fellow campers and new experiences make that confusing and difficult. The ending is fairly open, but she has clearly learned to be true to herself and reject arbitrarily assigned labels.

I’ve assigned this graphic memoir to college students, given it to young nieces, and sent a copy to my mom. Prince tells the familiar story of being identified by others as a tomboy and struggling to understand what that means and whether or not she accepts the term. It’s funny, poignant, and smart.

The first trans child we know of to self-identify and receive affirmative medical care was Ewan Forbes, whose mother accessed early testosterone treatments for him in the 1920s. A hundred years later, when I’m asked by parents for one book to understand the how’s and why’s of trans kids, Diane’s is my go-to recommendation. Based on her own real-life clinical experience, she sets out a spectrum of gender diversity, and shows how parents can support their children’s explorations and decisions.

Key to this is letting children define their own social presentation and activity, for as she puts it, ‘if we want to know a child’s gender, it is not for us to say but for the child to tell’. Diane demonstrates that this approach allows both child and parent to identify whether their gender expression is ‘insistent, consistent, and persistent’, in other words, the direction in which the… show more.

Conklin’s collection of short stories offers storylines that are utterly and marvelously original.

These queer characters are quirky, but not quirky for the sake of being quirky. They are so fully themselves, and their passions drive them through their relationships and actions so believably, that you don’t question the strangeness of the situations for a second.

Mainly I just love the big heart in Conklin’s stories. Their prose, the actual word choices, are a delight in the same way the characters are—they surprise you and yet are spot-on right.

This was the first published book I read with a nonbinary main character. That alone makes it one of the most personally important books I have ever read. The fact that I encountered it just after writing my own novel about a nonbinary figure skater made this beautiful book hit even harder.

It showed me that even though two books may have the same hook and some of the same basic ingredients, the execution can be diverse and take those ingredients in directions you never expected. It sparkles, both in its descriptions of figure skating and in its nuanced and honest exploration of identity. It also makes for an excellent read-aloud book.

“Why is that dad wearing a dress?”

It wasn’t the first time my toddler commented on someone’s appearance in front of them, but I was convinced that his question sounded like a judgment. We have never left our grocery store so fast. I was angry. He was worried. Had he done something wrong? Yes! Maybe? I didn’t know. Had I? Yes. I wanted my family to be cool with all forms of gender expression, but I hadn’t built the common ground or the vocabulary to make that vision a reality. I’d projected my own fears, ignorance, and self-consciousness onto my child. I blew it. This book gave me words. We don’t assume anything about ourselves or other people anymore. I can see that my son’s curiosity comes from a place of sincerity and positivity. Now, I have the confidence to follow his lead.

As a fellow genderqueer/non-binary Asian writer, I’m happy to champion the first in Neon Yang’s Tensorate series. A YA novella set in a non-Western fantasy landscape, this book tackles issues of gender identity and choice head-on, introducing us to a society where children are referred to individually using they/them pronouns, and can select one of the binary genders when they come of age or chose to remain non-binary. We see the world through the eyes of twins Mokoya and Akeha as they come into their gender expressions and their powers in a feudal, monastic society largely reminiscent of those found in Asian history.