Book Review: A Quick & Easy Guide to Queer & Trans Identities

“The world is home to such a vibrant rainbow of people. So why not genders?”

In this quick and easy guide to queer and trans identities, cartoonists Mady G and JR Zuckerberg guide you through the basics of the LGBT+ world! Covering essential topics like sexuality, gender identity, coming out, and navigating relationships, this guide explains the spectrum of human experience through informative comics, interviews, worksheets, and imaginative examples. A great starting point for anyone curious about queer and trans life, and helpful for those already on their own journeys! (Goodreads)

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I certainly learned a lot from this book! The cute and charming art style helps in discussing such an intimidating topic.

The book embraces the fluidity of gender and queerness as a concept and defines how self-identification is still the basis of any classification. Labels are fine as long as they are self labels and helps the individual be more comfortable and self confident in his/her/their own skin.

It successfully differentiates sexuality vs gender and introduces the concept of an infinite number of types of people. Reading this really helped me a lot to understand the colorful spectrum of the Queer community. Now I can be more of an informed ally, and a better parent to my son who I plan to raise without gender role expectations.

If you are looking to read a story with a plot and characters, then maybe this is not for you. It’s almost like a textbook in the sense that it’s highly informative and really discussed details, definitions and terminologies. I also found some of the relationship lessons dragging, but perhaps I’m just a bit too old for it. I’m sure it will be really helpful to a lot of people.

In the end, the most important thing in this life is learning to love your self, respect others, and to always be kind. 🌈

Big thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for giving me a copy of this wonderful book in exchange for an honest review.

Overall Rating: 3.5/5⭐️

About the Authors

Mady G.

Mady G. is a cartoonist, illustrator, and designer who is currently based in Kingston, NY.

When they aren’t drawing or reading, Mady enjoys cooking elaborate meals, bringing up amphibians/snails at every opportunity, and making exaggerated facial expressions whenever possible. They also have deep interests in 70s fashion, body horror, and the surreal/absurd.

Mady has been actively freelancing for almost a decade and has received their BFA in Illustration from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY with high honors.

They also are passionate about LGBT and human rights, especially the rights of transgender and gender non-conforming people.

J.R. Zuckerberg

J.R. Zuckerberg is a cartoonist, illustrator, and craftsperson living in Brooklyn, NY. In 2017 Zuckerberg got their BFA in Communications Design from the Pratt Institute. Since then, they have created playful illustrations for children’s magazines, journal comics galore, and a number of self-published mini comics.

Their most recent endeavor was co-authoring A Quick and Easy Guide to Queer and Trans Identities with Mady G., published by Limerence Press, set to release in April 2019.

Buy Links

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