Beyond Magenta by Susan Kuklin

Title: Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out

Author: Susan Kuklin

ISBN: 9780763673680

Publisher: Candlewick Press

Copyright Date: 2014

Genre: Non Fiction

About the Author:

 Philadelphia-born author, photographer, and former teacher Susan Kuklin was introduced to art, theater, and books at an early age. She received her undergraduate and master’s degrees in theater from New York University and taught English in the New York public school system after college graduation. While in graduate school, Kuklin began to direct plays. “Whereas acting taught me how to interpret a part, directing forced me to look at the big picture, which included visual aspects,” she says. She incorporated this into her photography and nonfiction writing, which was fueled by her curiosity about other people, their lives and concerns.

After her marriage, she and her husband moved to Tennessee where her growing interest in photography led to her first photo-essay, “Appalachian Families.” Since then, she has been a professional photojournalist whose work has appeared in major magazines and newspapers throughout the United States and Europe.

As an author, Kuklin understands how important it is for teenage voices to be heard. Much of the research for her books consists of on-the-job training. For Speaking Out, Kuklin spent an entire year at Bayard Rustin High School for the Humanities in Manhattan interviewing, photographing, and observing students and teachers, and their interactions with one another, in an attempt to get to the heart of the prejudices and stereotypes that permeate today’s society. “Prejudice manifests itself through apathy and fear. We need to talk to each other,” she says. “We need to hear each other. We need to care.”

Susan Kuklin: Bio. http://www.penguin.com/author/susan-kuklin/245278.

Curriculum Ties:

•  Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.
• Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.

Plot Summary:

Beyond Magenta tells the story of six different transgender teens and their different experiences. The first is Jessy, who talks about how he grew up as a woman, but changed his gender because of how he felt. His family was very supportive of this change, and helped him make the adaptation. Christina grew up as a boy, but went to a catholic school and had more difficulty in adjusting because of this and her own difficulty inn understanding her urges. Mariah was raised more as a girl, which made her adjustment more difficult because of the criticism she received at an early age. Cameron discusses his experiences, which are different because he identifies as gender fluid. Nat also tells his story, identifying as gender neutral, neither male or female. Luke then tells his story, relating his acting experiences and his difficulties with bullies. The book then closes with information on the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center.

Critical Evaluation:

Beyond Magenta’s plot and purpose is to help people understand the lives and difficulties of transgender and gender neutral teens. To do this, the author interviewed six teens and put their experiences into this book. This makes the format of the book different than most, with it being written in that interview format. Their personal experiences makes the story more personal, with them each having their own personality and different fears, like Mariah’s unwillingness to be photographed, or Luke’s putting everything in context of a play. The author inserts her own thoughts into the story, making her sympathy for the interviewees clear in her writing, often describing the beauty of the person, which makes her regret Mariah’s unwillingness to be photographed.  The author also includes resources for helping transgender teens at the end of the book, which help support her purpose of helping people to understand transgender teens, but also making sure that they get the help they need.

Readers Annotation:

Read about six transgender teen's experiences in this moving book of interviews that talks about their lives in their own words.

Book Talking Ideas:

• Talk about the difference between Jessy and Christina's experiences in understanding their gender identity. Look for what makes the other experiences different as well. 

Reading Level/Interest Age: 12-18

Challenge Issues:

• Discussion of sexuality and identity
• Bullying and offensive language

Defense Collection:

•  Kuklin (No Choirboy, 2008, etc.) brings her intimate, compassionate and respectful lens to the stories of six transgender young people. In verbal and, when the subjects have given permission, visual profiles, readers meet transgender teens with a wide range of backgrounds and experiences. They hear from teens who identify fully as female or male, teens who identify as neither male nor female, and one teen who is intersex. Their stories are told largely in the teens' own words, with only a few italicized interpolations to clarify or contextualize a point or to describe a facial expression or inflection readers cannot see or hear. In photographs, readers see Nat, who attends a performing-arts high school in New York City and uses the personal gender pronouns them and they, carrying their violin on New York's High Line. Christina, who attends Fashion Institute of Technology, is pictured shopping for clothes, proudly displaying a school project and hugging her mother. Images of the young people before their transitions are often included but, appropriately, do not serve as focal points for their chapters. Similarly, sex and genitalia are discussed frankly but are rarely what matters most. The collective portrait that emerges from these narratives and pictures is diverse, complex and occasionally self-contradictory--as any true story should be. Informative, revealing, powerful and necessary. (author's note, glossary, resource list) (Nonfiction. 12 & up)(Kirkus Reviews, December 15, 2013)
• In a sorely needed resource for teens and, frankly, many adults, author/photographer Kuklin shares first-person narratives from six transgender teens, drawn from interviews she conducted and shaped with input from her subjects. The six “chapters” read like personal histories, with Kuklin interjecting occasional context and helping bridge jumps in time. Readers will gain a real understanding of gender as a spectrum and a societal construct, and of the challenges that even the most well-adjusted, well-supported transgender teens face, from mockery by peers and adults alike to feelings of isolation and discomfort in their own bodies. When readers meet New York City teenager Christina, she has gotten into a knock-down fight on the subway with two girls who were making fun of her; although Kuklin’s color and b&w portraits appear throughout, 19-year-old Mariah requests no photographs of her be used, confessing, “I’m not ready for people to see me.” While Kuklin’s subjects are candid about the difficulties of coming out as transgender to family and friends and the patience that transitioning often requires, their honest, humorous, and painful remarks about their relationships with gender are often downright revelatory. “Because I’m perceived as male, I get male privileges. It weirds me out a little bit,” says Cameron, whose PGP (preferred gender pronoun) is the plural “they.” Nat, who also prefers “they,” is relieved when diagnosed as intersex. “It proved what I had been feeling all along. I was not only emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually both sexes; I was physically both sexes, too. This is who I am.” A q&a section, author notes, glossary, and print and online resources close out the book . But its chief value isn’t just in the stories it reveals but in the way Kuklin captures these teenagers not as idealized exemplars of what it “means” to be transgender but as full, complex, and imperfect human beings. As Kuklin writes, “My subjects’ willingness to brave bullying and condemnation in order to reveal their individual selves makes it impossible to be nothing less than awestruck.” She isn’t wrong. Ages 14–up. Agent: Brianne Johnson, Writers House. (Feb.) --Staff (Reviewed November 18, 2013) (Publishers Weekly, vol 260, issue 46, p)
• Awards:
• Booklist Editors' Choice - Books for Youth - Older Readers Category: 2014
• Flora Stieglitz Straus Award
• Notable Books for a Global Society: 2015
• Rainbow List: 2015
• Stonewall Honor Book
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Purpose in Collection:

This is a collection of interviews describing different teens experiences in coming out. The book also contains a number of resources for teens going through the same experience. This makes the book useful as a resource for transgender teens, or for parents/other teens trying understand what they are going through.