Content Warning: This review contains mentions of sexual violence.
“I was wondering if I was going to write about you now that you’re dead.”
—George M. Johnson
It’s the summer of 2006. I’m sitting on the eve of my childhood – which is the front porch of my friend Melanie’s house – and I’m wondering what we’re going to do tonight. Maybe watch the Dallas Mavs vs. Miami Heat game. Maybe fantasize about sitting on the court during the finale, but Melanie’s dad said that won’t happen until the Mavs win tonight. Maybe talk about the church, since we had just left a few hours ago. We could do so much; Little did I know that this would be the house that would shelter my doom. I didn’t know that this night would be devoid of my maybes.
Although the memory of that day was buried for decades, it came back vividly to me after reading George M. Johnson’s provocative but necessary first young adult book, Not all boys are blue. This book covers many topics, including blackness, homosexuality, and coming of age in a world that suppresses your presence. This also touches on something that torments more than 57,000 children in the United States: sexual assault.
When I first read “Boys Will Be Boys,” the chapter that describes Johnson’s assault in chilling detail, I thought it was a bold choice to include this particular story in the book .
Isn’t this aimed at young adults? I thought, as if there was no need to broach the subject of sexual assault with young people; as if one in nine girls and one in 20 boys under 18s are not victims of sexual assault in this country. Of course, sexual assault is a potentially uncomfortable topic to discuss with people ages 12 to 18 (the target audience for YA literature), but they are at risk. It would be negligent for YA literature to approach it superficially – or worse, not address it at all. Once I faced my naivety and discomfort, I realized that Johnson was doing life-saving work.
This was work that was due to me in 2006, after the game ended and the Mavericks lost. Melanie and I, with faces longer than the longest NBA playoffs, sulked to Melanie’s room, which was filled with posters of black boys and piles of unfolded clothes. She took her clothes off the bed and invited me to sleep next to her that night. I obliged. It wasn’t (yet) a red flag for two girls sleeping in the same bed. His hand grabbed my panties and pulled them down. I jumped. Then, after a (manipulative) conversation, I sat down and accepted my fate.
My body’s destiny was for it to belong to someone else. At age 11, my body became something to play with, even if I didn’t want to.
I will never know what I could have happened, but I recognized what did after reading Not all boys are blue.
It was crazy to realize that, 16 years later, what I had experienced was abuse. Like me, Johnson was sexually assaulted by an older child they knew. The attack on him happened at almost the same age as me. For some reason, I was led to believe that childhood sexual abuse happened between adults and children, so I always viewed the things that happened between Melanie and I as a communication problem. I had to read this YA book that I kept seeing on social media (due to the unfortunate reality of book bans) to make sense of my past. This part of me I buried for years; I buried this story so far that I thought I had swallowed it.
I wish I had a book like Not all boys are blue, and a chapter like “Boys will be boys”, when I was 11 and full of questions that no one was ready to answer, full of emotions – regret, disgust and shame – that I didn’t have to treat alone. I could have had the language to know that what happened to me was wrong. I could have understood that my issues with depression, PTSD, and substance abuse were common consequences for survivors of childhood sexual abuse. I could have told my parents, who punished me when they found Melanie raping me in my childhood bed, that they shouldn’t punish me for “the sin of being gay.” The only sin in the play was the illness that forced Melanie to do these things, the adult who surely told this child – implicitly or explicitly – that this behavior was acceptable. The sin was the failure of homophobia that kept my parents from knowing the truth about our difficult situations.
See also:
The perfect gift for my inner black and trans child
Although it won the Stonewall Book Award, the book landed on banned lists across the country. “It’s terrifying to think that a story about a child loved by his parents for being exactly himself could be portrayed as threatening.”
I will never know what I could have happened, but I recognized what did after reading Not all boys are blue. This book is vital for both young people and adults who desperately need to figure their shit out (like me). States and cities ban books like Not all boys are blue prohibit black people, gay people, survivors, and people who hold more than one of those identities from seeing themselves – in literature and in life.
I want to live in a world where the things that happened to Johnson and me and many other young people don’t happen. Assault, anti-trans and the suppression of reproductive rights all live under an ugly umbrella that says we don’t own our bodies. I can talk about it now that my abuser is dead – at least for me, or at least for the part of them that controlled the way I loved/lived. Books like Not all boys are blue makes me believe in a world where all children become children. But that world won’t be far away if we continue to talk about our current situation.
And if we have nothing else, at least we have our stories.
MORE BANNED BOOKS:
In the state where books are most banned, Texas mobile librarians and booksellers are bridging the access gap.
It’s possible that shipping books to prisons is supposed to be difficult.
When the publishing industry cut them off, black weeklies gave black youth a platform.
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