Anti-Bias Children's Lit Part 3: Gender & Identity
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I was tired. I had read several children's lit books, trekked to several bookstores, and had read pretty much every anti-bias children's lit booklist to be found. Spurred on by Anti-Bias Curriculum's requirements for anti-biased books, I pressed on, and turned to the last book I had found.
I Am Jazz
I Am Jazz is a book co-written by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings, with Jazz herself being the titular character of the book. It is an autobiographical pre-school age picture book, chronicling the first few years of Jazz's life, especially as she discovered she is transgendered as a toddler.
I have been aware of Jazz Jennings for a while, and if you watch TV or Youtube you may have come across her. I came across her story when a few transgendered friends of mine posted about her on Facebook some years ago. Every once in a while I would check her Youtube channel to see how her story has progressed. Jazz is now a teenager, and is facing a whole new set of challenges that are common among transgendered teens. I was interested to see that she had published I Am Jazz, and decided to buy it.
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| I Am Jazz is intended for preschool age to young grade school age children. |
I Am Jazz starts off with Jazz introducing
herself and describing everything she loves. She lists her
favorite colors and her favorite activities, and introduces her best friends,
Samantha and Casey. Here, Jazz informs the audience that she is “not exactly
like Samantha and Casey,” in that she is a girl born in the wrong body. Jazz
explains that when she was little, her family tried to make her act and dress
like a boy, but it felt like she was living a lie. But one day her parents took
her to a doctor who told them that Jazz was transgender, and her parents
accepted her as Jazz. They told her that they loved her, and just want her to
be happy. Jazz’s mom is very supportive, but explains to her that not everyone
will accept her for who she is, but she should always stay true to herself.
Jazz explains that some people bully because they don’t understand. Jazz leaves
off that no matter what, she knows who she is inside, and doesn’t mind being
different, and that she is happy and loved.
The story is beautifully and cleanly illustrated by Shelagh McNicholas, who presents the story in a cute manner not unlike that of Disney Princesses. The prose itself is easy to understand, although I was worried about such a big word as transgender being presented to children as young as age 3. But mostly, I was worried about what the reaction this book would have to my class.
And then, I realized, I had found my book.
Fear is a good indicator of the things that need to be challenged. We all face fears everyday. I am not talking about simple fears like fears of spiders (yuck) or snakes (not yuck at all), but the fears that fuel our own intolerances. If you take any intolerance and boil it down to its simplest parts, you get left with fear, and usually, a personal fear we are afraid of facing!
Usually this fear has to do with the feelings of less than, or the fear of the unknown. Instead of healthily facing these fears, many turn to other means of dealing with them: anger, prejudices, projections, abuse, and bullying in all its forms (a bully doesn't have to hit to be a bully). And even with these fears being caricatured into "evils" and given faces like Disney villains or even dictators we all despise, the truth is, we all participate in this egotistical illusion.
I can see where transgendered people may cause fear. It doesn't fit into the circle that many draw about their lives and all they thought they knew. To be challenged in such a way is to force oneself to look at this circle and perhaps think, "Some of this is wrong or outdated, and needs to be changed." And it isn't even that simple! There are structures within our society that are built upon the most collective of these beliefs. The concept of there only being a gender binary is one of these structures. Think about it: there are only men's and women's bathrooms. There are only female or male's clothing. There are girl's toys and there are boy's toys. We grow up within this structure and thus believe it to be all there is to consider.
I thought of all this and wrote my report on I Am Jazz, because like my mother has been telling me since I was 8, I'm nothing if not challenging. And I've lived my life paying attention to the forgotten and ignored, and knew that I wasn't going to stop because of a little fear of people not liking what I had to say.
The teacher and I had a lengthy discussion right after the presentation, as I was standing before the class, about the book. I explained that I was inspired because of her presentation of My Princess Boy, but also, because this was a true story and such a hot topic. We discussed how a person's decision to be transgendered wasn't ours (a teacher's), and how the word transgender may be beyond some children. We talked about how when presenting these books we can edit them as we go along to tailor to our audience.
I now had a new fear: that I had bombed this project.
I stayed after to discuss this with my teacher, and she told me she felt I had done a good job. She explained to me what I knew aside from my fear - funny how sometimes we need validation still - that when faced with the reaction I got from my fellow classmates, it was a sign that I did what needed to be done. I found myself looking at the reactions in a more compassionate light.
After class, a classmate came up to me and thanked me for presenting the book. She told me that until then, she had struggled to understand transgendered people. Now, she understood. I thanked her for letting me know, and felt a little more mission accomplished about the assignment.
Thank you, I Am Jazz.
PS. I know that I, as a non transgendered person, have the luxury of waiting for others to come around to a more accepting point of view of LGBTQ peoples. I understand that for many people, there is real danger in living as a trans person, especially in today's political climate. Every day trans people fear for their lives or live a life of misery, or are homeless because of their gender identity. Unlike the famous transgender people we see on TV, like Caitlyn Jenner and Laverne Cox, people struggle with things like coming out as trans, passing as their identified gender, obtaining needed hormones, using their preferred restrooms, paying for surgeries, and just being treated like a human being. Please be a good ally to trans people, and if you are a trans person in need of help, please look below:
Trans Lifeline
GLAAD
PS. I know that I, as a non transgendered person, have the luxury of waiting for others to come around to a more accepting point of view of LGBTQ peoples. I understand that for many people, there is real danger in living as a trans person, especially in today's political climate. Every day trans people fear for their lives or live a life of misery, or are homeless because of their gender identity. Unlike the famous transgender people we see on TV, like Caitlyn Jenner and Laverne Cox, people struggle with things like coming out as trans, passing as their identified gender, obtaining needed hormones, using their preferred restrooms, paying for surgeries, and just being treated like a human being. Please be a good ally to trans people, and if you are a trans person in need of help, please look below:
Trans Lifeline
GLAAD
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