This journalist spent a year living with the embattled families of trans youth

It’s such a cliché, but it’s really important: We forget that there are more of us than there are of them. I think we get demoralized by how much there is to fight, and how horrible the world seems sometimes. It’s easy to look at the news cycle right now and feel hopeless. But there’s always hope. That hope is us. That hope is these kids. I think when we find our connection to each other, when we learn to show up for each other and support each other and vote for each other, it’s not going to fix everything, but it at least gets us a little bit closer.

I get wrapped up in the students I need to provide extra support to because family refuses to support them. But I do try to let all these kids give me hope too. Their joy is my hope.

I bought this book when I saw this article, and I just finished it.

It’s excellent. I highly recommend it.

It is richly written, with full, complex portraits of the people the author embedded with. It is equal parts heartwarming, devastating, inspiring, and infuriating.

Lang does an incredible job at weaving in cultural and societal factors into each person’s story. I went in expecting to meet some new teenagers, but instead felt like I went on full trips to different parts of the country, visited different cultures, learned about local scenes and laws, and met entire families. To tell each teenager’s story, Lang has to tell the story of the people and place around them too. Without those, we don’t get a complete picture. With them, we get something wonderfully human.

While it is sad in many places, the parts that stuck with me most were not the heaviest things but the lightest and brightest ones. There is a lot of joy and acceptance captured in the book. It doesn’t highlight these by whitewashing away any negativity — in fact, the book’s genuine honesty about the negative aspects are what make the positive ones shine so strongly in contrast.

It’s also noteworthy in that it captures not just the exceptional, but the everyday. The author does a great job of making each individual teen’s story feel lived, down to earth, and relatable. Their transness is one aspect of their story, but it is not their whole story. The book also goes into their thoughts, feelings, and interests about plenty of other topics. It covers the fears and anxieties related to growing up — things that everyone faces in their own individual ways.

I’m a teacher, so I’m lucky enough to get to work with kids, including trans kids, on a daily basis. The people in this book reminded me of some of my own students.

If you’re not someone who knows any trans kids, then I recommend this book specifically to you. You’ll come away feeling like you do.

I also recommend this to anyone who’s feeling beaten down by the rise in anti-trans legislation and sentiment in the US.

As a queer adult, it’s been genuinely healing for me to work with queer kids and see them getting to live as themselves and have opportunities I never had at their age.

The stories in this book are like that. Even with prejudice and legislation targeting these kids, they still manage to find hope and joy. They show perseverance and strength. Individuality. Self-awareness. Patience. Compassion. Love.

Kids help me maintain my faith in the future, and, I think right now, a lot of us beleaguered queer adults could use more of that faith.

I think this book is a good source of that.

I’ll end by sharing my favorite detail from the book. Up to this point I’ve been talking kind of abstractly about a book that’s deeply personal and intimate. It feels right to bring some of that forward, because this book isn’t abstract at all.

The following detail wasn’t a big part of the person’s story, but that’s sort of the way the whole book is — filled to the brim with small but remarkably resonant and revealing details.

Here it is:

One of the teenagers profiled in the book is a trans girl in high school. She has to go before a judge in order to get a legal name change.

After the name change is finalized and she leaves the judge, she cartwheels down the hall of the courthouse.