Posted on December 21, 2022 at 10:00 AM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek

NPR is looking to highlight authors whose work has been challenged or banned around the US.

Today, that writer is Susan Kuklin, whose award-winning nonfiction work Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out has drawn opposition since its 2014 publication.

NPR notes that it's been on the American Library Association's list of most books most often challenged several times since 2015 and is currently banned from libraries in eleven US school districts.

Beyond Magenta is a collection of photos of and interviews with transgender and nonbinary teens and young adults, who bravely share their experiences transitioning and reflect on their identities.

It wasn't Kuklin's first book relaying young people's actual experiences with often-difficult topics, like teen pregnancy, suicide, AIDS, and death row.

But, she writes in an essay for NPR, none of those had been widely targeted — and so, she had the "evidently naïve" belief that Beyond Magenta would be treated with the same respect.

Nope.

It breaks Kuklin's heart that a book designed to bring humanity to a marginalized population has, instead, brought such anger and continued misunderstanding, she told NPR in a companion interview to her essay.

You can read highlights from that interview or listen to it in full on NPR's website.

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Categories: Author Interview

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