Reviews with content warning for Chronic illness - All Boys Aren't Blue

This was quite the book. George M. Johnson is an incredible person, and their story is a very important one for everyone to hear. The incredible thing about this story is that while most memoirs are about someone with a very unique or unusual story, Johnson's is very commonplace, it just has hardly ever been told before. On top of its importance to society, the book is also full of stories about Johnson's life that are heartwarming, sad, and everything in between. I'm so glad I got to experience this book, and I would recommend it to absolutely anyone.

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nassy's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted reflective sad tense fast-paced

4.0

I really enjoyed this book and so thankful to have literature such as this to help support me as a 30 something black queer woman. This is a definite recommendation to all in and outside of the community. I cried, laughed, learned and so much more!

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mme_carton's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

4.0

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ellioteverafter's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful inspiring sad slow-paced

4.0

To deny the queer community a basic sex education as teens is to perpetuate the prevalence of those statistics.

I cannot imagine how difficult this must have been to write. Difficult, but oh-so necessary. All Boys Aren't Blue is a thought-provoking piece that put to words a lot of similar experiences to what I went through growing up queer. I adored the incredibly strong theme of family in this, and was so glad to see a perspective from someone with a family who loved and accepted him when he came out. Those stories still unfortunately rare for those in certain communities.

What stopped me from rating this higher was the section on Hope. I don't think it was at all appropriate to broadcast her deadname, especially given that she wasn't around to give consent to that. I felt fairly uncomfortable reading that section because there was quite a lot of misgendering (which I understand was how Hope was seen at the time, but that still isn't necessary) and it all came from the perspective of a cisgender man. I think many people still have a lot to learn about how to treat trans people fairly, unfortunately. That's not to say that Hope's section was disrespectful, but that it definitely could've stood to have been looked at by a few more trans people before going ahead.

Overall, I am going to be recommending this book to a lot of non-black people and a lot of queer people, too. I definitely don't think it's a piece that's above critique by any means, but it is an incredibly solid work that needs to be read by a much wider audience.

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princessgonchar's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

3.0

I didn't have any particular feelings in any direction towards this book. I think the stories about their life was interesting, but there were some aspects about the abstract, more theoretical big picture that I just didn't agree with. You know, small things. I appreciated it though.

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