In Episode 2 of To Be Read, Amanda and Gable discuss All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson.
Lawmakers across the country are banning books they deem too dangerous for children to read—we added them all to our “to be read” list. Join us each month as we read and discuss banned books: what we liked, what we didn’t like, why they say they banned it, and why they really banned it.
Transcription
AMANDA O’BRIEN, HOST:
Welcome to “To Be Read,” a Banned Books podcast presented by Urban Plains. This month’s episode we will be discussing. All Boys Aren’t Blue by George Johnson. My name is Amanda O’Brien.
GABLE THOMPSON, HOST:
And I’m Gable Thompson. All Boys Aren’t Blue was published in 2020 and includes topics of sexual abuse, trauma, homophobia, racism, transphobia, discussions of these topics may be triggering to some listeners. If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1 800 6564673.
AMANDA:
All boys aren’t blue was the third most challenged book of 2021, according to the American Library Association, that year showed the highest number of attempted book bannings in public and school libraries since the organization began tracking book bans in 2000. The reasons given for the bans of this book were LGBTQIA plus content, profanity, and because it was considered sexually explicit.
AMANDA:
So did you want to start us off with talking about how the book addressed trauma?
GABLE:
The book starts off with a very interesting anecdote by the author, George Johnson, where he talks about as a kid when he was around five years old, he got his teeth kicked in by some other boys while his brothers were trying to defend him. And he said that incidents he didn’t like it might not seem like such a big issue because they were just his baby teeth and his adults teeth grew in but it did end up affecting him throughout his entire life.
GABLE:
Even as an adult. His he smiled less and basically like not even at all until he said like his thirties was when he started to feel uncomfortable smiling in front of people. And as you said, it all related back to that moment when someone like threw him to the ground and like kicked his teeth in.
AMANDA:
Yeah, a lot of emotional pain. Definitely stuck with him. I know that he later on also talks about trauma and he kind of relates it more historically as well with how one of his cousins was drowning in a pool and his other cousins jumped in to save her but that moment, which was so small because she was drowning for only a couple seconds and they immediately jumped in to save her.
AMANDA:
But he talked about how that moment as well was something that really had him fearing water for a long time. But he also related that to him as more historical standpoint as well and how the slave ships and sort of generational trauma stuck with a lot of people because many of them chose to drown in the water rather than be delivered to the Americas.
AMANDA:
Definitely from a historical standpoint as well that he relates to that. And I think he said that his mother also had bad experiences with water, which is why she never took him to learn to swim or anything, because she never saw it as something important for him to learn.
GABLE:
He talked about in order to get over it, his cousins pushed him into a pool and then they like after he the initial shock of it, they like helped him teach him and like showed him the motions on how to stay afloat. And that was it was knowing that like his family was always there for him. That was the only way he could get over his fear of water and fear of swimming.
AMANDA:
Yeah. And I think that kind of goes into sort of the family dynamics that are talked about throughout the book. He kind of talks about how he had a fairly supportive family, which is not something that’s always found with members of the queer community. A lot of times family is a big issue with that. And so there tends to be sort of a found family rather than blood family sort of approach to things where you would find people that you relate to, that you kind of consider family more than the people that you might be blood related to or legally related to.
AMANDA:
And how he sort of had like a family dynamic that was a lot more supportive, but he still had that sort of found family as well with his fraternity brothers in college. And so he had both of those sort of experiences. I know it was really interesting to me is how he talked about in his family. He had a lot of queer relatives as well, which I think was definitely helpful to him, but also scarring for him as well with some of his experiences.
AMANDA:
And I thought that was an interesting topic because I know a lot of times when you’re sort of reading queer media, a lot of the issue is sometimes not having a supportive family. And that’s where a lot of the issues is but with him, he had a queer family members, and that also brought up about some issues with them.
GABLE:
The oldest brother was gay, right, in his family, and so his father who I guess hasn’t had much experience with queer culture in the queer community, sort of struggled and like was not able to develop a good relationship with his oldest son. So in his way, his exploration in with George is sort of benefited from that experience because he was able to like now that he had a better understanding of what to expect.
AMANDA:
Yeah. And I know that he kind of touched on with his father, especially and his relationship with his oldest brother. For the longest time, him and his oldest brother just really never were able to connect until they were a lot older. And how he thought that that relationship, if he had it when he was younger, would be really beneficial towards that to him.
AMANDA:
But there was just sort of a disconnect between them because the father was treating George so differently than he was treating his older brother, oldest brother, because he just never really knew how to relate to him. Whereas with George, since he had that first experience and kind of learn from it and his mother’s side of George’s mother’s side of the family was very supportive of him as well, which sort of helped him and his father kind of have a bit of a better relationship, but it definitely caused issues with him and his oldest brother for I remember him saying it was until they were quite older and he was already kind of grown before he
AMANDA:
was able to have those conversations with his older brother about their queerness. But I know another thing that was sort of touched on in this book was a lot about gender identity and how he for the longest time when he was younger, he kind of struggled with his view of masculinity and kind of relating more to femininity. But he wasn’t really sure what that meant and how one of his cousins was trans.
AMANDA:
And so he kind of talked about how he regretted for the longest time, how he sort of talked to her or talked about her to other family members. He was kind of saying that for a while he was a bit embarrassed to be around her and how he regrets because she died from what he was assuming was HIV and how that sort of impacted a lot of people in the queer community, especially but how he kind of regrets that he wasn’t able to form a better relationship with her before she passed away.
AMANDA:
She was kind of they were kind of getting a bit of a better relationship right before. But obviously she passed. And so he wasn’t able to sort of apologize for how he treated her when he was younger and how he had regrets about that. But how that sort of formed how he relates to trans women today and how he views his position as needing to protect trans women today.
AMANDA:
But he did also discuss how having her, as an example, being a trans woman, how he realized that he wasn’t trans through that. It helped him understand his own relationship with his gender identity a bit more. Having her around, which again, is not something that all people get to experience when they’re growing up, especially all queer people. They don’t always have a family member that they can kind of learn from.
AMANDA:
With that, he.
GABLE:
Has a very interesting relationship with masculinity and family. He starts off at the end. The book is describing himself as an effeminate man so like he acts with like traits that aren’t like like traditional.
AMANDA:
Masculine.
GABLE:
Traditionally masculine. And he sort of talked about like he always leans towards femininity, but he also is masculine in ways he’s really great at sports. And I remember like even near the end of the book when he joined the black fraternity, he said that he found it finally found a way to like find his own masculinity and own version that he was comfortable with that sort of still possesses the traits that are often associated with like strength and confidence and stuff like that.
GABLE:
It’s very interesting how he makes a distinction between the two and he wants to take traits from both elements.
AMANDA:
Yeah. And I also I thought that was interesting as well, that he went into a space that was that is typically viewed as traditionally masculine, a fraternity and how he kind of used that experience to fully realize himself and how he learned a lot through that. And through his relationship with his brothers in the fraternity and how that kind of served him really well in a space that I think most people would consider traditionally masculine.
AMANDA:
Especially talking about his college experience. I thought that that was really interesting how he was sort of talking about how he was had that double marginalization, especially when he goes into college and how he was really looking forward to be at a historically black college campus and how he was really excited to get there. He had this idea in his mind that he’d get there and he would be able to fully realize his queerness and exist in a very black space, but also in a very queer space, and how he would be able to sort of share that version of himself with the world.
AMANDA:
But then when he was given the chance, when he got there, it was something that he because he was so used to denying it, it just was his instinct to say no and how he had regrets about that. And it wasn’t until his senior year almost that he started to actually sort of live his his truth and his queerness.
AMANDA:
And that was benefited a lot by his relationships with his fraternity brothers and how they helped him sort of realize himself so this book, I think, actually serves as a great transition between last month’s book and the Dream House and next month’s book, The 1619 Project, because it sort of has a combination of identities like the Queerness in the Dream House and the Blackness, which will be discussed in next month’s episode of The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones in New York and The New York Times.
AMANDA:
So I thought that this serves as a nice sort of transition between those two.
GABLE:
As always, thank you for listening to this month’s episode of To Be Read and be sure to join us next month where we’ll be reading the 1619 Project. In the meantime, find us on Instagram at Urban Underscore Plains or you are website urban hyphen planes dot com.
