It’s time for the first session of YA Book Club for the year 2021! What will this year bring? Did All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson kick off the year on a good note? Read on to find out!!
Emily: So for the first YA book club pick of 2021, we’re delving into a genre we haven’t covered yet: memoir. So to start us off, I have two questions for you, Mary. This was a book that we both were interested in, but you’re the one who brought it up as a potential option for this club. So why did you want to read this book? And what makes a memoir a YA memoir rather than just a memoir?
Mary: I wanted to read this book simply because I’d heard about it so much, and because I’ve never read a YA memoir before. I’m not sure exactly what the qualifications are for YA memoir, and I’ve got a lot of weird thoughts on YA as a marketing category more than a literature category anyway, but I’ll take a stab at it. All Boys Aren’t Blue is a YA memoir first and foremost because George M. Johnson intended it to be that. In the introduction to the book, he’s very clear that he wants his words to inspire young people. There’s no way to know whether he wanted to publish as a YA book or if his publisher pushed him to it, but going off the intro I’m going to guess it’s the first one. Secondly, the book does read like a guide to coming to terms with your sexuality, which is a very big issue for young adults. Growing up is hard and having books to help kids figure that out is good. I think I would’ve felt a lot different about this book if I was a teenager.
Emily: Yeah, so I think one of the things we have to consider about this book when we’re talking about it is its intended audience. I think a lot of what makes something YA or not YA is its intended audience. Especially with some YA books that seem a bit more didactic, like this one, the intended audience seems pretty central to its categorization. With other YA books that are more story and less “here’s what you should do” or “here’s what I did when I was your age,” intended audience seems to matter less? For me anyway. In other words, sometimes I read a YA book and I think, “I can see how people of all ages can enjoy this, even though the primary audience is young adult.” And other times I read a YA book and think, “This really isn’t for me.” Some other books we’ve read where I felt this way, for instance, were The Babysitter’s Coven and Moxie.
Mary: This one definitely falls into that more didactic category for me. It felt like I was being talked down to a little bit, so I agree with you on that. I do think that the general audience is a good thing. If I was a little kid growing up in super-rural Georgia, I think hearing about people who identified as LGBTQ+ and grew up and had struggles and succeeded—that would mean something. I’m a big believer (and I’m sure you are too) that kids who read broadly, about experiences that are different from their own, have an easier time understanding their world and being more empathetic to experiences that are different from their own.
Emily: Maybe we should explain what this book is about?
Mary: Yeah! So this is a memoir by George M. Johnson (who goes by Matthew for most of the book) about his life growing up as an LGBTQ+ youth and coming to terms with his identity, both sexual and in general. The first half of the book or so focuses on early childhood, then the second half talks about older teenage years and college. Johnson places a huge emphasis on story and storytelling, which is something you’re more qualified to explain.
Emily: So this book isn’t so much a memoir as it is a collection of personal essays. They are pretty much told in chronological order, starting with George M. Johnson’s childhood when he actually went by Matt and didn’t even realize George was his real name. Each essay does focus on a different event or phase in his life, and this works in a way, I guess, but part of the problem I had with this is I felt like this left big holes in the story. Like because this was all very linear and covers his whole life, this felt like bullet points rather than a fully realized narrative. I think in the past, when I’ve read books that are personal essays rather than a full on memoir, it covered less time. Or at least it felt a little more focused. I didn’t feel like I was missing parts of the story because it didn’t feel like the author was trying to tell a full life story in this one book. So, I don’t know, to me, narratively, this book seemed a little confused about what it wanted to be. Did you have a similar feeling?
Mary: Gosh, yes, absolutely. It was trying to do so much, but actually ended up talking about less than I thought it would. Part of why it felt like pieces were missing is that there were frequently really self-reflective, pithy statements that just seemed so...adult. It felt like a dash of the future peeking into the world of this kid, and I didn’t like that. I understand what Johnson is trying to do, and like I said, if I was an actual teenager I think I’d feel entirely different. For me now, a 32-year-old reading this book, all I can think is, yes, I know all this stuff already, let’s get to the good stuff! I did find the parts about some of his family members (especially Nanny) interesting, but I also felt like it was self-mythologizing a little bit. I think that feeling comes from something that’s missing, just like you said. People aren’t just one thing, but that’s how they often come off in this memoir.
Emily: That’s absolutely what it is. People come off as representative of one thing, and they don’t feel like real, full people with their own lives and stories. Should we maybe talk about parts of the book that stood out to us? The good and the bad?
Mary: The thing that’s going to haunt me forever is when Johnson describes his first sexual experience and says they had sex for 15 minutes. Nothing about the actual encounter upset me, it was the timing. I’m sorry, but you’re a 20-something virgin and you just like...kept on going? Sorry, but I don’t believe it. People aren’t magically good at sex first thing. I did like that Johnson makes sure to note that sex is something you can practice, it’s something you can work on with a partner. That’s something I don’t think enough people ascribe to. Chemistry is a thing but that doesn’t mean you can’t talk about your feelings and improve!
Emily: Yeah, and I think something I realized, you know, after I’d had sex with more than one person, is that sex the first time with anyone always kind of feels like the first time? That’s why I don’t really understand how people can have one night stands. You don’t even know how to do it right with that person yet. But that’s just a tangent about sex that has little to do with the book except to say Johnson is totally right about sex being something you work on with a partner. And I do like that this book is so sex-positive, in spite of Johnson’s complicated history with his own sexual awakening.
Mary: Yeah, it seemed to strike a really good balance. Johnson talks about his sexual trauma and his sexual joy in a balanced way, I think, and acknowledges both as part of his life.
Emily: Honestly, Mary, I felt really conflicted while I was reading this book because I had heard so many good things about it. And I know that these kinds of narratives are important to tell, especially because we don’t get a lot of YA stories specifically for queer Black men. And I got to see George M. Johnson speak at an online, socially distant YA convention earlier in the year, which made me more excited to read his work because he seemed like a great person. But this book was just not resonating with me the way I wanted it to. For that, I think we can go back to the fact that I am not the audience for this book, like, AT ALL. And so I’m trying to take that into account. But also… I feel like this story could have been told better?
Mary: Definitely. I had no issue with the content—it’s a story that needs to be told and reassure queer youth—but I wanted it to be more engaging structurally. I needed a cohesive theme to pull it all together (which I think could’ve been done). I mean, honestly, I think my patience for wandering narratives is just completely zapped after grad school, you know? I just can’t follow a meandering memoir anymore because my literary analysis part of my brain is screaming, “But what does it all mean?!” That really made it hard for me to enjoy this book. It felt like a lot of prologue and little meat. I wanted a lot from it because I’d also heard really good things, but I ended up feeling like it just wasn’t for me. It’s for somebody, maybe 15-year-old me, but not me now.
Emily: I also feel like this book was a little bit ruined for me because I listened to the audio version, which was read by the author. Sometimes author readings are great. But… let’s be real. More often than not, they’re not great. In this case, he was not a very good reader. His cadence was very repetitive, which is something I find grating in audiobook readings. I wonder if my experience with the book would have been different if I had read it.
Mary: Yes! A point for me! I hate audiobooks for the most part, although I like reading aloud to other people. A bad narrator makes or breaks it for me most of the time, and I don’t think that authors are always the best narrators of their work. Except Lindy West. She can narrate her own work all day for me and I’ll eat it up. I read the book digitally, and I kind of wish I’d had the hard copy. I think turning actual pages and seeing the formatting clearly would have made the experience better for me. Plus, the book has a beautiful cover.
Emily: I guess we should get to ratings?
Mary: Yeah...if we gotta. My rating for this book makes me feel so awful because, like I’ve said over and over, I really wanted to like it and had so many high hopes for it. But as far as how much I enjoyed reading it? I gave it a two and a half (a two on Goodreads, but a two and a half on my ~official log~). I just didn’t enjoy the process of reading it. I found myself rushing through parts because I was bored, or already knew the information that was being provided. I think I just wanted the book to pick a lane. It felt like it was trying to be an intimate memoir and a broad overview of growing up queer. I wanted it to be one or the other and it just never did that for me.
Emily: Yeah, I gave it a 3 because, like I said, I don’t think this was for me, and I don’t know if I can totally fault this book for that. For the right reader, I can see how this book would be really meaningful. So I’m not going to not recommend it for others just because it didn’t work for me.
I guess let’s talk about what we’re reading next? It’s a book I’ve been so excited about reading, and then the publication date got moved back, so we moved back when we were reading it, obviously. You want to tell our readers what it is?
Mary: Yessss, we’re reading This is Not the Jess Show by Anna Carey. I honestly don’t know too too much about it, but I’ve heard it described as “Black Mirror meets My So-Called Life,” which I’m very into! It’s really new, too, being published February 2!