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Alison Stewart: In 2022, George M. Johnson's memoir, All Boys Aren't Blue, became the second most challenged title in the nation according to the American Literary Association, 86 times to be exact. It's been banned in at least 29 school districts. Some of the reasons for the challenges against this young-adult, non-fiction book include sexual content and LGBTQIAP+ content. That stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersex, pansexual people.

As Johnson writes, "Unfortunately, we are still struggling to move the conversation past assumed identity at birth, and LGBTQIAP+ people are not just fighting for the right to self-identify and be accepted in a society that is predominantly composed of two genders, which would be the bare minimum of acceptance. We're also fighting to survive physical acts of violence. Many of us are not even surviving that." The book takes us through Johnson's memories of growing up as a queer, Black person in Plainfield, New Jersey.

Yes, there's trauma, but also joy. There are stories of playing double Dutch with girls in the playground, letters to a queer cousin and aunt, and a bunch of other family members that created space for them to be who they were. The New York Times calls the book "an exuberant, unapologetic memoir infused with a deep but clear-eyed love for its subjects." The book is titled, All Boys Aren't Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto. New York Times bestselling author and Emmy Award-nominated writer and executive producer George M. Johnson joins us to discuss. Hi, George.

George M. Johnson: Hi.

Alison Stewart: I want to talk about that full title, All Boys Aren't Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto. How is a memoir-manifesto different from a memoir?

George M. Johnson: Yes. In writing All Boys Aren't Blue, something inside of me said that it was just more than me telling my story. I, from the very beginning, felt that it was going to be a call to action, a rallying cry, a book that did a lot of healing work. I felt something was very special about the book. Three years later, I don't think I thought it would be the second most banned in the country.

I think in me thinking that this was going to be some type of very powerful statement being made that I was thinking more from the inspirational side of those who needed it, not from the other side of those who would try to reject it and drive those who would try to suppress this story. I think we can tell like if all I'm doing is telling my true story and it is upsetting that many people that I live and that I exist, then this has truly become a call to action and a rallying cry for so many who have never been seen in the pages of books before.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, we want to get you in on this conversation. Have you read George M. Johnson's All Boys Aren't Blue? What did you take away from the memoir? If you want to tell us about a challenged book that you'd like to shout out, we're going to be doing it all month long. Maybe you want to tell us about a challenged or banned book you read and tell us why we need to read it. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC is our number. You can also text to us at that number. Our socials are @AllOfItWNYC. I want to talk to you a little bit about the writing of the book before we dive totally into the challenging and the book-banning. I think it's important to know what your book's about and your process. You're a writer, right?

George M. Johnson: Yes.

Alison Stewart: You did write about the challenges of writing a memoir, saying that 33 felt a little bit narcissistic at first. You were sort of a little concerned about that. When did you, one, realize that you could break through that concern?

George M. Johnson: Yes, my biggest concern was I was like, "I'm only 33." I'm like, that just feels so odd to be like, "I'm writing a memoir." It's like, "Have I lived enough life?" It was like, "Did I live enough life yet to really be doing this?" I think what essentially became the breakthrough for me was that it wasn't about if I had lived enough life or if I had enough life experiences. It was more about the fact that this life has been lived time and time again by so many people, but nobody has been able to tell the story.

For me, that's when it was like, yes, this isn't about me and this isn't about if I've lived enough life. It's about the fact that this life continues to be lived over and over again by teens, by young adults. Nobody is telling them that they exist and telling them that it's okay and telling them that you had people who came before you who have had many of these same experiences. That's, in essence, what pushed me to being able to say, "I can write this and I need to write this."

The story, realistically, it's just about my experience growing up, knowing that I was different but not having the language to know what different meant. It's like a five-year-old who I'm like, "I'm not like everybody else, but I don't know what that means." You just watch that journey as I start to get language and start to go through experiences, which help shape who I am today but shaped my childhood into young adulthood. Then the other side of the story is just about family. I have a very loving Black family who I talk to every single day.

It shows that you don't have to be homophobic or transphobic like that. Everything like my grandmother used to say, it just starts from a place of love, and then we'll figure out everything else afterwards. We're all not the same type of people. We all have different innate things about us that make us who we are. My grandmother, she just was one of those people who was like, "Love on the differences." What's similar about us makes it easy, but what's hard is when you got to love on the differences. I grew up in a family that loved really, really hard on the things that made us different.

Alison Stewart: You tell some great stories in here. There's one that did make me laugh out loud about how you didn't know your name was actually George for a long time-

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Alison Stewart: -and that you were shocked to find out your name was George and you'd always been called Matthew. Then when you wrote your name, once you find out, you write it on a piece of paper. The teacher calls your home and be like, "Is he okay? Is this little person okay?" First of all, if you would share that moment when you discovered that your given name was George and why.

George M. Johnson: It was interesting. Again, I was in an argument with my older cousin, Little Raw, who I still talk to regularly. We're very, very close, but we were in one of those just back-and-forth arguments. Just out of nowhere, he was just like, "That's why your real name is George." I was like, "What? That's not a funny joke." That's not a clap back or whatever. I'm like, "My name isn't George, my name isn't George."

My grandmother could just overhear it. Just to look on her face, it was like, "Oh crap. Why did you say that? Matt doesn't know that." She had to sit me down and be like, "Yes, you do have a different first name. We called you by your middle name." I won't say it was traumatizing. It just was one of those things where, as a kid, you're like, "Okay, do other kids have different first names too? What does this all mean?"

Then my mom was just like, "Yes, your name is George, but we decided to call you by your middle name." Realistically, it was because my grandmother, she just could not fathom calling a little baby George. She just something was so old. Her and my mom chose my middle name and then everybody started calling me by my middle name. Even to this day, nobody in my family called me George. Everybody called me Matthew.

For a little kid, it's like-- I don't know. I guess everything is wonder and excitement. It just felt kind of cool to have a different name and to walk around as a different person. Even though nothing really changed. It just felt cool. Yes, I started signing all my papers with George. My teacher was like, "Okay, what is going on?" which I'm sure my teachers back then probably were like, "What is going on with this kid?" because I always was having something happen.

It was just like a really big moment for me, especially because my mom gave me the agency to choose which name I wanted to go by after I found out. I decided that I still wanted to go by Matthew. Realistically, I would still be going by Matthew. When I went to high school, they wouldn't allow you to use a different name. You had to use your first name. That's the only reason I even go by George today is because, in high school, they wouldn't allow me to go by Matthew.

Alison Stewart: I'm talking to George Matthew Johnson. The name of the book is All Boys Aren't Blue. It's part of our month-long series about talking to authors whose books have been challenged or banned. We can talk to them about their books and other things as well. In the introduction titled, Black Queer Here, you include a story about how you entered the world. You used the word "foreshadowing." Your aunt assumed after seeing this full head of curly, jet-black hair that you were a little girl. Why did you want to begin the memoir this way?

George M. Johnson: [laughs] I just thought it was ironic that that's how everything started. Everything started with a mistake around my gender, right? I've been dealing with this from the very beginning. I think it's also funny because I don't think I put this in the book. After the fact, I found out that my mom-- Well, I mean, clearly, it makes sense because they didn't know what I was, but I didn't put two and two together. My mother didn't really want to know what I was.

She was adamant about it even though everybody else in the family was like, "Well, how are you going to have a baby shower if we don't know if it's a boy or a girl?" She was like, "We'll get yellow and gray." My baby shower, I think yellow and gray were the colors because she just didn't want to know. Then to have that be my introduction into the world like this whole question around my gender and then to be here today, where I am at the forefront of fighting this fight against how it really shouldn't even matter.

It's just like I grew up to be an amazing person and that should be all that matters. I help people. Our identities, we should be able to just be who we are. I wanted to start it out that way because, one, I thought it was funny and ironic, but two, just to prove the point that it really doesn't matter. The fact of the matter is, had I been a girl, different decisions may have been made about what I could do and couldn't do, right?

Like me doing double Dutch at 10 wouldn't have been an issue if I was a girl, right? Me being a little sassy or effeminate, people would have loved that I was so sassy and effeminate if I were a girl. It's just the simple fact that it's like, "Oh, no, it's a boy." Now, all of those things that I naturally gravitated to are a problem. I think that was why I wanted to start the story there because it just means I was born into this from the very beginning.

Alison Stewart: Do you have a sense of what cues you started to get about what a boy should do and what a boy shouldn't do and how a boy should act? When did you first start to get those cues?

George M. Johnson: Yes, it was definitely around the age of 10. Literally, the story I tell, it was because of me double-Dutching. The other boys starting to say, "That's not what boys do," because I grew up with cousins who were very rough, tough, masculine. It wasn't that I didn't do those things. I played baseball. I played sports. I did things with them that boys would do, but I also was doing things that people felt traditionally only girls should be doing. I always say it was by the age of around 9 or 10 because it's like, before that, nobody cared.

We just were kids, but I think around that age of 9 or 10 is when you start to be informed by what your parents say, the things you hear them say when you're at home, and then you bring them back to the playground. I think that's when kids start to notice your differences. I don't think early on, kids really notice too much that we're different from each other. Then as the world starts to inform us, especially around that age where we're processing so much information, we then start to say things to one another based off of the things we're processing in our own individual homes.

I think it was around that age when I really realized like, "Oh, okay, I'm doing something that people think is girly or that I shouldn't be doing." Kids are now noticing it because before then, as long as I said anything, I was going to keep living my happy life until it started to become a problem. I had to choose safety realistically over just being happy doing what I wanted to do every day.

Alison Stewart: I've heard you in an interview say like you wrote this book because there wasn't a book like this. There weren't books like this when you were growing up that you didn't get to see yourself in books when you were growing up, yet you enjoyed reading. When you did enjoy reading, what did you read?

George M. Johnson: Yes, I read like the Goosebumps books, which is funny. Nobody talks about those today, but that was the biggest kids' series when I was growing up. It was like Goosebumps. That was like the thing. There was another series. I believe it was called The Appleheads, which I really enjoyed reading about. I was always someone though who-- I used to read the newspaper. My mom and dad were very avid readers of the newspaper.

Every day, paper comes to the house. They would sit, have their coffee, and read the actual paper. I actually enjoyed reading about the news and articles like that. I was also very big on history. When we got to read Souls of Black Folks and the Three Negro Classics, those type of things used to spark my interest, as well as Greek and Roman mythology. I love anything that had a very interesting narrative that I could play with and felt like world-building, so to speak.

I also used to like to read books about witchcraft. [laughs] I would go to the library and read books about the Salem witch trials. I just always thought the history of this country was so fascinating and how we've been through so many different iterations of people who were deemed different and how those people got treated differently in this country. That was a lot of what I was into, folklore, and all those type of things.

Alison Stewart: What resources did you have that addressed queerness?

George M. Johnson: Really none. Outside of the fact that I grew up with a transgender cousin and I had queerness in my family, there really wasn't anything. There really wasn't much anything on television either. There was a character here and there, a storyline here and there. Even when you saw a storyline like that person was oftentimes being demonized or being outed, it didn't make you feel any safer because it just made you feel like, "Oh, God, one day, somebody's going to out me."

That's what it really made you feel like. It just kind of puts you further back into that "closet." We didn't have it in books. We didn't really have it in television and film. It really wasn't a major existent thing. I was aging myself because I was like-- I believe there was a gay character on a show called Spin City with Michael J. Fox when they all worked at the mayor's office.

I always remember that because I was like, "That felt like something." I could be like, "Oh, yes, that makes sense to me." This character kind of is effeminate as a man. Then that adds up to me for some reason. Yes, it was like little blips of images, but I did at least have it in my family. What I couldn't get from books and from anywhere else, I could at least get at home.

Alison Stewart: My guest is George M. Johnson. Their book is called All Boys Aren't Blue. It was the second most challenged title of 2022. Listeners, if any of you've read George's book and you want to ask a question or you want to weigh in or if there's a banned book you'd like to shout out, we would like to support these authors. 212-433-9692 is the phone number. You can also text with that number, 212-433-WNYC. We'll have more with George after a quick break. This is All Of It.

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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is George M. Johnson. Their book is called All Boys Aren't Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto. You grew up in our listening area, Plainfield, New Jersey. First of all, tell me you're from Jersey without telling me you're from Jersey.

George M. Johnson: [laughs] Tell you I'm from Jersey without telling you I'm from Jersey. Oh, my God, the turnpike. If you know anything about that turnpike and the fact that we only got them 15 exits. Everybody used the highways. I'm like, "Oh, no, we have a turnpike that runs through our state." [laughs]

Alison Stewart: There you go. This book, it's beautifully written. It's your story. There are essays. We learn about your family. We learn about New Jersey. We learn about how you're figuring yourself out, your college years. It's just a really lovely story. There are upsetting parts, of course, obviously, because there are certain traumas people go through, but this is book, this memoir. When did you get the first sense that there was going to be some trouble brewing for you and for the book?

George M. Johnson: Yes, it was September of 2021. Someone made a tweet just like, "Hey, there's this guy in Kansas City running for school board and they're using your book as the platform for why he should be on the school board so he can get rid of books like yours." I went on Facebook. I saw it. I said something jokingly about him and his appearance. He deleted the post. I thought that was going to be the end of it. I really did. I was like, "Okay, this is our first little inkling."

Then about six weeks later, it was challenged in eight different school districts. I was like [chuckles], but they were doing it very low level and very local. I just happened to have Google Alerts set up so I could keep up with it. By the time the ninth county happened, I made a tweet like, "Hey, I don't know if y'all are paying attention to what's going on, but my book has been pretty much challenged or taken off school shelves in nine different states," because each county was in a different state.

The tweet went viral. Because I was a journalist, I had a lot of journalist friends who were following me, and they were like, "Wait, what's the story?" Now, that's when journalists started to get involved to be like, "Wait, we got something brewing that we don't know anything about." The tweet goes viral. I start talking about it a little bit. Then that following week, I had a criminal complaint filed against me in Florida in Flagler County. One against the book, one against myself.

I think that was November of 2021. That's really when things ramped up because we were starting to get criminal charges. Bills and legislation was starting to be introduced around books. Like I said, it's been an ongoing fight now for about two and a half years of just-- I don't even know. This is ridiculous, I guess. [laughs] I can say it's ridiculous to fight over books in the year 2023.

Alison Stewart: One of the reasons cited by the American Library Association for why the book has been challenged, people claim for sexual content for LGBTQIA+ content. What is your response to that argument?

George M. Johnson: It's ridiculous on its surface because the same people who are saying, "Oh, this book has sexual content in it," and I'm like, "Who'd you vote for? Oh, okay. You could vote for that but then also, at the same time, have an issue with it, right?" We already know it's a baseless claim. Guess what? Teens have sexual experiences. That's why the rates of sexually-transmitted infections are so high within that age group.

Denying them to know about what sexual health is, what agency is, what rape culture is, what the things that they're going to experience does not help them. It only helps predators who are after them. It only lessens the knowledge that they have before they go into adulthood. I also think the argument is baseless because it's like, "Well, how can you ban abortions but then want teens to not know why an abortion would be necessary?" Because they can't read about how one gets pregnant. Again, it's a very interesting argument they're trying to make against our books.

First of all, my book is a true story. I think that's what's like. This is not even made up. This is what happened. [chuckles] You're saying this is too heavy for a teen to read. I'm like, "These things happen to me when I was a teen." These things are happening to teens, right? How many more Catholic church scandals do we need before we start to realize that we need to make sure we are properly giving teen readers the information they need as they are going through their own journey through identity as well as their own journey through puberty simply, right?

Being banned for LGBTQ content, I don't even know what that means. I'm LQBTQ. We've always existed. How do you ban something for people just being who they are? I don't know. That's really what this is. Realistically, it's not about my book because these people haven't read the book. You can't challenge a book you really didn't read. People ask, "How do you know they didn't read it?"

I'm like, "Because nobody ever brings up all of the stuff I said about Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and Abraham Lincoln." Trust me, this particular group of people would be much more upset if they ever got to that chapter. I know they're not even reading the book. This is really about the fight to keep Gen Z non-educated as least educated as possible as they're becoming the largest voting block in this country.

Alison Stewart: I'm glad you brought in generational issues because we have someone who's calling in who wants to join the conversation. His name's Fidel. Their name is Fidel from Jersey City. Hi, Fidel.

Fidel: Hey, Alison. Hello, George. First of all, I just want to say that I'm fascinated by your whole explanation. I wanted to touch on something that you said earlier about the book being banned. I think it's really tragic because sometimes, or many times, children cannot get that kind of dialogue in the home. The only place that they might find some kind of solidarity would be in a setting like a school where they have peers that might identify with them, or even teachers that are more educated in many instances than their family members at home because ut happens.

It happened to me. The reason why I called was because it really made me laugh when you said that when you came into the world that you were thought to be a little girl. When I was born, my mom heard my cries, [laughs] and she thought I was a little girl. It was like you said, ironic, but almost a slap in the face as well because she didn't know how to deal with my homosexuality.

It was a really hard upbringing for me because I was completely in tune and aware of who I was at a very early age. In a survival mode, I played along with the boys. I'm one of the butcher's guys that you can see right now. It was, I guess, a gift and something that was thrust upon me. It wasn't something that just came out organically. It was something of a survival skill.

Alison Stewart: Fidel, thank you for calling in. Fidel had mentioned, I don't know if you mentioned it on air, I'm sorry, I'm going to say this, Fidel, that he's about 30 years your senior. That was his experience, which I thought was interesting and what the generations are going through. Part of what you've been talking about is trying to help the next generations learn to live life and learn to be authentic in the life that they're going to live.

George M. Johnson: That's really what it's all about. Again, as I stated earlier, I'm not the first to have that experience. Someone 30 years my senior just said that that was their experience, right? To know that someone 30 years my senior is having that experience, and I know that someone 15 to 20 years my junior is also still having that experience. That's why it's important to put these words into the world, but it's also important that the people who exist around us know our story, right?

It's not just about so that we can feel seen, but it's also about the people who actually do have privilege and will have power in this country knowing that other people exist too so that they don't get this worldview that's just shaped by their home environment. They don't walk into their world assuming that we're all alike and we all have these same experiences. Because then when they become the next people who are in positions of power, they think from a place of empathy, and they think about the fact that there are other people who are not like them, that they also have a duty to protect and ensure the safest and ability to thrive in their livelihoods too.

Alison Stewart: Someone texted to us, "I feel compelled to start a banned book club in my neighborhood of Stuytown, Gramercy Park. Please convey to George that as a banned book author, they are in very good company. The growing list of banned books is astonishing." You've had to do a lot of interviews about this book. You've had to relive parts of your life. You've had to talk about everything that's been going on with the books being banned. PEN America filed a joint lawsuit with Penguin Random House, parents and authors like yourself against school districts to try to fight back in some way. How have you been taking care of yourself during all of this?

George M. Johnson: I'm fortunate that I have a really, really good, strong foundational family support system, but also a great cast of friends like real friends who check in on me, who make sure I'm drinking water, who make sure I'm getting enough rest. The little things that I'll sometimes forget because I'm sometimes just going, going, going, going. They sometimes put up a roadblock like, "Okay, you're taking a day off."

Even my team at Macmillan, they've been wonderful and giving me more time on deadlines, allowing me to just step away from certain things. In doing this type of work, it can be exhausting and it can be draining because it's a daily thing. The other side doesn't let up. It's like the moment you let up is the moment they ramp up. It can be draining. It can be exhausting.

I think, for me, what I've done is just made sure that I've made time for myself even if it's just to sleep, even if it's just to binge-watch shows or anything so that I'm not overly consumed by this as my daily lived experience. It's a fight that's not going anywhere anytime soon. I don't know. We start to make some headways with the lawsuit thing, so maybe it is going to go away sometime soon. Ultimately, I have a great cast of people who make sure that I'm good at all times.

Alison Stewart: The name of the book is All Boys Aren't Blue. It was the second most challenged book of 2022. It is available at your independent bookseller of choice. My guest has been George M. Johnson. George, thank you so much for being with us.

George M. Johnson: Thank you for having me.

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