We're Here, We're Queer, Now What Do We Read?

In a time when stories are under siege, especially those that center queer characters and themes, we’re seeing a rise in book bans and legislative efforts aimed at erasing LGBTQ+ experiences from classrooms and libraries. Just last month, The U.S. Supreme Court handed a victory to Montgomery County parents who object, for religious reasons, to the school system’s use of LGBTQ+ themed books in classrooms, saying parents should be allowed to opt their children out of such classes. Today In the Den, Sara is joined by Lee Wind, advocate, educator, and author whose work helps fill the shelves with stories LGBTQ+ youth so deeply need. 

Special Guest: Lee Wind

Lee Wind’s superpower is stories – true and fictional – that center marginalized kids and teens and celebrate their power to change the world. Closeted until his 20s, Lee writes the books that would have changed his life as a young gay kid. His Masters Degree from Harvard didn’t include blueprints for a time machine to go back and tell these stories to himself, so Lee pays it forward with a popular blog with over 3 million page views (I’m Here. I’m Queer. What The Hell Do I Read?) and books for kids and teens.

His latest book is Red and Green and Blue and White, a picture book illustrated by Caldecott-winning illustrator Paul O. Zelinsky (Levine Querido.) It has received five starred trade reviews and the New York Times called it “beautiful.” Lee’s middle grade nonfiction No Way, They Were Gay? Hidden Lives and Secret Loves (Lerner Publishing Group/Zest Books), was honored as a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selection and was selected for the Chicago Public Library’s 2021 Best of the Best Books list. He is also the author of the crowd-funded YA novel Queer as a Five-Dollar Bill, featured as a Publishers Weekly Indie Success Story, and one of Publishers Weekly’s Top Five Independently Published Middle Grade and Young Adult Books of 2018. 

With day jobs for the Independent Book Publishers Association (as their director of education and programs) and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (as their official blogger), Lee’s superhero job is storytelling to empower readers to shine with their own light. 

Links from the Show: 

• Lee’s website: https://www.leewind.org/ 
• Lee’s books: https://bookshop.org/beta-search?keywords=lee+wind  
• Subscribe to Lee’s newsletter here: https://mailchi.mp/fc7b55fc0636/leewindsignup 
• Join Mama Dragons today: www.mamadragons.org 

In the Den is made possible by generous donors like you. Help us continue to deliver quality content by becoming a donor today at www.mamadragons.org

Transcript

SARA: Hi everyone. Welcome to In the Den with Mama Dragons. A podcast and community to support, educate, and empower parents on the journey of raising happy and healthy LGBTQ+ humans. I’m your host, Sara LaWall. I’m a Mama Dragon myself and an advocate for our queer community. And I’m so glad to be part of this wild and wonderful parenting journey with all of you. Thanks for joining us. We’re so glad you’re here. 

We find ourselves in a time when stories are under siege, especially those that center queer characters and themes. So today’s conversation feels especially urgent. Across the country, we’re seeing a rise in book bans and legislative efforts aimed at erasing LGBTQ+ content and experiences from classrooms and libraries. Just last month, we saw the U.S. Supreme Court decision come down handing a victory to Montgomery County parents who objected, for religious reasons, to the school system’s use of LGBTQ+-themed books in classrooms, saying that parents should be allowed to opt out of such classes for their children. 

So today, we are honored to speak with Lee Wind. Lee is a passionate advocate, educator, and author whose work helps fill the shelves with stories of LGBTQ+ youth and the kind of stories our queer youth so deeply need. Lee writes both fiction and nonfiction for young readers, offering empowering windows and mirrors into queer history, identity, and joy. From his groundbreaking blog “I’m Here. I’m Queer. What the Hell Do I Read?” to his award-winning books like Queer as a Five-Dollar Bill and No Way, They Were Gay?, Lee is helping a generation of kids feel seen, valued, and inspired. Lee, Welcome to In the Den. It’s so great to have you with us. 

LEE: Thank you so much, Sara. Wow. That was a beautiful introduction. I’m like, filling the shelves, I love that. Filling the shelves, yes. 

SARA: Yes, all of your work. Let’s just first start with your blog because that is a delightful, hilarious title. What started the blog, “I’m Here, I’m Queer, What the Hell do I Read?” 

LEE: Yeah. And unbelievably enough it was started in 2007. 

SARA: Wow. 

LEE: Yeah. I was an early blogger. And I basically was trying to populate my inner teen and inner child with the books I didn’t have. And I was involved in children’s literature. My husband and I – we’ve been together 28 years, our daughter is now 22 – but at the time, she was a little one. And I was looking for like, what are the books that are inclusive? What are the books that show two moms or two dads. And there were few. And what were the teen novels with queer characters and themes? And I figured that there were about 30. And I was talking to my friend and I was saying, “I don’t know what to do with this blog. I don’t know what the content will be because I’m going to run out of books so quickly.” And happily, I didn’t. Because I also started talking about all these other things that were coming up for me. And back in the late 80s and early 90s there was an Act Up chant which was, “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.” 

SARA: Right. 

LEE: Which is sort of a protest chant, and I sort of adapted that because I was a big reader when I was a kid and there was never anything I read that had someone like me, a guy that liked other guys, in it. There were a couple of pedophile villains, which weren’t helping. But it was really, really hard. And I just was like, I needed to somehow populate that inner landscape. So I’ll say as a writer as well, a lot of what I write is fueled by the books that would’ve changed my life as a young, gay, Jewish kid growing up in the late 70s and 80s and into the 90s. So the blog became, “I’m Here, I’m Queer, What the Hell Do I Read”, was sort of like trying to answer that. And then also trying to talk about other things that are going on in our culture that I really wanted people to pay attention to. I wanted teens to pay attention to. And it just sort of started to grow and get a lot of traction because it was an early entry into the field of blogging for children’s literature. And then, through that, I got the opportunity to blog for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, which I actually just wrapped up. I just finished 14 and a half years of blogging for them. 

SARA: Wow. That’s amazing. 

LEE: Yeah. 

SARA: I’m curious, when you were growing up, noting the lack of content and themes and queer characters, but was there a book or author that you encountered at a young person that really just brought you to life or really sparked something in you? 

LEE: I was a very expert reader between the lines. So I was obsessed with Anne McCaffery’s books. And, in fact, she has the Dragon Riders of Pern series. And, in fact, my family would joke, they’d be like, “Where’s Lee? Oh, his on Pern.” Pern was the name of the planet where these dragon riders lived. I was mesmerized by it. It was this whole culture that had been created. And while there were no queer characters, there was a queer subtext. You had to really read into it, though. But it turned out that there were female dragons and male dragons and yet, besides the queen dragons, there were only male dragon riders. So when the mating thing happened between the non-queen dragons – the greens or the blues or whatever colors they were – and there was an element of it that you got to understand that there was some physical intimacy happening between the humans that were bonded to these dragons, while the dragons were doing their physical intimacy thing making new dragons. Anyway, it was like I was really reading between the lines. 

SARA: But I’m sure you were not the only queer young person reading between the lines in those days. 

LEE: I was desperate. Desperate for any recognition, anything, anything. So I really feel like there’s a healing that happens when I read a book today. Still, when I read anything that sorts of queer inclusive and positive or trails of queer characters an themes – whether it’s something I’ve written, especially when I wrote it there’s a healing – but when I read someone else’s book, I’m just like, ‘Wow. I wish I could send this back in a time machine to myself.”

SARA: So what was the first book that you wrote? 

LEE: The first book that I wrote was back when I was 15 years old. And I wanted to write a sci-fi thing. And I sometimes think about those characters still being stranded up in orbit because I never finished it. But it was the beginning of me thinking like, “Maybe I can do this. Maybe I can be a writer.” And then I have a very long and – to me it was interesting and stressful – career journey. And I did screen plays for a while, but that was drawing up blueprints for houses that were never built. Writing a screen play for a movie that doesn’t get made is a really hard thing. And I did a lot of it. And then, when our daughter was born, I got back into children’s literature. And I was thinking, books, there’s more autonomy. It’s not that you don’t do it all yourself. But it felt like I could have a thing when I was done that actually was similar to the thing that people would ultimately get. So I got into writing in that sense. And I started writing picture books, thinking, “Well, they’re short. They can’t be that hard.” They’re the hardest. Don’t be fooled. Picture books are the absolute hardest. But the first book that I published was actually crowd-funded. It was call, Queer as a Five Dollar Bill. When I started writing, I was not writing queer stuff. And all those screen plays, they were from the closet. It was like the most diversity I had was an interracial straight relationship. And I was afraid to be authentic and honest. And I had a lot of this internalized homophobia in my head telling me – like the voice of my parents – “Why would you make life harder for yourself. If you want to be a writer, why would you write about stuff that’s going to make it so much harder for people to connect with.” So I really denied the authenticity of who I was in my creative writing. And it really had an impact. It made my writing much less good, much less authentic, much less interesting. So when I started to finally be honest, that’s when I started to get a little bit of traction. And because I was closeted – I’m gay, for those who don’t see me or can’t figure that out and didn’t catch that I was married to my husband – I was closeted from age 11 to age 25. And that fourteen years really shaped so much of who I’ve become. Because what I want is, I don’t want anybody else to have to be that inauthentic. 

SARA: So when you say you were closeted, you knew at age 11. 

LEE: Oh yeah. Absolutely. 

SARA: What was it that made you finally decide to come out and be you?

LEE: It became impossible to not. And I also felt like, not only could I no longer hold it back, I was so unhappy. And I was making other people unhappy. And it took me a long time. I did therapy. I needed to find some mentors that were queer in our community. And I also needed to learn how to love myself and get past all that internalized homophobia. So when I did come out, it was sort of like I had to be a teenager all over again. I didn’t have those experiences authentically. I was a big actor. I was pretending all the time. So when I finally came out and was honest with myself, my life started to blossom. And I went to a weekend camp experience for gay men. And it was like standing in a circle in the woods and sharing and talking and listening, doing crafts. And I went to a talk. And one guy talked about the letters that Abraham Lincoln wrote Joshua Fry Speed that convinced him Abraham was in love with Joshua. And I was like, “What? How is that possible?” I totally didn’t believe it. So I went to the library after this weekend and I got out a book of letters that, it basically was a book called Joshua Fry Speed, Abraham Lincoln’s Most Intimate Friend. And then the first half of it was history analysis and I was bored. I didn’t care. I just skipped it, and I went right to the – because history never had anything to do with me so I wasn’t particularly interested – but I went right  to the second half of the book were reproductions of the letters. And I read the letters. And I was completely gob smacked. I became convinced. Because all that time that I was in the closet, I dated girls – I mean not when I was 11 – but when I was a teenager and into my 20’s, I dated girls. And I judged that it was the right thing to do, but I didn’t feel it. And I kept wondering, would the feeling come. And then, I’m randomly flipping through these letters. And there, in this letter from the 1800s, Abraham Lincoln is asking Joshua – who just married a woman – are you now in feeling as well as judgement that you’re married as you are? And I just got goosebumps. And I was like, “Oh my gosh. That’s me. That’s exactly how I felt.” And that was the beginning of opening up this absolutely obsession with queer history, with finding the stories of men who loved men, and women who loved women, and people who loved without regard to gender, and people who lived outside the gender binary. And so I wrote a novel called Queer As a Five Dollar Bill about a teen that discovers these letters about Abraham Lincoln. The teen is closeted in a very small, homophobic town and decides he’s going to out Abraham Lincoln to change the world. And he does out Abraham Lincoln and it does go viral. But it ends up sparking a conservative backlash and a media firestorm. And so the whole story is about what does he do. And the families going to lose the family business because they run a Lincoln Slept Here bed and breakfast in a town in Oregon. And so they bring in a civil rights attorney to help them as the town is suing them. And it gets really inflamed and she has an openly gay son – who’s Black actually so I got to talk about how Abraham Lincoln is not this perfect person in history. He was actually pretty racist. And there was this whole plan to send Black people back to Africa – it’s really interesting because we present history as this complete black or white thing, completely good people, completely bad people, and it’s so much more interesting than that. And there are queer people in history. 

SARA: And we certainly aren’t telling those stories. I never learned that about Abraham Lincoln. Even the letters, that is a fascinating story. And your book, it sounds like it’s a true-life story today, given all that’s happening in our world today and this fight around queer issues and queer themes with regard to literature and school curriculum and libraries. I’m curious how you think about that, especially just given what you told us about that first book. How is all of this unfolding for you as an author that has dedicated his writing to queer characters and queer themes? 

LEE: I did a ton of research when I was writing that novel. And I just kept finding more and more evidence that Abraham Lincoln really was in love with Joshua Fry Speed. And at some point, I got to the place were I was like, “I can’t shove all of this in this book.” Maybe there’s another book. Maybe there’s a nonfiction book where I can put all the evidence. And I was like, ‘I didn’t really think history was that interesting.” I thought, for me, writing a history book about Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Fry Speed sounded kind of awful, like not a book that I would’ve picked up as a teen. And I was like, “Alright. Well, what’s my solution.” And I started to collect all these other stories too, like Eleanor Roosevelt and her decades-long love affair with Lorena Hickok, which was absolutely romantic love. And we have so much proof in the letters between them. And people dismiss it and they’re like, “No. No. No. It was a friendship. And you’re misinterpreting it.” And like, no, if you read the letters, even the ones that survived being burned – because a lot of letters were burned – they talk about, “My lips miss the northeast corner of your mouth.” That is not just a friendship. There was a romantic love, passionate love between them. And it’s beautiful to read about. And so I thought, well, maybe that’s what the nonfiction book will be. And it’s called, No Way, They were Gay. It had quite the journey to being published. It was acquired by an imprint of one of the big corporate publishing houses. And then, when our current president was elected the first time, the publisher freaked out and cancelled the contract. And then it took me years to regroup, find a new agent, find a publishing house. And it ended up being with Learner. And it got published by Learner in 2021. And that book, No Way, They Were Gay, because it has Abraham Lincoln on the cover and Eleanor Roosevelt and Gandhi who – the love of Gandhi’s life, it turns out it was this German architect, Hermann Kallenbach. This is We’wha who was a member of the Shewee nation, what we call Zuni. And the stories were just so fascinating and so interesting. So that was the nonfiction book that I wrote. And it’s won a lot of awards, but it’s also landed on a lot of not-so-nice lists of we want to challenge this, we want to ban this. And that was really hard at first. Both, because I think that people don’t understand about book banning that it’s not about the books. So when we talk about book challenges and we talk about book banning, there’s a lot of focus on, “These are the top ten most challenged books in the US.” And that gets media attention. And that gets people to pay attention. And maybe it helps sell those ten books. But the vast majority of the books that are being challenged are more like mid-list bans. And it tricks us all into thinking it’s about the books. It's never been about the books. It’s about creating this chilling effect that makes teachers and librarians afraid to bring in books, even though they know they have kids that will benefit from it, whether it’s about Black history, whether it’s about queer history, whether it’s inclusive stories of a family with two moms or two dads. It’s about creating this dampening, this chilling effect. And at my day job, I work for a non-profit that helps independent publishers. And we’re hearing from some publishers that they’re sales to schools and libraries are down 50%. 

SARA: Woah. 

LEE: I mean, imagine. That’s a huge economic impact, right? So that’s the point of the book challenges, to depress the representation that we were just beginning to get a little traction in. But circling back to my blog and what I said I started and there were only 35 books a years. There’s hundreds of books coming out now. Traditionally published books coming out now every year. And there are independently published books from authors that are publishing their own work from small presses. There’s so many books coming out, I can’t keep up anymore. There was a point at which, I’m not going to be comprehensive. For years I was like, “I’m going to be comprehensive. You’re going to find every book.” And then I was like, “No. I can’t do it anymore. I’m just going to choose ones I really love.” 

SARA: That’s a good sign, I will say. It’s a noble endeavor, but a good sign that there’s too much for you to be able to track all of it.

LEE: And that’s wonderful, right? 

SARA: Yeah.

LEE: That gives me a lot of hope and it makes me feel like, yeah, that’s cool. The other thing to consider is that I grew up, I really thought was the only queer person in the world. I thought I was the only guy that like-liked other guys in the history of our planet. And the irony is that my brother is gay, my older brother. And I had no idea and didn’t find out until I graduated high school, actually, because he was five years older. And it is very unlikely that an 11-year-old today could think what I thought. There’s just too much out there. So I think the reason they’re attacking books is because books are empathy machines. And they make us recognize that even though that person looks so different on the outside, that we share so much in terms of our common humanity, the things that we fear, the things that we hope for. And you care about people that are different than yourself. And that’s the magic of books in such a huge way. And I think that that’s why they’re attacking books. Because, if we all band together, if we all see that we are more similar than we are different, then that is going to destroy the status-quo power structure of them controlling things by making us fight each other. 

SARA: Yeah. Absolutely. Just out of curiosity, have any of your books been banned from schools or districts or libraries that you’re aware of. 

LEE: Yeah. No Why, They’re Gay is the one that gets the most. But occasionally, there’s an article that’s really kind of nice. And I actually just saw one last week. And the article was, “Our Library System is Standing Tall for Diversity.” Or something like that. And they had a photo of my book on the shelf. And it was No Way, They’re Gay. And that was one of the two photos in the article. And I was like, “Okay. That’s pretty cool to get mentioned.” Because previously, a couple weeks before that, The Gender Binary is a Big Lie – which is also from Learner, which is the next book in that series – that was mentioned in some Connecticut briefing about how they were trying to push a proposal through that would force the library to include the opposite point of view on things they didn’t like, basically. So if you didn’t particularly like the fact that the world is round, you could argue that there has to be a book that says the world is flat. That was sort of the stupid logic of it. 

SARA: So if the library is going to carry your book, There’s No Such Thing as a Gender Binary, then it would have to have a book that reflected the opposite. 

LEE: Right. The joke is practically every other book in the library is talking about the gender binary. So it made me kind of role my eyes. But it’s interesting, a lot of times when I’ll mention that my book was on a list that they were trying to challenge or ban, the response most people give is, “Oh. Congratulations” because it’s almost like you must be doing something right if you’re getting in front of the haters. But I really want people to think beyond that and recognize that there is a method to this madness on the other side. There was a study done by the Washington Post in the 2022-2023 school year they found that 60% of the challenges to books were from 11 people. 

SARA: Woah. Okay. Say that again. I’ve got to absorb that. 

LEE: 60% of the book challenges in the 2022-2023 school year, were 11 people. So there’s a lot of ways we have to push against this. We definitely have to change the rule that a single person shouldn’t be able to challenge thousands of books. And in fact, I just heard this past month that somebody in Florida, they did change that law. And now this person is getting power of attorney from other people so that they can continue to try to challenge books beyond the 200 limit that they instituted. So the opposition to The Freedom to Read, they’re very passionate and they must think that they’re doing the right thing. But it’s this idea that if you want to have control over what your children read as a parent, you have that guidance, you have that ability to be like, “Hey, sweetie. I don’t think this is the right book for you at this time.” Or whatever.  But, for you to think that you should control what other children read, that’s really messed up, I think. And that’s where we fall into the whole thing of, America’s the land of the free except when it isn’t, right? Except when the people in power really want to control what other people have exposure to. There’ve been a bunch of really, really  problematic court rulings recently including one where they were saying that removing books from a library is okay because libraries are funded by the government. And then it’s government speech. And government speech doesn’t have to follow The First Amendment. They are tripping over themselves to come up with excuses and rationales for why it would be okay for them to take out books. And I think that the SCOTUS case that you mentioned which just came down a week or two ago is so awful because this idea that you can opt children out of being exposed to books about people that are different than you, that’s so problematic and so scary. I think a lot about The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keets which was one of the very first books with the star, a Black child. And it wasn’t about the kid being Black. It was just about this wonderful exploration of this snowy day. And the kid takes a snowball and wants to save it and puts it in his pocket. And later, the snowballs gone. And he can’t figure out what happened to the snowball. It’s the sweetest story. And to think that a parent who doesn’t want their children to acknowledge the humanity of a Black child, could ostensively, under this ruling, opt their kid out. “No, you’re going to read A Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keets, I don’t want my child exposed to that. I don’t want my child to have empathy for Black people. So I want you to pull my kid out of the classroom before that book is shared.” And if you think about the perspective of, okay that child being pulled out of the classroom, what’s going on in that child’s head? What’s going on in the heads of all the kids that are left in that classroom? And the horrible irony of this is that the lead plaintiff in this case was a Muslim family. And they were quite ill informed if they think that this is not going to be used against books with Muslim content. A book about a Muslim family celebrating a Muslim holiday, people will be opting their children out of that. And that is not going to be helpful to anybody. It’s going to further stigmatize minority kids. And it is a horrible, horrible precedent because it’s just going to continue to fracture public education from being a place where we learn about how to live in community. 

SARA: And, as you mentioned, it’s a slippery slope for opening the gates to what else can be restricted and what else can be opted out of and what will be the ripple effect of removing content and kids and all of that. That is what I worry about. 

LEE: Yeah. There’s a lot of frustrating and difficult news. So one of the things that is nice that happened because I was an author that had my book challenged multiple times, is that I was invited to a author support group on Zoom led by this wonderful person, Dr. Tasslyn Magnussen. And Tasslyn hold the data on book banning in the US. And she and I became friends over the course of a few months. And we had this ongoing conversation about how it felt that we were always playing defense. And was telling this story about a person in Wisconsin challenged 400 books in an elementary school library. And all 400 books were pulled for 4 months while they were reviewed. And then, at the end of the four months, they were almost all put back on the shelves. But if you think about it, those books were banned for those kids in that school for an entire semester. I kept talking with her about, how do we go on the offense? What does offense look like. So Tasslyn and I came up with this really cool idea. It’s called, “We are Stronger than Censorship.” And the program buys and donates two books to offset every one book challenge. And the idea is that if that person knew that if they challenged 400 books, 800 books were going to be purchased and donated to push back against that, maybe it would slow their role. Maybe they’d be like, “Oops. Maybe I should only challenge one book.” And so the idea is, how do we pull the emergency brake on a runaway train and how do we slow this down? So happily, it started to build some traction. We launched it in September of 2024. There was a lot of other things going on in September of 2024. So we didn’t spend a lot of effort and attention to focus on the program because we felt like there was an election that other people really needed to pay attention to. It didn’t go the way that we had hoped in terms of The Freedom to Read. So we picked it up again in March of this year. And we just announced in, I think it was April, that we raised the first $16,000, which allowed us to buy 2,000 books to offset 1,000-book challenges. 

SARA: Amazing. 

LEE: Thank you. We have the Book Manufacturers Institute which is a big organization in the world of publishing that printers, and the people that build the printing machine. They issued a challenge to their members to basically raise enough funds if it works, it’ll be another 4,000 books to offset 2,000-book challenges. We have a lot of industry partners, over 50 partners. So that’s been really exciting. There are even these cool t-shirts. Our logo is really neat. It’s the words, “We are stronger than censorship.” And then the “O” of censorship is a “Do not enter” sign that is opening up to reveal it is a book being read, which I quite love. And then that ‘O’, “Do Not Enter” opening up to a book being read is on our t-shirst that promote the program. That say, “Strong like a reader.” Or “Strong like an author.” And the ‘O’ in strong is that logo. And each t-shirt or sweatshirt includes a donation of $16 to buy two books to offset one-book challenge. So I’m really excited about that program because it feels like there’s something we can do that is pushing back. And it is focused on independent publishers. We have 20 different independent publishers, each with one book in the program. And those are the books we’re buying to offset the book challenges. So, that’s one thing that’s feeling good. 

SARA: That’s amazing. I’m so glad to know about that. We’ll make sure to put a link to the website in our show notes for people so they can go and see the logo and buy t-shirts and read more about that work. That’s really exciting. And that feels really proactive, right. What a beautiful, proactive way to get involved and fight these kinds of book bans. I want to go back to the gender binary book. 

LEE: The Gender Binary Is a Big Lie. 

SARA: Yes. I’m curious. It is a huge topic in the country right now, in the media right now. We’re seeing lots of backlash. This is a topic that Mama Dragons has been very active around supporting our trans kids and gender expansive community. So I want to just hear a little bit  from you, what prompted that book.

LEE: Yeah. Absolutely. When I was doing the research on No Way, They were Gay, I included stories of We’wha, from the Shewee people, who was celebrated in the 1800s in Washington DC as an Indian Princess and then when they found out that she didn’t have a female body, it was completely recast as a trick that had been played on Washington society. There were two pieces of research that really caught my attention when I was doing No Way, They were Gay. One was learning about We’wha. I also learned that there were over 150 native nations in the continental US – or what became the continental US or turtle island, which is north America for Native Americans – that had genders besides just men and women. They called it “Third gender” or “Fourth Genders”. And I thought that that was really interesting that there were so many and we know so little about it. We’re not taught it. And that, along with the statistic that 1.7% of people are born intersex, which is the same number of people that are born with red hair. And I was like, “Wait a minute. I know people with red hair. But I don’t think I know anybody – at the time – I didn’t know anybody that was openly intersex.” And those two pieces of information felt like there was more there. And I really struggled about it because I didn’t feel like I was the perfect person to write the book being a cis guy, but I also feel like it was the book that really demanded to be written. So what I think of it is that it is a party I’m hosting. It has over 300 primary source quotes in the book. And the idea is to give them a space, give gender diverse people a space to tell us their stories. And it is set up very much that No Way, They were Gay, is. There’s major chapters and then there’s short interstitials in between the chapters with more information. It tries to show how gender diversity – it’s not saying the men and women don’t exist, those categories don’t exist. It’s just saying that that’s not all there is. And wanting to show that it’s not just now. It’s throughout history and also all around the world. So the biggest shock was that I am Jewish. And my parents were immigrants and so I’m a first-generation American. And I was most surprised by all this information about gender diversity in classical Judaism that I had never heard about. But it turns out, so there’s the Bible, the Old Testament. And there are these books of commentary that for thousands of years have been Rabbis and otherwise learned people have done these running commentaries. And they’re called, the Midrash, the Talmud, the Gemara. And in these books, over a period of 1,600 years, there are more than 1,600 references to genders besides men and women. And that blew my mind, totally. 

SARA: We don’t talk about that when we start waiving religious proof texting in front of people. That is fascinating. 

LEE: And everybody’s like, “This is a new thing. People weren’t trans before. People weren’t gender-nonconforming before.” And that’s completely not true. There is so much evidence of gender diversity throughout time. And it’s weird because we don’t always let that history be heard. So, sometimes our primary sources are hostile. And we have to read past the negative bias of those recorders of history. And yet, it’s still there. In the intro chapters, there’s this really powerful quote from 1770s of the Spanish missionaries who were coming to what is now California and their efforts to basically eradicate gender roles that were outside the binary. And yet, in doing so, they documented that in every town there were two or three of these third-gender people. They were called Koia in the native language, that were people that did not have female bodies that had a female role in the culture. And that other men were married to these Koia. And yet, to the missionaries, they perceived it as gay relationships. And so, for them, it was something that should be eradicated. And they talked very openly about wanting to destroy both these people and this gender role in these cultures that they came upon in the name of their God. 

SARA: So important to know and tell these stories today. Just so very important to stretch our understanding, but to reach back into history and share stories when the narrative is just being so co-opted to this very particular theme around gender. And it does feel like we’re losing a little bit of that breadth and depth of understanding. 

LEE: Yeah. And I really feel like, I just wish everybody that wants to talk about trans people in sports, if you’re not trans, include trans people in that conversation. It’s just so upsetting. And honestly, read Sklyer Baylars, He, She, They. There’s an incredible chapter on sports. And Skyler played professional – well not professional sports – but at Harvard they raced on the Division 1 men’s swim team as a trans guy. And it’s so eye-opening. And if you want to have that conversation, get informed. And read books, whether it’s mine or somebody else’s. But don’t put the burden on trans and gender-nonconforming people to always have to educate you. That’s exhausting for them. 

SARA: Yeah. Thankfully there are folks like you out there who are helping to get those stories out and helping share them. But you also have a new book that’s out recently Like That Eleanor. Tell us about your new book. 

LEE: So this is also inspired by history. I’m very inspired by history which is such an irony when looking back. 

SARA: For someone who really didn’t like history growing up. 

LEE: I didn’t. Well, history was always presented like medicine. And now I think the history books that I write are more like chocolate, empowering chocolate. 

SARA: Nice. 

LEE: So Like That Eleanor, it’s a picture book. It is beautifully illustrated by Kelly Mangan. And it is basically inspired by these real stories I learned about Eleanor Roosevelt when I was doing the research for No Way, They were Gay. Eleanor Roosevelt, in addition to being in love with Lorena Hickok was an amazing ally. She did these very cool things. So just one example. When her husband, FDR, became president he gave weekly press conferences. But they only allowed men reporters to attend the president’s press conferences. Well, Eleanor Roosevelt didn’t think this was fair. But she didn’t fight it. But what she did was, to push back against this unfair thing, she didn’t lobby her husband to have women reporters included in the president’s press conferences. She didn’t want to upset the apple cart in that way. What she did instead was so clever and so nonconfrontation and brilliant. She decided that she would have her own weekly briefings for media, but she would only allow women reporters in the room. This forced all these news outlets to hire women reporters because, otherwise, they would be left out of this flow of information from the White House. Before Eleanor Roosevelt, almost all the First Ladies were like Hostesses. That was what they viewed the job as. They would redecorate the White House. They would have parties. You could make the case that the first, First Lady that had a platform, that used the position that leveraged that attention, that spotlight, to make a better place. And there’s a lot of evidence that shows that Lorena Hickok was very instrumental in Eleanor rethinking what the role of First Lady could be, which is very exciting. I had all these cool stories about Eleanor Roosevelt being an ally. And, as I said, my husband and I, we have a daughter. And as she was going through school, there were so many unfair things that she noticed. And she’d come home and we’d talk about it. And oftentimes, there’s that dilemma like, what do you do in that situation? And, as a kid, me too. And even as an adult, there are all these moments that you witness that are unfair and you try to figure out what can you do. And what I’ve really figured out on my journey as a gay man is that my gig, my job, is to be an ally to everybody else in the wonderful alphabet soup of our queer community. So to lesbians, to bi people, to trans people, to intersex people to asexual people, to everybody in our queer communities, LGBTQIA+ acronym, and also to women and people of color and disabled people, to everybody that’s not getting this opportunity in our society to have the opportunity to succeed. And with that lens I kind of was thinking about these two things, kids see things that are unfair all the time and are basically told that they have to wait to grow up to make things better, that they’re kids. They’re not empowered to make things better. But I don’t think that’s true. I think kids do have a lot of power, even in little things. And then, these stories about Eleanor Rooselvelt being this amazing ally and these two things sort of fused and came together with a lot of work into this picture book called, Like That Eleanor, where it’s a little girl. She had two dads. So it’s my third picture book, but it’s my first one with a family that looks like mine. But she’s named after Eleanor Roosevelt, and she witnesses these unfair things happening at her school and she talks to her dads about it. And they tell her real stories about how Eleanor Roosevelt was an ally to other people. And those stories inspire the child in the book, child Eleanor, to stand up for a nonbinary friend and to make her little corner of the world a little more fair. 

SARA: I love it. 

LEE: Thank you. I’m really excited. It just got a star from Kirkus Reviews. So that was really exciting. And we got the great-granddaughter of Eleanor Roosevelt to blurb it. 

SARA: Oh, that’s even better. That’s fabulous. 

LEE: Yeah. I’m very excited. And actually, later this month, right around the time that I think this podcast is going to come out, I will be doing an event at the Eleanor Roosevelt Center where that great-granddaughter of Eleanor Roosevelt will be doing Q and A with me. 

SARA: Oh, that’s fantastic. 

LEE: I’m pretty excited about it. 

SARA: Wonderful. Well, I’ll remind our listeners we have a Mama Dragons bookshop where you can go and search for the books of our guests. So we’ll make sure that we link as many of Lee’s books as we can on that bookshop there so folks can check them out. And, of course, your website. I can’t wait to read some of your books, Lee. You’re making me curious about history now, too. I think this is wonderful. As we round out our time together, I’m curious if you had a message to give to queer kids who might in this moment be internalizing what they’re hearing about their lives and stories being too controversial, being inappropriate, what message would you say to kids.

 LEE: I think the biggest gift you can give yourself is to be authentic. And if you’re not in a place to do that now externally, at least give yourself the gift of doing it internally. And then, when you get to a place where you’re safe, try to do it externally as well because I really feel like that’s the moment my life shifted. And I remember how scary it was to be in the closet for all those years and how it felt impossible to think of a future where I could be me. But I know it’s a cliché, but it does get better. And right now, it definitely feels like our society is slipping back to where the middle school bullies are winning. But I am an optimist, and I do believe that we will push back against that tide. It feels like this the last gasp of patriarchy – extinction burst, I’ve heard it called – they know they’re going out, and so they’re trying to grab all the power and all the control. And the things they do are very nasty and vindictive for the point of being nasty and hateful. But I don’t believe hate is stronger than love. I do believe that love will win. And I think that if we can support each other and be allies to each other and not to have to be allies in confrontational ways, but, like Eleanor Roosevelt be allies in really creative ways and stand up for each other, then I think that is when we will tip the scales back to justice. And if you’re looking for something to do, try to help somebody else. It can get you out of your own head. It can feel really, really good. And you’ll also make the world a better place. And when you stand up for somebody else, there’s a much better chance they’ll stand up for you. 

SARA: That’s a beautiful message. And you said it in your book in, Like That Eleanor, she’s tending to her little corner. And I think that’s a helpful reminder for all of us that when things feel so overwhelming, the big picture, to just try to get tight, get close and figure out what little corner in our world can we make a little better.

LEE: 100%. That is how change happens. Yes, a lot of nasty stuff can come from on high. But, as they say, it’s the grass roots that is really where – I’m going to mix up so many metaphors – where the rubber hits the road, right? 

SARA: Is there anything that you have read recently that you’ve loved that you would like to maybe recommend to our listening audience? 

LEE: Yeah. I read a really, really sweet book called The Rainbow Sheep by David Hayward, published by Beaming Books. I cried, kind of happy cry. It was so unbelievably sweet. So I really recommend that. And I feel like there’s so much right now. I was just moderating a panel with four different queer Kid Lit creators on it. And I have a monthly call with other queer Kid Lit authors and illustrators that we have. They don’t all attend every month. But we have over 100 people on that list. And so I feel like community is this incredible moment right now where it’s thinking back to what you’re just saying about like, if we can’t fix everything, how do we make a little corner of our world better? And I feel like community is giving me a lot of hope. And the books that make me feel connected, those are the ones that I’m thinking a lot about right now. Like He/She/They/Me like what I was just mentioning by Schuyler Bailar, my to-be-read list is absurdly long. But I was also really like, The Darkness Outside us by Eliot Schrefer, that was the sci-fi thriller that was very gay and very good. And there’s a sequel that I haven’t read yet. So I’m really excited about that. 

SARA: These are great recommendations. And as you’re talking and as I’m listening to you, delighted that there are so many queer authors and creators and illustrators our there continuing to produce beautiful work in the face of book bans and challenges in this moment. One of the things we all can do is go buy a book and read it, or give it away, or support that great work to keep it out there and keep it in our world. Before we close together, we have some final questions that we like to ask all of our guests at the end of every episode. And the first question has to do with the Mama Dragons name, Mama Dragons  came about out of a sense of fierceness and fierce protection for our queer kids. And so we like to ask our guest, besides what we’ve talked about, what is it in your life that you are fierce about?

LEE: I like to think I’m fierce about being an ally. I have this expression, there is no such thing as a silent ally. So if, in my head, I am an ally to women, but I don’t actually back that up by doing anything to prove that I’m a feminist, that I don’t actually help in some way, then I’m just a bystander. I’m not an ally. And so I think about that a lot in terms of challenging myself like, “How am I actually an ally? How am I actually standing up for the rights of women and people like my own kid?” And so I feel pretty fierce about being an ally. And even in this current environment, I’m very cognizant of the privilege I have of walking through the world as the 6’4 white guy and trying to use that. So, like when I travel, I will always wear a t-shirt that has some sort of inclusive slogan on it, whether it’s about Freedom to Read or I just wear a PFLAG shirt that said, “Trans is Beautiful” on my last flight. The very least I can do. 

SARA: That’s great. That’s wonderful. The second question is, what is bringing you joy right now, especially in these times when we have to cultivate as much joy as we can?

LEE: I think it’s community, and it’s not just breadth, but it’s depth. It’s having a conversation with someone like you where we where its substantive and it’s meaningful and we know we’re on the same page because the thing we want most is to be fierce advocates and protectors for queer kids. And to know that we’re not alone in this journey is very heartening to me. And all these moments – the more upset I am about the state of our world and politics, the more I try to focus on these connections, these communities, these holding safe space for people. I hope that everybody listening to this episode feels like they’re in our bubble of safe space, that we’re with them and we want kids to feel empowered and safe and whole and to life happy, healthy, authentic lives as little queer humans, and ally humans too. 

SARA: And know that there are people like us out there cheering them along. 

LEE: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. A friend of mine teases me about how my favorite shape is a circle. But it is. If we all sit in a circle, then there’s always room for more. We can always bring more people into it. It’s not pie, people. We can bake more pies. We can add more chairs to the circle. We don’t have to buy into the scarcity mentality, to the fear, to the scapegoating. I want to sit in a circle where we celebrate everyone’s right to be a human being and everyone has the opportunity to live to their fullest and realize their potential. And that’s the circle I want to be part of. It’s the circle we’re co-creating together. And that brings me joy because we are being told from on high, by the powers that are so invested in dividing us, that we should be fighting each other and that the world is in chaos because of our diversity. And that’s not the case. The world has hope because of our diversity. 

SARA: Beautiful. What a beautiful statement to close our time together. Thank you so much. I cannot wait to read some of your books. And to our Mama Dragons community, if you’ve been looking for a new book for yourself, for your queer kiddo, for some family, Lee has plenty for you to choose from. And we’ll make sure that we link all the ways you can get Lee’s books on our website. Thank you so much, Lee, for this conversation and thanks for the amazing work you do. 

LEE: Oh, it was a joy. Thank you, Sara.

SARA: Thank you so much for joining us here In the Den. Did you know that Mama Dragons also offers an eLearning program called Parachute? This is an interactive learning platform where you can learn more about how to affirm, support, and celebrate the LGBTQ+ people in your life. Learn more at Mamadragons.org/parachute. Or find the link in the episode show notes under links. 

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