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THE BOOK OF LIFE - Pride Month Special with A.J. Sass: Otter Voice Meeting Notes

THE BOOK OF LIFE - Pride Month Special with A.J. Sass

AJL Holly Zimmerman44min

A.J. Sass

00:00

[COLD OPEN] Sometimes you don't know if you've met a trans person because some trans people don't feel comfortable being out and open about their trans status. So a lot of what I've done with my writing and what little author platform I have is to be as open and public as possible about my own experiences being trans and nonbinary. I'm hopeful that the more people see examples in media and representations and books of trans and nonbinary people, the more they won't want to take away our rights. We're not that much different from anyone else.

Heidi Rabinowitz

00:32

[MUSIC, INTRO] This is The Book of Life, a show about Jewish kidlit, mostly. I'm Heidi Rabinowitz. It's June and that means LGBTQ+ Pride Month. Over half the books currently being challenged by bigoted extremists are targeted for their LGBTQ+ content. In support of the queer Jewish community, for Pride Month, I will post an LGBTQ+ Jewish kidlit title each day in June, on the Book of Life Facebook page at facebook.com/bookoflifepodcast.

Heidi Rabinowitz

01:14

It should go without saying that gender identity and/or age-appropriate sexual content does not automatically equal porn or obscenity. Children and teens are human beings who have bodies, and they do experience some sexual feelings. And sometimes they need books that will help them understand their bodies and feelings more fully. Please see my show notes for links to more information on these topics. Queer books save lives, and I'll be proud to share with you excellent examples of queer Jewish representation all month long.

Heidi Rabinowitz

01:49

In that vein, I'm very happy to bring you my interview with AJ Sass. Andrew Sass is known for writing middle grade books featuring respectful portrayals of trans and nonbinary characters, often with Jewish and neurodiverse representation included as well. I was excited to talk with them about a few books: Debut novel Ana on the Edge from 2020; Ellen Outside the Lines from 2022, which was a 2023 Sydney Taylor Honor Book, and this year's Camp QUILTBAG, co-written with Nicole Melleby. I thoroughly enjoyed all of these books, which are thoughtful and funny, and for a cishet chick like me, these are great window books. Be sure to check the show notes for links to Andrew's website, tikkun olam suggestions, a transcript of our conversation, and more at BookofLifepodcast.com.

Heidi Rabinowitz

02:54

Andrew Sass, welcome to The Book of Life.

A.J. Sass

02:56

Thank you for having me.

Heidi Rabinowitz

02:58

Thank you for being here. I'm so happy to meet you. Andrew, where are we speaking to you from?

A.J. Sass

03:04

I'm in Oakland, California right now just across the bay from San Francisco.

Heidi Rabinowitz

03:07

Is that where you're from originally?

A.J. Sass

03:09

No. My family moved around a lot when I was a kid. I tend to say Minnesota is my home state. But I've also lived in Wisconsin and upper peninsula Michigan and Nebraska. And then I spent my middle school years down in Georgia. So I've been kind of all over the place. Yeah, I've been in California for the past 15 years, though.

Heidi Rabinowitz

03:27

Very nice. The hallmark of most of your writing is a respectful portrayal of trans and nonbinary characters for middle grade readers. And you include Jewish representation frequently as well. So can you tell us a little bit about your journey to becoming the author that you are today?

A.J. Sass

03:48

Sure, well, I've been writing since I was a little kid, almost as long as I can remember. I think when I was about six or seven, my parents gave me a paper journal. And instead of writing down my thoughts, I was making up stories about my cat. Then as I got older, high school, college graduate school, I used creative writing as an outlet. But I never really considered trying to get anything published really until probably my early 30s. And in large part that was because I didn't really see the types of stories that I wanted to write already on the market. I really wanted to write queer characters and contemporary Jewish characters, things like that. And I'm hopeful that they were out there when I was a kid, and I just missed them, but I just didn't see it. So I didn't know that I could write it, basically. And it wasn't until I moved to San Francisco as an adult and started getting more involved in the queer community and realizing that I myself am queer and identify with being trans and embracing nonbinary identity that I got really excited about the thought of wanting to try to write characters like this.

Heidi Rabinowitz

04:50

Your debut novel, Ana on the Edge, is about a young Asian American Jewish figure skater who realizes they are nonbinary when a princess themed ice routine makes them surprisingly uncomfortable. So, you have a figure skating background, right?

A.J. Sass

05:06

I do. Yeah.

Heidi Rabinowitz

05:07

Can you tell us about that and how much of Ana's story is autobiographical?

A.J. Sass

05:11

Sure. So I'm originally from the Midwest and Minnesota specifically. I feel like at a very young age, you are either putting on figure skates or hockey skates and you're getting out there and skating either indoors or outdoors. Because it's cold six months out of the year. I started taking skating lessons when I was seven. Aside from writing, it was probably the one constant in my life as my family was moving around so often. As long as we moved someplace with an ice rink, I felt really good about figuring out the rest of the stuff that comes with having to change schools so often. To this day, I still skate, just not as much. And I'm also part of the US figure skating officials community as a figure skating judge. So, how much of Ana on the Edge is autobiographical? I think not a whole lot in terms of the external plot. Ana grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area in a very inclusive environment. I was more in conservative small towns, when I was growing up. Ana learns that she's nonbinary by googling on the internet when she's 12. And I don't think the term nonbinary even existed when I was 12. Or at least it wasn't in wide use at the time. So a lot of what I wrote about in Ana on the Edge was kind of writing a story for my younger self that I would have liked to have read when I was 12. I would have really loved to have vocabulary to describe how I was feeling and a lot of it was also trying to figure out, well, if I had known that I was nonbinary when I was 12, how would I have navigated this very gendered space within the world of figure skating? So it was sort of a hypothetical challenge to myself to write this book about how I would have proceeded. There are autobiographical Easter eggs, like there's a secondary character named Tamar, who's on a synchronized skating team and they're skating to La La Land which is the music that my synchro team skated at Nationals when we placed second when I was an adult.

Heidi Rabinowitz

06:59

Is there any video online of you doing figure skating?

A.J. Sass

07:04

I have an Instagram account. Occasionally, I'll throw some videos up there. I wish I was videoing more when I was a better jumper because I think jumps are always really impressive to see online, but I occasionally post like spins and jumps. And I'm still actively trying to get through my ice dance pattern tests. I've got one level left. So sometimes I post a video of my coach and me doing the patterns and ice dance online.

Heidi Rabinowitz

07:28

All right, very cool. I'm gonna look for that. Ana on the Edge is a casually Jewish story. She's Asian American, and she's Jewish. But that wasn't necessary for the plot. Right? Talk about your decision to give Ana this identity.

A.J. Sass

07:44

Ana was not Jewish in very early iterations of the story. I've seen interviews online with authors of various identities, who kind of went through the same revision journey that I did. The secondary character in Ana on the edge and her family, Tamar, were always Jewish, but Ana wasn't. After I signed with my literary agent, and she read through it to give me feedback, one of her comments was, why didn't you make Ana Jewish? At first I was like, Well, I don't want to complicate things. This is a coming out story. And she's like, I don't think writing from your own experience or writing a character that resonates with you is muddying the waters, people have intersecting identities. She gently convinced me to consider making Ana Jewish and like you mentioned, the representation is very casual. It's not a main focus of the story. Neither is Ana's Chinese American identity, primarily because I'm hoping that there are trans and nonbinary Chinese American authors who will approach how that community interprets gender identity more than I could myself, I specifically wanted to make Ana Asian American because I wanted to reflect the diversity in the Bay Area rinks that I see which is a little bit different than growing up in Iowa and Minnesota and stuff, at the rinks that I was skating at. But after I made Ana Jewish like canonically Jewish in the story, I didn't necessarily have a lot of space, since the book is already 400 pages long, to include a lot of Jewish representation. But there were questions that came up in my mind that I was able to reflect within the story about what Ana might be thinking in relation to her faith, once she realized that she is nonbinary, and a big example of that is she is gearing up to start preparing for her Bat Mitzvah. And this is a very small part of the story. But within the next year, she'll probably start taking classes and studying to become a bat mitzvah. And she's like, do I, do I want to be a BAT mitzvah? Or is there something for nonbinary kids because BAT means daughter of the Covenant. She's just not sure if that's the right terminology and the right path for her and it's a small question, but it's something that I hope readers will think about it more. Hopefully, if they're active in their own faith communities, they can make the space more inclusive for kids who might be in the same situation as Ana.

Heidi Rabinowitz

10:00

Your 2022 book, Ellen Outside the Lines was a Sydney Taylor Honor Book. So please tell us about Ellen Outside the Lines, and what was your inspiration for this book?

A.J. Sass

10:11

So Ellen Outside the Lines follows 13 year old Ellen Katz, who is autistic, and she is trying to reconnect with her best and only friend Laurel on a school class trip to Barcelona, Spain during the summer between seventh and eighth grade. But being autistic, Ellen is very reliant on known quantities and schedules. And this is how she interprets the world and how she makes sense of it, and it brings her comfort. So she's already looked at last year's itinerary for the trip and she's prepared, she's gonna win her friend back, it's going to be great. And from the moment she gets to the airport, everything just kind of falls apart, basically, from her Spanish teacher saying that the itinerary is changing from field trips and lectures to a scavenger hunt format, to meeting a new classmate named Isa who uses they/them pronouns. So on this trip Ellen is navigating a new path for herself while also getting used to a foreign city and exploring various aspects of her queer and Jewish identities. I took inspiration for this because I love traveling, I've been to Barcelona several times. I also wanted to explore what it would be like to place an autistic kid into a situation that is very much out of their comfort zone. This comes from personal experience too and the anxiety I feel when I'm in unknown locations and just wanting to explore how that would work with a character who has so many different identities and is also trying to, at the core, just reconnect with a best friend who might just be growing distant through natural means, ebbs and flows of middle school friendships.

Heidi Rabinowitz

11:40

So Ellen is Jewish.

A.J. Sass

11:42

Right.

Heidi Rabinowitz

11:43

She discovers she's nonbinary. She's also autistic. Extremely intersectional. How did her character gel in your mind?

A.J. Sass

11:53

It took a while to work out, which is kind of funny because I share all of those aspects of myself with Ellen. But writing a narrative that is coherent, and also gives airtime to each aspect of someone's identity can be a little bit tricky. I knew that I wanted to have an autistic character to kind of give autistic readers representation there, but also to hopefully give other readers who might not be autistic kind of a window into that experience. I also know that Barcelona is very difficult to be Jewish in, having lived there myself a little bit. It's hard to keep kosher. And it's a very unusual, unique part of the country of Spain. So I wanted to include the difficulties that traveling while Jewish might entail. And then I tend to write queer characters just naturally. So it took a lot of revision, and trying to define really what was important about the story and what elements of this character's identity would best serve the plot. But I'm hoping that by writing something like this, readers will either feel seen, or at least they'll be able to better empathize with the people that they encounter in their lives who do have identities of this nature.

Heidi Rabinowitz

13:02

Okay. As you said, Ellen has a scavenger hunt ahead of her on this trip to Barcelona. So that's an interesting aspect of the story. Can you tell us about the scavenger hunt?

A.J. Sass

13:15

Yeah, so initially, in really early drafts before this book sold, I didn't have a scavenger hunt, I just had lectures and field trips. And I changed that because it was really boring to write. And it also, yeah, and it also felt like it pulled the character away from the agency that most main characters need to be able to drive the plot forward. There wasn't a lot of opportunities for Ellen to actually make decisions that would change the plot in ways that matter. So my partner and I were watching reruns of this reality TV show called The Amazing Race, which, for those who are unfamiliar with it, it's basically a race around the world, teams of two. And it's kind of got a scavenger hunt format. They interact with different elements of various countries' cultures, and complete challenges trying to get to the finish line the fastest. With Ellen, it was just one country. But I thought, you know, it'd be really kind of neat to see what would happen if we threw middle schoolers into a situation like this and made them try to figure out clues and get kind of competitive about it. And then, of course, with Ellen's background too, being kind of stressed over clues, you have to finish one before you get the next one. There's a lot of unknowns there. So I took the idea and ran with it. And then when the book sold in 2020, it was very early on in the pandemic, I was stuck at home sheltering in place, and it was really nice to be able to envision myself someplace else. So I'm glad I thought of it.

Heidi Rabinowitz

14:38

Oh, that's interesting that your your own writing setting would make it more special that you were able to live in the world of the book.

A.J. Sass

14:47

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Heidi Rabinowitz

14:50

So you have lived experience with autism. Right? Did you still need to do research about autism?

A.J. Sass

14:58

Yeah, to an extent. So Ellen knows she's autistic. She has a diagnosis when she's younger, she has family support and a therapist that she sees fairly regularly, both privately and as a family with her parents. I was not diagnosed until I was an adult. So a lot of the stuff that I had to research was how support systems are set up for teenage kids who have a diagnosis on the neurodiversity spectrum. I didn't have an IEP, which is an Individualized Education Program in school like Ellen does, I didn't even know what it was when I set out to write this book. So I reached out to a lot of friends who are educators and did a lot of Googling and watching of YouTube video interviews and stuff, just to see how autism is treated in the school system and what kind of supports are in place for people who are autistic. When I was a kid, I was, of course, autistic, but I didn't know that I was. So a lot of the things that I struggled with in terms of maintaining friendships, I didn't know why I was struggling socially with things like that. Whereas Ellen might not know all the reasons why the friendship that she's trying to regain is kind of failing. But at least she has the tools and the vocabulary to understand that she might react to things differently than a neurotypical classmate might; she can take a beat and be like, Oh, okay, you know, maybe this isn't, quote unquote, normal for them. But this is my normal. I also had to work with my editor, because a lot of the things that I would write that felt very normal and natural to me, were things that she said might be confusing to neurotypical readers. That was one of the large challenges for me.

Heidi Rabinowitz

16:28

Can you give an example of something that you wrote that the editor said other people might not understand?

A.J. Sass

16:36

Sure. And I should preface this by just saying that, you know, Ellen's experience with autism is her own, just like mine is my own. Once you've met like one autistic person, you've literally just learned about one experience with autism, everyone's a little bit different. But for me, especially growing up, I had very rigid black and white thinking. And I wrote that kind of organically, how I would react to things that were kind of ambiguous or nonbinary, even, you could say, and my editor would say, you know, we need to spell it out a little bit more clearly for reader so that they understand that the reason Ellen is reacting this way is because she thinks there's no other option besides those two that she's familiar with. And this comes up with Ellen's categories, and her dot diary where she lists out things like boy and girl and then meets Isa, this classmate who is neither a boy or girl, and has to sort of reconcile that in her head. Other things like kosher and treif, and parve, and stuff like that. Those are all categories for Ellen, that didn't exist initially, I just had written the book with the implicit understanding that this is how Ellen thought. So it was a lot of that type of thinking through like, how can we make this feel like an organic narrative, and not an autistic person telling readers Here is how I experience the world, you know, and not just an aside or something that pulls people out of the actual plot and story.

Heidi Rabinowitz

17:58

Good. Well, you did a good job with it.

A.J. Sass

18:00

Thank you.

Heidi Rabinowitz

18:01

Yeah. So to go to another research related question, how did you choose the Barcelona setting for the story? You mentioned that you've lived in Barcelona for a while. But did you still need to do additional research about that location?

A.J. Sass

18:19

I did, yes. So all of my books to date have taken place in settings that I'm familiar with or lived in. Ana on the Edge is set in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is where I live now. Camp QUILTBAG, the book that just came out, is set in the Minnesota North Woods, and I'm from Minnesota. And Ellen Outside the Lines is about a group of Georgia middle schoolers who are traveling to Barcelona and I spent my middle school years in Georgia. So when I came to think about where I was going to set a study abroad trip, I wanted it to be someplace that I'd visited before because I feel like everyone's had an experience where they've read a book in a location that they know very well, and they're like, this is not accurate to my experience with this location at all. Barcelona specifically for me was a place that I used to travel pretty frequently for work. I was working for a company that was headquartered in the city there. And every year, I would spend a couple of months within the city. That was from 2010 to 2012. And I was trying to write this book in 2019. So I did need to go back, took a lot of videos in the locations that I hoped would feature in the story in some way. Although there were a couple instances I think like Sagrada Familia, where the kids go in for the first scavenger hunt clue trying to solve it. I have never actually been inside La Sagrada Familia. I've been on the outside. But luckily, they have a virtual tour that you can take online. So that was what I did in that instance. But in terms of looking at the Gaudi tiles that you'll see along most of the streets, so that was something that I got to video when I was there in 2019. And I think just looking around to see what might make a good scavenger hunt clues, because when I was there for work, I wasn't thinking, Oh, this is where we're going to set this book that I write, you know, 10 years from now, this is going to be one of the clues. And just trying to make sure that I was portraying the city in a nuanced and sensitive way too, because the people who live there are really wonderful, and it's a really unique part of Spain itself within a region called Catalonia, which has its own language, its own culture, and I wanted to, if not have that be the focus of the book, I wanted to give little nods to it.

Heidi Rabinowitz

20:29

So can you tell us something interesting that you learned about Barcelona as you were doing that research?

A.J. Sass

20:36

I wanted to learn more about Antonin Gaudi, the architect who features prominently in the book. Gaudi has a lot of buildings that were constructed throughout Barcelona. I did a lot of research of Gaudi's buildings, and like his philosophy. Gaudi's quote that Ellen finds really resonates with her is, "tomorrow, we will do something beautiful." Ellen uses that as a kind of a life philosophy by the end, that it's okay not to really know what's coming. It's okay not to have everything planned out sometimes. There's a lot of joy to be found in the surprises that come in life. So a lot of research on Gaudi and visiting places that I wanted to put in the book like Park Güell, I'd never been there before. And one of the characters is really fixated on the lizard, dragon salamander statue that's in the park. So just getting to see those things with my own eyes and taking pictures too so that I could better describe them in the story and figure out how they might fit. Because with the scavenger hunt, and everything, it was kind of like fitting together a puzzle.

Heidi Rabinowitz

21:37

I think you did a very good job of giving a sense of place. And like I felt like I had taken a trip to Barcelona when I read this book.

A.J. Sass

21:45

So have you been there before?

Heidi Rabinowitz

21:47

No, I've never been there.

A.J. Sass

21:48

Oh, that's, that's nice to hear then. Thank you.

Heidi Rabinowitz

21:52

So in an interview on the Bookishly Jewish blog, you were asked about Ellen's learning that people might observe Judaism differently, even within a single family, when she finds her dad eating non kosher food during their trip. And you had mentioned that, about categories kosher and treif.

A.J. Sass

22:10

Right.

Heidi Rabinowitz

22:10

Can you talk about your decision to include this element?

A.J. Sass

22:14

Yes, so it's a fairly small thread throughout the story. But it does keep coming up repeatedly because it's something that Ellen is noticing, and it doesn't fit within these rigid categories that she's created for herself and how she believes her family operates. There's a moment when Ellen talks to her Abba, her dad and says like, we're all the same. We're family. And he said, Well, we are family, but that doesn't make us all the same. And he's talking about not always eating kosher, whereas Ellen's mom and Ellen are a little bit more observant. I, I liked exploring that with this book. And I'm actually going to be exploring that further with a future book. Because when I got out of college, I was trying to find a temple and a faith community that felt right for me. And I ended up visiting a lot of different temples from Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstruction, you name it, I visited them. And in my very black and white autistic brain, I was trying to find the quote unquote, right way to be Jewish. And even within the same temples, what I noticed is that each family or each person had different ways they observe things like Shabbat, it really resonated with me as someone who who wants to find the right way to do everything, that there isn't necessarily a right way to be Jewish. It's what works well for you. And that's something that I kind of wanted to leave a little message for readers, what feels right for you might not necessarily be what's right for another member of your family or your friends.

Heidi Rabinowitz

23:39

Excellent. It's a good message.

A.J. Sass

23:41

Thank you.

Heidi Rabinowitz

23:42

So you have a new book, Camp QUILTBAG.

A.J. Sass

23:45

Yes.

Heidi Rabinowitz

23:46

First of all, explain the acronym QUILTBAG, please.

A.J. Sass

23:50

Yeah, so QUILTBAG is an acronym for the LGBTQIA+ community. I don't think it ever caught on quite as well as other acronyms because while QUILTBAG does have several letters that pertain to queer identities, it doesn't have all of them, like specifically in my story there's a character who's pansexual and she's like there's no P in QUILTBAG. But it is a reference to the, the nature of the camp and the people who are welcome at this camp in the story.

Heidi Rabinowitz

24:18

Can you break down what the letters...

Heidi Rabinowitz

24:20

Oh, gosh!

Heidi Rabinowitz

24:21

...what each letter stands for?

A.J. Sass

24:23

Maybe?

Heidi Rabinowitz

24:24

I know there's a lot of letters. It's a long word.

A.J. Sass

24:26

I did it in the actual book. So let's see if I can remember. Q is for queer and questioning I believe U is for unsure. I is intersex. Watch me not be able to spell the rest of this. L is lesbian, T is transgender and two spirit. B is bisexual. A is asexual and G is gay. I think I got them all.

Heidi Rabinowitz

24:28

Okay.

A.J. Sass

24:30

You're still missing some obviously, like demisexual and pansexual. Initially, too, I think a lot of people really responded to the imagery of a quilt being stitched together of all different types of fabric and coming together as one.

Heidi Rabinowitz

25:04

Right. So tell us about this book Camp QUILTBAG.

A.J. Sass

25:08

It's unique among the books that I've published so far because it was co written with another author. Nicole Melleby and I kind of expanded on these characters that initially had their own short stories in an anthology that she co edited with Katherine Locke called This Is Our Rainbow: 16 Stories of Her, Him, Them and Us. And I wrote a story about Kai who is a nonbinary athlete who is trying to find a new athletic community after e has left gymnastics, which was too gendered for em. And Nicole wrote a story about a 12 year old lesbian named Abigail, and the story's name is kind of funny if you're familiar with like your early 2000s song, it's called Stacy's Mom, a direct kind of nod to that song by Fountains of Wayne about pre adolescent boy having a crush on Stacy's mom, but she kind of queered it up and turned it around and had Abigail have a crush on her friend Stacy's mom. But we took these two characters, they were from different locations, Kai is from Minnesota, and Abigail is from New Jersey. So we were trying to figure out how to get them together and realized, you know, summer camp would be a great place where kids get to meet people they otherwise wouldn't necessarily get to meet. And we did a lot of research pertaining to like, are queer camps things that exist, and they actually are! Camps that are inclusive for queer and trans kids exist all over the country, which was really cool because they didn't when we were kids. The story is that dual perspective story between Kai and Abigail, they're both attending the camp for very different reasons. And once they get there, they meet each other and form a pact to help one another navigate the space at camp, navigate crushes, and there's a camp wide competition that pits cabin against cabin. So it's very much like an older sibling, younger sibling relationship between these two characters, and, of course, lots of camp antics because everyone gets up to everything in camp and it can be quite dramatic because it's tweens.

Heidi Rabinowitz

26:57

Tell us about the Jewish representation in this book.

A.J. Sass

27:00

So Kai is from an interfaith family. Eir mom is Reform Jewish, and eir dad is Lutheran. Kai's background is basically just kind of hopping between church and temple, whenever family members have important events there. So e doesn't have a lot of background understanding of eir Jewish heritage. But one of the campers named Oren is from a traditionally practicing Jewish family, Oren wears a kippah and is more observant than Kai and Kai's family and through Oren, Kai gets to learn a little bit more about how Judaism approaches queerness, or at least some branches of Judaism do, and ends up getting a crush on Oren as well, which is part of the plot. There's also a really nice scene between Oren and Abigail, who's Catholic, about how Abigail is kind of surprised that Oren's community is accepting of him. Because Abigail doesn't feel very accepted at her Catholic school. And there's this conversation about how Oren's family is the catalyst behind this because there's so much support from Oren's family about him being queer that they found a faith community that is also queer and accepting. So yeah, it was, it was a lot of fun to write. The Jewish component, again, is more casual representation than in Ellen Outside the Lines. But it's always been really important for me to give a nod to it because it's something I would have loved again to see when I was a kid that I didn't get to see quite as often, seeing contemporary portrayals of Jewish characters.

Heidi Rabinowitz

28:29

Camp QUILTBAG is unusual in that basically, almost all of the characters are queer in some way.

A.J. Sass

28:37

Right.

Heidi Rabinowitz

28:37

What is your message for parents who think that reading about queer identity, and especially it seems about gender identity, is somehow dangerous for their children?

A.J. Sass

28:49

So it's kind of a two part answer for me. I would say that, on the one hand, if if your kid happens to be queer, or trans or nonbinary, and you don't know yet, taking this type of representation away from them can be hurtful, it can feel isolating, it can feel like they have something to be ashamed about when they actually don't. And when I was a kid, not being able to have any books that I could show my parents, I mean, I feel like my parents would have been fairly accepting if potentially a little confused if I had said I was nonbinary at 12. But I feel like having the representation in books would have been beneficial to me because I could have brought it to them and said I'm like this, it's in a book, it's, it's real just like I am. And if your kids happen not to be LGBTQIA, books like this really teach and build empathy for people who are different than them, which I think is what a lot of people attempting to ban the books don't want. But assuming that you are not one of those people, I feel like even if your kid does not fall into one of these categories, it is almost a certainty that throughout their life, they will meet someone who is queer or trans or nonbinary. It might be a friend or family member or even just like a classmate or an acquaintance down the road but we do a disservice to our kids when we're hiding things like this from them, because allyship is really important as well as, you know, being able to define who you are. And I do feel like right now, and when I was younger, it would have saved me a lot of heartache and difficulty trying to define that aspect of myself, I could have focused on other things like any other kid gets to. So I don't think it helps anyone to hide this stuff from kids. And also, it's not inappropriate, I've seen that come up a lot. A lot of books that simply have queer content in it are marked as too mature, especially in middle school. And to that I just say, you know, if you're not going to mark a book about a straight crush as inappropriate for that age, why would you do it if the crush were gay? Or if the people who had the crush happen to be nonbinary?

Heidi Rabinowitz

30:49

Right. And just to clarify, I mean, this is a very sweet book where people have crushes, maybe there was a kiss at some point. But you know, nothing else is going on.

A.J. Sass

31:02

No!

Heidi Rabinowitz

31:03

It's just a very innocent sweet book. So, yeah.

A.J. Sass

31:07

It kind of just makes me more determined to keep writing these stories and these characters, because I feel like getting to read books from the perspective of queer characters is only going to build empathy. I think a lot of people who are fearful of trans people have never met them, I feel like most people can say that they've met someone who is queer, and other aspects like gay or lesbian or bisexual. But sometimes, you don't know if you've met a trans person, because some trans people don't feel comfortable being out and open about their trans status too. So a lot of what I've done with my writing, and what little author platform I have, is to be as open and public as possible about my own experiences being trans and nonbinary. Because my hope is that, you know, you can't say you've never met a trans person, if you've read my essays, or you've heard me speak on a podcast or a given interview. And I'm hopeful that the more people see examples in media and representations in books of trans and nonbinary people, the more they won't want to take away our rights or to take away the things that we have fought so hard just to get basic medical care and stuff. So I'm hoping that we keep getting the opportunities to speak out. So people get firsthand experiences with trans people and see we're not that much different from anyone else.

Heidi Rabinowitz

32:27

Right. Thank you. Middle grade, and YA fiction about characters who are not cisgender are thankfully not so rare as they used to be. Besides your own, are there any others that you would like to recommend, and especially if there are any others that include Jewish content?

A.J. Sass

32:46

This one is so tricky, because when you try to get Jewish and queer characters together, particularly trans Jewish characters, it's harder for me to locate them, particularly in the middle grade space. And I'm hopeful that it's just I haven't read them yet, and that they are out there. But I can give some examples of YA books that I've read recently that I really loved. The first one is called A Million Quiet Revolutions by Robin Gow, this is a YA novel told in verse with dual perspectives; two trans boys who fall in love and one of them happens to be Jewish. It's lyrical and it's a really lovely story. Another one, which I'm sure you're probably familiar with, is When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Lamb. I don't know if the trans or nonbinary terminology was ever used in that book, because it's a YA historical but the way that gender is approached from such a Jewish perspective in that book, I completely adore it, and it deserves every award that it's won. Then there's another book, a YA story by L.C. Rosen called Camp, which is basically like Camp QUILTBAG. It's a book that's set at a camp that's inclusive of queer and trans kids, but it's YA so the main character, I think is 17 or 18. The main character is Jewish, and there is a lot of trans and nonbinary representation and secondary characters in that novel.

A.J. Sass

34:03

In terms of middle grade, I'm going to just offer some suggestions for books that have non cisgender main characters in them. The first is The Best Liars in Riverview by Lin Thompson, it has a nonbinary main character. And Lin has also written a sophomore novel called The House That Whispers with a trans boy character in it. You cannot go wrong with anything that Kyle Lukoff has written; I believe Kyle is Jewish. Too Bright to See is the Newbery Honor award winning book that has a trans boy main character. And Kyle's also written Different Kinds of Fruit, which is middle grade. I would also recommend Moonflower by Kacen Callender and then if fantasy is more your thing, I would say Sir Callie and the Champions of Helston which is by Esme Symes-Smith, which was recently announced that on top of the sequel that's coming out later this year that there'll be two more books in that series and the main character is a non binary knight.

A.J. Sass

34:03

Oh, wow. A knight!

A.J. Sass

34:59

Yes!

Heidi Rabinowitz

35:00

So those middle grade titles you named are not books with Jewish content, but they're books with non cisgendered characters. Okay.

A.J. Sass

35:07

Yes, Kyle Lukoff's books might have some Jewish content in them, but I don't know off the top of my head. Just a heads up.

Heidi Rabinowitz

35:14

Well, thank you for all those recommendations.

A.J. Sass

35:16

So like Lily and Dunkin is an example but I haven't read it.

Heidi Rabinowitz

35:20

Yes, Lily and Dunkin by Donna Gephardt. Dunkin is Jewish, but Lily is the one who is trans. But it has both kinds of representation. And the Jewish content is very casual, right, but it is in there.

A.J. Sass

35:33

But it's important that it's there. Yeah. An untapped market, I guess.

Heidi Rabinowitz

35:37

Yes! All right. Well, so then it seems like you are the trendsetter. The first one making trans middle grade fiction with Jewish characters. So good job!

A.J. Sass

35:50

Yeah, hopefully, it'll encourage other people to write it too then.

Heidi Rabinowitz

35:53

Yeah. Yeah. So it's Tikkun Olam time. What action would you like to call listeners to take to help heal the world?

A.J. Sass

36:03

I would hope that people would push back when they see attempts at banning books and attempts at censorship. It can be something as simple as looking at a list of banned books and buying them from your local indie bookstore or checking them out from libraries that have them available, to let librarians know that there is interest in them and there's support for them. You can write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper. Reach out to your local representatives to let them know how you feel about book bans and censorship in your community. You can also go to your local library and school boards, a lot of the attempts to ban books are done at the local level. And there are often instances where people who are banning books don't even have kids in the school district. They haven't even read the titles that they're trying to get banned. They've basically Googled for specific terms that relate to identity. So having your voice heard a school board meeting in opposition to people's attempts to ban books is also super helpful.

Heidi Rabinowitz

37:02

Excellent, thank you for those suggestions. And I do want to point out that even that very simple suggestion you made of checking the books out of the library, requesting them from your library, those make a bigger difference than you may realize, because libraries keep statistics, right, of how many books are checked out and which books are checked out and how popular that particular title is. And it helps their statistics if they know that those books are desired by their community, it's definitely a helpful thing to do.

A.J. Sass

37:36

Yep, absolutely. And if the books that you want to read don't exist in your library system, usually most libraries are set up where you can request that they purchased them too.

Heidi Rabinowitz

37:44

Right, and the requesting also goes into their statistics and record keeping, to know that the community actually does want these titles, and that the loud voices of the people objecting to the titles are not speaking for the whole community.

A.J. Sass

37:57

Right.

Heidi Rabinowitz

37:59

So what are you working on next?

A.J. Sass

38:02

Well, I have a handful of books that are coming out next year in 2024, the first of which, it's my next middle grade contemporary novel with Little Brown Books for Young Readers that I believe is coming out in January at some point, it is called Just Shy of Ordinary. And it follows a 13 year old Shai, who's gender fluid, and has been a longtime homeschooler, who is struggling with anxiety after their mom loses their job as a result of the pandemic. And they end up having to move in with family friends, and Shai has started picking the hair on their arms and doesn't want to tell their mom because their mom is stressing enough with work and trying to save money. And Shai also happens to be kind of an expert problem solver. So they figured they'll solve the problem on their own. And they read online that sometimes a reset or creation of a new normal can help kind of jog you out of situations like this. So Shai decides to convince their mom to let them attend public school in the fall. And the book starts with Shai learning that their academic evaluation has come back and has them put into ninth grade rather than eighth. So there's a whole thrown-for-a-loop component there and one of the first assignments that she gets in their honors English class, or they decide to do on their Jewish heritage, which is something that they don't know a lot about. Their mom was raised Jewish, their grandparents attended temple but Shai themself was not raised Jewish. So there's an underlying component of trying to figure out how this fits in and how it relates to their own queer identity and also living in a small town in the Wisconsin Northwoods, just as a fun, different setting. I also have a short story coming out in an anthology that focuses on the Passover seder that is called On All Other Nights and it's edited by Joshua S. Levy, Chris Baron, and Naomi Milliner, and is coming out from Abrams. Each contributor is focusing on a different aspect of the meal. I have tzafun so I'm doing that the afikoman search. And then my debut picture book comes out in fall of 2024. It's called Shabbat Is... and follows three characters who are all part of the same temple. But they all have different observance levels for Shabbat, and they all do different things to mark the occasion every week with their families, and it centers around a B'nai Mitzvah ceremony of one of their nonbinary cousins at the end so I could get the queer identity in there, I'm really looking forward to that; the illustrator is Noa Kelner. And I've seen a little bit of the character concept illustrations to start, and they're super cute. So I can't wait to share that with everyone next year.

Heidi Rabinowitz

40:40

I am really excited about all of those books, too. That's great. And it's interesting how you're expanding on some of the things you talked about. This is probably the first picture book I can think of that's going to explore the topic of different observance levels.

A.J. Sass

40:55

Yeah.

Heidi Rabinowitz

40:56

And also, I wanted to mention that Joshua S. Levy, one of the editors of your anthology, also is going to be a guest on The Book of Life this summer to talk about his novel The Jake Show.

A.J. Sass

41:09

That's wonderful. I am so excited to read that one. It also has that component of feeling kind of stuck between different observance levels with the parents in the family, I think, so I'm really stoked to read it.

Heidi Rabinowitz

41:20

That's true. It is very much about differing observance levels. It's kind of a central thing. Where can listeners learn more about you and your work?

A.J. Sass

41:30

I have a website, sassinsf.com, which is short for Sass in San Francisco. And you can find me most places online @matokah: Instagram for cat pictures and skating videos and occasional book updates, Twitter and sometimes Tik Tok. And then I'm also on Facebook.com/authorAJ.

Heidi Rabinowitz

41:52

All right. Andrew Sass, thank you so much for speaking with me.

A.J. Sass

41:57

Thank you so much for having me, Heidi, I really appreciate the thought that you took for the questions that you asked me too.

Heidi Rabinowitz

42:04

My pleasure.

Arthur Levine

42:08

Hi, I'm Arthur Levine, the founder and publisher of Levine Querido. I'm looking forward to talking to you on The Book of Life podcast, coming up soon. I'd like to dedicate this episode to the fight against book banning.

Heidi Rabinowitz

42:23

[MUSIC, OUTRO] Say hi to Heidi at 561-206-2473 or bookoflifepodcast@gmail.com Check out our Book of Life podcast Facebook page, or our Facebook discussion group Jewish Kidlit Mavens. We are occasionally on Twitter too @bookoflifepod. Want to read the books featured on the show? Buy them through Bookshop.org/shop/bookoflife to support the podcast and independent bookstores at the same time. You can also help us out by becoming a monthly supporter through Patreon. Additional support comes from the Association of Jewish Libraries, which also sponsors our sister podcast, Nice Jewish Books, a show about Jewish fiction for adults. You'll find links for all of that and more at BookofLifepodcast.com Our background music is provided by the Freilachmakers Klezmer String Band. Thanks for listening and happy reading!

Sheryl Stahl

43:37

[MUSIC, PROMO] Teenage Casey is in trouble. So her parents decide to move her and their family from New Orleans back to Brooklyn to be closer to their Orthodox Jewish Syrian community. How will Casey's independent spirit fare in this new environment and will she end up trapped in the marriage box? I'm Sheryl Stahl. Join me for a conversation with author Corie Adjmi as we talk about her latest novel The Marriage Box. Find us at Jewishlibraries.org/NiceJewishBooks.

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