All Boys Aren't Blue

Johnson often varies how they present slurs on the page, either displaying them in full or censoring them. In the author’s note, they write, “I included these slurs in the text in specific ways for specific emotional and intellectual effect” (viii). What might some of those emotional and intellectual effects be?

What role does family play in Johnson’s ability to become an adult who is proud of their identity? Consider how having a less accepting family and/or one without visible queer representation might have impacted Johnson.

Repetition is a key literary device in several chapters. What effect does this have on Johnson’s writing? Consider things like tone, motif, and word choice when analyzing instances of repetition.

Johnson set out to write the book they wish they could have read as a child looking for guidance on being Black and queer. How do you think their memoir-manifesto would have been different if they had set out to simply chronicle their life? What would change?

Intersections of identity are key to the way Johnson views the world and writes about it. What unique challenges do they face specifically because they are Black and queer? What might have been different about their experiences if they’d lacked one identity or the other?

Johnson narrates their memoir as if it were a story. Several times throughout, they emphasize how important stories and storytelling are. Why do you think they have chosen to frame their memoir this way? What influence does this have on the text? Think of other ways they might have framed the memoir.

Gendered assumptions can greatly harm LGBTQ+ people. Johnson illustrates this within the first page of the Introduction, discussing how babies are gendered before they are born. What are some other gendered assumptions that the book illustrates? Why might they harm people and how might they be changed?

Hope is the first person Johnson meets who does not fit into her assigned gender at birth. How does this affect Johnson’s family? What sort of effects do you think the family’s treatment of Hope had on her and Johnson growing up?

The memoir-manifesto comes in four “acts,” which is a term usually associated with plays. Why does Johnson frame their memoir-manifesto this way?