Nico Lang(they/them) is a journalist, editor, culture critic, and essayist. Lang is the founder of Queer News Daily and has previously worked as the deputy editor of Out magazine, an LGBTQ+ correspondent for VICE, the news editor at Them, and a contributing editor at Xtra magazine. Their work has been published in Rolling Stone, Esquire, The Daily Beast, HuffPost, and BuzzFeed News, among others. Lang was named the 2023 Online Journalist of the Year by the Los Angeles Press Club Association and is the recipient of 10 awards from the National Association of LGBTQ+ Journalist, a GLAAD Award, and the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Funds inaugural Visibility Award. Their new book American Teenager is available on October 8th.Tell the readers a little bit about your inspiration to set off on this journey to interviewing trans young people?I wrote this book because I knew it needed to exist. This year alone, more than 650 bills targeting trans people have been introduced to state legislatures across the U.S., and those signed into law include restrictions on the ability of trans kids to access necessary medical care, use the bathroom at school, or even play on school sports teams. More than half of U.S. states already have either gender-affirming care bans or sports bans in place for trans youth, usually both. Lawmakers have been able to pass many harmful bills so quickly because they do not recognize the dignity of trans youth, and they erase the very existence of the vulnerable population their policies impact. When trans kids bravely testify before their state legislatures to try and stop anti-trans legislation from being passed, lawmakers very often ignore them. They check their text messages and their unread emails. They stare up at their ceiling. Anything to avoid making eye contact or keep themselves from seeing that these are merely human beings asked to be treated like all other human beings: with empathy, compassion, and love.My personal breaking point was seeing Texas lawmakers introduce a bill in 2021 branding parents of trans youth as child abusers if they allowed their children to transition or simply affirmed them for who they are. As a journalist, I believe in the power of education: If there are questions that lawmakers have, we can answer them. We can present them with the correct information and dispel myths and misconceptions that they might have. But if that is our starting point that loving your child as they are is abuse then there can be no conversation. There is no foundation to be built upon. With this book, my hope is to bring some of that good faith back into the discussion and show people what they have been ignoring: that these are just kids, trying to get by in the world like everyone else.What is the biggest misconception that young people express that they hear about themselves? What about misconceptions or misperceptions you had?I dont think that I had any misperceptions about trans youth going into this book because Ive been doing this for a really long time. Ive been working with families of trans kids for about eight years, and one of the reasons I had the kind of access to write this book is that I had an enormous amount of trust built in that allowed people to let me into their lives and communities. The families I worked with knew that I was going to treat them with respect, and sadly, they cant always count on that from every journalist. It should be a given, but its too rarely the case.A misperception I encountered while pitching this book to publishers, which American Teenager pushes back on heavily, is the idea that theres any single story to be told about the lives of trans youth. Trans people, both kids and adults, have such diverse experiences because theyre such a diverse group of people, and I never wanted to present trans kids as being a monolith, to say that theres one single kind of trans kid who can speak for everyone. On this subject, the author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie once said: Ive always felt that it is impossible to engage properly with a place or a person without engaging with all of the stories of that place and that person. The consequence of the single story is this: It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. Instead, with this book, I hoped to give trans youth the freedom to speak for themselves, without representing anyone elses experience but their own. Rather than using the stories in this book to generalize and make assumptions about how other trans kids exist, my purpose was to illustrate that there is no way to know about the lives that trans youth lead without asking them. They need to be the narrators of their own stories, and we, as a media and a culture, have frequently denied that to them. I wanted to give them that power: to lead the conversation themselves and show all of us just how rich, complex, and deep their world truly is.Did The Trevor Project or suicide prevention come up at all on your travels?Mental health was a consistent theme throughout the book, and it underscores just how important supportive environments and affirming families are for young people. In West Virginia, Mykah was experiencing a severe mental health crisis after they bombed their audition to NYUs theater school, fearing that they would be stuck in a state where they saw few opportunities to thrive as a Black, genderfluid person. Shortly after I visited Mykah to spend two and a half weeks in their home state, legislators passed a bill banning trans youth from accessing hormone therapy and puberty blockers, having already enacted a trans sports ban. While Mykah was over 18 and wasnt sure then whether they intended to medically transition, the laws passage speaks to the limits elected officials are willing to place on their freedom. If they are willing to take away necessary medical care from kids, what could be next? And how can you build a life in such a place? Those kinds of questions weighed heavy on Mykahs mind at a time when the future seemed increasingly less bright.Even young people with incredibly supportive households still struggled if state policy didnt match the love they had felt in their own communities. Ruby had a loving boyfriend, an incredible family, and a church that has affirmed her from the minute she came out as trans, but she knew she couldnt stay in Texas with the deluge of anti-trans policy being enacted there. In recent weeks, the state began blocking trans people from correcting their birth certificates and drivers licenses. Ruby knew that the only way to truly live her life and to avoid another potentially life-threatening mental breakdown was to move to a place that would allow her liberty. Her chapter saw Ruby planning to give up all the support she had found in Texas to attend school in California, where she would no longer have to fight her own state government just to be herself.This speaks to the importance of allies. To live lives where they can reach their fullest potential, its not merely important that trans kids have friends, family, and community members who will love them no matter what. They also need elected officials who have their back, too.At least one supportive adult can lower the risk of suicide for LGBTQ+ young people. How do you view writing this book as showing up for young people?As I mentioned, Ive been doing this work for quite a long time. In addition to this book, I run an Instagram account, Queer News Daily, dedicated to elevating and uplifting the voices of the community. Ive written for just about every news publication that will have me, sometimes taking extremely little pay to do so. I dont really think about the question of allyship very much because its just my job. If Im not helping young people to get their voices and perspectives out there, then Im not doing it very well.What I hope readers ask themselves is what they can do to be better allies to youth. People who buy the book may notice that American Teenager doesnt end with a big red bow tying everything up, and theres no concluding chapter. I thought about doing it, but it just didnt feel very authentic. I wanted this book to feel like life itself in all its complications and messiness and things dont wrap up. You often dont get the closure you seek. We briefly check in with each kid to find out where they are now, but the truth is that their lives will continue on years after this book is published. They will go off to college. They will have careers that hopefully bring them fulfillment. They will marry. They will grow families of their own. They will grow old, just as children have before them and will after them.If readers want closure, to know that these kids and others like them will grow up to have lovely lives, that is on us. We must build a world that will protect them and safeguard their rights. We must elect lawmakers who have their best interests in mind. We must empower advocates and allies who can fight on their behalf. We must create safe spaces in our schools and communities. We pretend that what happens to them is totally separate from our own lives, but its not. We live in a constitutional republic where we get a say in what our society looks like. We should act like it and vote like it.All of us should remember that we have that power to make trans youth feel as though they matter, because they do. And if youre a trans person reading this, I hope it doesnt take a reporter calling you to feel worthy. Your worth is intrinsic and your beauty is inherent. No one can bestow it upon you, and no one can take it from you either. The world is better because you are in it, and we are all so lucky to have you.What was one story you wish every lawmaker could hear?Lawmakers need to hear every story in this book, and they need to start listening to the young trans constituents whose stories they have been ignoring. The sad fact is that I didnt invent this work. Trans people have been trying to educate their elected officials for years, and theyve been snubbed and turned away. American Teenager was an extraordinary opportunity, and everyone involved is incredibly grateful for it, but it never should have needed to exist. In 2024, we shouldnt still be begging politicians to acknowledge the humanity of children.But if theres one chapter I hope they take with them, I hope its Jacks story. Jack is a young trans girl who was forcibly detransitioned by the state of Florida after she lost access to gender-affirming medical care through its Medicaid program. For five months, Jack went without her hormones, and she almost didnt survive. She stopped eating and stopped going outside. She grew so thin and frail that her mother would sit by her daughters bedside every night, worried her daughters heart would stop in her sleep. Although she got her health care back when she turned 18, Jack is still deeply traumatized by having her body taken away from her for a time period that felt as if it would never end. Her family members say that she isnt the Jack they knew before her forced detransition, and she doubts that she will ever be the same again. All she wants is that person back or maybe to disappear somewhere and start all over.If lawmakers have been unwilling to recognize the extreme pain and trauma caused by their decisions, Jacks story is proof of what they are doing and to children, no less. This should never have happened to anyone, least of all a child.The post Nonfiction American Teenager Meets Trans Young People Where They Live appeared first on The Trevor Project.