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funkyfreshramblings · 3 years

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A Story Twenty Years in the Making

CW: Swearing, sex, transphobia (Look, I'm not proud of who I was).

Shortly after I was born, a cousin of mine was as well. My mother took me to a store where she looked to buy a dress for her new niece to celebrate her birth. A woman stopped and looked at my mother, baby Devon in the stroller, dress in her hand, and curiously spoke up.

"Excuse me miss, but you know that you have a boy, right?" The woman shopping, presumably for her own daughter, had said to my mother.

"Of course I know I have a son. What about it?" My mother said in response.

"Well, that's a dress you're holding. Why would you be buying that for your son?" The woman puzzled.

My mother, quick as a whip and smarter than most people I know today, responded without a second thought.

"I'm letting him experiment with his sexuality."

---

At twelve (12) years old, I became aware of this really weird website. You see, everyone was talking about it, a schoolyard rumour we didn't dare to talk about in front of the teachers. The mythical status of this website was nothing to scoff at, students would huddle around and talk about their findings. It was like an ARG, a new puzzle added every day. The school was rife with these conversations, and everyone was hooked.

I'm of course talking about Pornhub.

Obligatory "don't go on Pornhub unless you're the legal viewing age in your country" aside (even though I'm aware those warnings stop nobody), I too became a curious mind. One day, when my parents had slipped out of the house and I was alone, I pulled it up on my computer upstairs. What I say fascinated me, women and men having sex.

Sex. Woah. Penises, vaginas, anuses. There was everything on this website. Everything. Including this one tab which I didn't dare click.

This one category had what appears to be two men on it. I assumed it was two men, after all neither of them had pronounced breasts like all the women had. And the title of the category? Gay. 'What the fuck does that mean?' twelve-year-old (12) me thought. I ignored it, thought it was weird, and continued on.

In the back of my mind, I was curious. A few weeks after watching straight porn and being mostly repulsed by how awful the women screamed in those videos, I tried it. I clicked on the category tab and was immediately hit with my first exposure to the gay community.

'Twink? Bear? Fisting? Now that's nasty.' I was curiously disgusted but clicked on anyways. "Twinks" looked cute, so I clicked there. Wait, cute? Did I really think these guys were cute? Like I thought my girlfriend was cute?

The video was, simply put, less aggressive than straight porn. Holy shit was straight porn aggressive. It terrified me how much those women screamed like the men were killing them by inserting their penises too far into their bodies. But gay porn looked softer. It was sweeter, with more love. After all, sex is about love, right? Forgive my younger self, you see. He clearly did not understand that nothing in porn is about love. But hey, when working with a half deck, you have to make the cards work.

So I watched gay porn over straight porn. That doesn't mean I'm gay! But wait, if gay porn is between two men, what is porn between a woman and a man. What's porn between two women? Never mind, I'm not that curious about two women together.

A quick Google search sent me down the most soul-searching adventure I'd ever partake in. At least, up until this point.

I soon learned what gay meant, what straight meant, what lesbian meant. You mean boys liking other boys was normal? Girls can like other girls? Wait, you can like boys and girls?

Oh, wait, you can also not be sexually attracted to anyone.

Asexual was a term I first read those years ago, and I soon thought that it described me. See, up until this point, women never interested me sexually. I was twelve (12). Sex really never crossed my mind, even when it was supposed to. But I was watching porn, I thought!

Doesn't matter. I didn't want to be part of those acts. That's what made me ace, I thought.

My lord was I wrong. (Not about ace people, but about my identity. This is where things get juicy. And chuddy.)

---

Okay, so cut to two years later. I'm fourteen (14), in grade ten (10) during Art class. One of my friends sat beside me, my ex across from me, and I hated Art class. Why'd I taken this god-awful course again? Regardless, as I sat there and thought, I thought about my bullying up until high school.

I filled out as a kid. I mean that literally, I grew tall and wide really quickly. No one fucked with me when I was in high school. No one wanted to, and I faded to the background.

But in elementary school, I was the new kid. Backing up to 2009, eight-year-old (8) Devon moved. I would celebrate my ninth (9th) birthday in a class where no one knew me or no one cared. Well, that's not true. One kid cared. Bless that kid. Regardless, 9-year-old (9) me had a target on his back. A big one, and it quickly meant I was being bullied.

My mother is terrifying. I use bold there because I don't think italics can describe just how terrifying mama-bear is when she's angry. After finding out that I was being bullied, she pulled into the school and chewed out the principal. And the parents. And the kids. Hell hath no fury like a mother who went through the shit mine did. So quickly the bullying died down.

Stopped? No, but quieted. My new friends surrounded me in a wonderful bubble of love, but that didn't mean they also didn't pick on me. The most common insult? Gay.

Gay? Like, porn gay? No no no, I said. I'm not gay.

Cut back to 14-year-old (14) me, thinking throughout Art class. I swear Ms. Taylor had it out for me. Oh, right, gay.

'Holy shit.' I thought.

'Wait. They're right, I'm gay. I like men. Holy shit I really like men. Men are hot, and I want to be with one so bad. But I live in this crap town of conservatives (my parents taught me right, conservatives are some of the shittiest people on the planet after all).'

Okay, so I'm gay. I figured that out at the very least! Now I have to tell people.

Oh. Fuck. I have to tell people.

Coming out. Hell, as I like to call it. First to my friends. My friends would understand, after all, I had a pansexual friend. What the fuck does pansexual mean? Never mind that Devon, focus on your own damn self for a second.

Oh. My. God. I have to tell people.

I pulled up my big boy pants and blurted out in the middle of class...

Nothing. What did you expect?

I waited 'till the next morning. That made sense.

---

"Hi, Sierrah!" I said to my colourful friend. Her hair was always a different colour every month and still is. I wish I had half the hair strength she must have.

"Hey, Devon!" She said, blue backpack on her back, meeting up with me to walk to school in the morning.

"I have something to tell you. I'm gay." She looked at me and squealed before wrapping me in a big hug.

"I'm so proud of you!" Okay, one down. A lot more to go.

My best friend in high school used to be someone who I absolutely despised. We bonded over our shared dislike of our shared ex. We became really close. Telling him was pretty easy. Okay, two down.

Remember that girl I sat beside during Art? Not my ex, the one I bonded with my best friend over disliking, I meant the girl sitting beside me. Well, let me tell you.

No one can give me a reception nearly half as good as what she did when I told her.

"Sara, I'm gay," I said. Less than five (5) seconds later, my face was buried in the tits of Sara. That was... fun. Not sexual in the slightest, it was fun. She was warm, and she loved me. I could tell that as a friend, Sara would become the most important person in my life. Thank you, Sara. Should you ever read this.

I hope someone reads this.

Anyone?

Moving on, I eventually told all my friends that day. None of them gave a shit! Cool!

My parents.

Oh no. My parents were next.

I'm skipping that part, it's no longer relevant.

Sorry. (Not sorry in the slightest.)

---

So I graduated the gay kid of 2018. Yay! Seventeen-year-old (17) me made it to grad!

But before I did, I need to preface this part of the story. I was, unfortunately, a fan of Soygon of Asskad. And Blairina Weiss.

Shame. Shame. Shame. Not a day goes by where I'm not sorry for my actions during this period of my life. I am so profusely sorry for the racism and transphobia I perpetuated during this period of my life. I was even homophobic. God damn it, Devon, what the fuck are you doing?

I am now a proud socialist. University helped. So did Vaush, and BadBunny (who's chat might be reading this. Henlo Nicole! Henlo chat!).

Scream at me about Vaush later.

Okay, where was I? Right, grad. University applications.

I made it into the University of Toronto Mississauga. Canada's best university. One of the best universities in the world. Holy shit, I should be more proud of myself for that. I am proud. I made it there, and as I write this, I'm on my last year.

Here's to me becoming a med student soon, I hope!

So school happened. I went to school as a shy gay kid with undiagnosed anxiety problems. That wouldn't last, and soon my anxiety was written in the prescriptions I was handed over the counter for Lexapro. This is where I met my first friend from university.

He will remain unnamed for legal reasons.

He introduced me to one of the most beautiful men I've met to this date.

S. (Name redacted for reasons you need not know. Not legal reasons. Personal ones. Please respect this decision.)

Woah, was this guy just... hot. He was an athlete, no way he'd like me. He probably also sleeps around, and I don't want that.

Boy was I wrong. I soon found out that S was very much into me. I was someone's crush. Wow!

That eventually turned into a... relationship. You get the gist. Affirmation.

I was very, very gay. S helped me understand that I was very very gay.

Okay, so eighteen-year-old (18) Devon was gay. That was very clear.

So that's the end of the story, right?

No.

We just crossed the halfway point.

---

Cut to twenty (20). I am gay, an active chatter in BadBunny's (Twitch streamer, not singer) discord, and really really confused.

See, progressive streamers like BadBunny typically have features to add yourself to a role on Discord that would tell everyone your pronouns when they clicked on your profile. This is a really good way to affirm pronouns of everyone, so I'm down.

Well, I do have one problem. Any/all isn't listed here. Wait.

Wait...

Any? All?

Why do I feel like this?

I'm cis. Let me make that clear. I am cisgendered. I identify as a man, I was born a man, and I think I will always be a man. I think.

But I know pronouns don't necessarily tell you someone's gender. They is a really popular pronoun for all sorts of non-binary identities, all of which are different from each other. So pronouns do not equal gender.

Can I really use they/them, she/her, he/him, fae/faer, fawn/fawn, etc/etc. all while being cis? I think so, let's try it! I don't know how to describe my gender, all I know is I'm apathetic to my pronouns.

Cut to a TikTok video. I learned my fucking gender identity from a TikTok video. This is why representation is important.

"Gender Apathy" we're the words coming from this person's mouth. She? He? Them? Didn't matter, they didn't care. I didn't care.

We didn't care.

Holy fuck.

---

Google has been a really important resource for me as an academic student. Wikipedia articles affirm my suspicions before I move onto Google Scholar to look up articles.

I'm fucking kidding.

Fuck Google Scholar.

But Google did introduce me to the world of fandom wikis.

Is gender wiki a thing? LGBTQ+ wiki?

As it turns out, it is.

Gender Apathy is an article there, as well as many many other identities. If you're question, do some keyword searches. You'll never know what you find.

Anyways, Gender Apathy. Cisapathetic, which I kind of interpret as someone who identifies as cisgender but doesn't really care? I guess? This is all still confusing, but whatever. Cisapathetic.

I quickly shared this with all my friends. I found something new out!

But we aren't done yet.

---

Cut to a little while later. It's Pride month, 2021. This month, if you happen to read this as soon as it goes up! Someone on TikTok is making Pride moths.

Fucking TikTok.

Moths were, at one point, a really popular meme online. Lämp. Gen Z humour will be the end of us all.

So naturally, people found a love for moths. Great, that's lead us to this point. I notice during these videos that these moths are pretty. I want one, or rather, two.

I want the modern Pride moth. The trans flag and a black and brown stripe were included on this modern Pride flag to signal that BIPOC are central to Pride, and need to be celebrated and that our trans friends need our help. Need our platform. Need our rights too.

And I wanted the Gender Apathetic moth. After all, it was something new I discovered! Well, I noticed something in the comments while I was requesting a Gender Apathetic moth from this creator (they were open to suggestions, so please don't heckle me about it). One commenter said the words "are you doing a Neptunic/Uranic/Saturnic moth as well?" What the hell are those?

To the LGBTA wiki!

Neptunic is described as a sexuality "attracted to women, feminine non-binary people and neutral non-binary people."

Saturnic is described as a sexuality "attracted to androgynous aligned non-binary people."

Uranic is the one I'm really curious about then. I'm attracted to men, after all. Uranic is described as a sexuality "attracted to men, masculine non-binary people and neutral non-binary people."

Woah.

So let me back up a little bit.

When I had access to Twitter (they suspended me for defending my sexuality from someone who was saying gay men all have AIDS, so thanks Twitter) I once made a thread talking about how I didn't feel comfortable with calling myself gay.

"But Devon," I hear you say, "the whole first half of this story was dedicated to you realizing you were gay! How can you say that after wasting so much of our fucken' time?"

Give me a minute, dear reader. Let me explain what I said in this thread.

As I type this out, I recognize the transphobia I had against trans-men even while typing out that thread. I want to say, right here, right now, that my sexuality is trans-inclusive. Men with vaginas are still men. I am still very much attracted to men with vaginas. But this thread still falls on transphobic remarks. Once again, I profusely apologize for my past. I am currently working towards being a better person to my trans friends, both online and offline. I am doing my best to be better. I love you all, and I thank you for taking the time out of your day to read this.

Oh, and U of T, if you're reading this, before you even think about kicking me out for admitting my previous bigotry, I urge you to think about your staff first. Jordan Peterson still has a job and makes the campus trans-exclusive as he continues to teach. Catch yourself before you come for me, a student doing his best to be better.

Okay, so back to the Twitter thread.

I essentially said something along the lines of this:

I really struggle with calling myself gay when in reality, I'm only attracted to people with penises, and who lack vaginas and breasts. I would have sex with non-binary people who have penises. So am I really just "gay?"

But in a lot more words. Before I continue, I want to take the time to explain how this comment is transphobic, and why I am sorry and why I want to explain that I no longer feel this way. Okay? So, here's the short of it:

I go by the term gay, but by saying I'm explicitly only attracted to people with penises while liking men, I was indirectly making the point that trans-men are not men if they too do not have penises.

This is not true. Trans men are men, and I have come to realize my attraction for trans men as well, despite genitalia. My sexuality encompasses men of all kinds, and non-binary people who are masculine aligned or neutrally aligned. Once again, I can only apologize and do better.

I am sorry for my previous transphobia. I hope I can make it better by acknowledging it and doing my best to avoid these implications ever again.

Okay, now that we have all of that out of the way, let's talk Uranic again.

Uranic really does describe me. I feel it in every bone of my body, that I really do find myself sexually attracted to even non-binary people.

So, gay is out, uranic is in.

Where does that leave me today?

---

When I started this post, I explained how I was a cisgendered gay man who was a liberal who almost fell down the alt-right pipeline. But as I type this post, not only has my identity evolved, but so has my political ideology. I am a cisapathetic, uranic man who still uses the term gay in casual conversation because it's easier even though it doesn't really describe me, socialist.

BadBunny/Nicole, chat, if you're reading this, thank you. You helped me a ton in discovering socialism and to reject ideas of capitalism that only serve to continue the systematic racism against black people, the systematic transphobia that kills trans people, and even the systematic homophobia I face as a "gay" man.

Wow, that was long. Really long. If you made it this far, give yourself a pat on the back. You just read the life history of a twenty-year-old (20) and how he came to understand his identity.

I love you all.

Signed,

Devon.

FunkyFreshHomo on Discord.

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color-of-magic · 7 years

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Becoming LGBT?

I started preschool when I was three years old, and I went to the same all-boys catholic preschool that my brother had gone to two years before me. I only went there for a year, and I don’t remember any of it, but there’s this really cute picture of me on picture day standing in a crowd of eight boys fixated on the doggy chew toy that I had in my mouth.

The next year I went to a co-ed presbyterian preschool, and I cant really tell from the picture, but I think there were only two boys in my class. My best friend was named Theresa and she had a hyphenated last name that I thought was the longest name I had ever seen, and she was allergic to tree nuts and peanuts and milk and eggs, and every Friday I would go over to her house and we would watch that movie Spirit and we would do a 100 piece puzzle and plan the rest of our lives together. We were going to adopt a puppy and a pony and live on a farm together and I know this because I saved all the letters we wrote to each other for years after I moved again.

In kindergarten I kissed my best friend while playing and the teacher saw and suddenly they weren’t fine with us playing house with two mommies and I was sent to the principals office. I got a talking to about how you aren't allowed to touch other people while at school and I was so scared by my visit that the next time I would allow myself to touch a friend would be in 10th grade.

In first grade I was sent to my grandparents house without my parents for the first time. and I got to play with my grandparent’s old transformers. My parents were starting to get worried about my tomboyishness and were making me wear more and more pink and skirts and dresses and I would cry every time they did but I would still wear them to make my parents happy.

At this time my grandfather began to pester me about the boys in my class that I might have a crush on. He heard the name Evan once and to this day he still asks “How’s Evan doing?” and “Has Evan asked you out yet?” Jokes on you, Grandpa, he’s gay too now.

I really liked playing with those transformers and I would sit on the rug in my grandparent’s living room while my grandmother read a book on the couch, and once she caught me completely by surprise by looking over at me out of the blue and asking if I felt like a boy trapped in a girls body. I was so surprised by this that I said yes, because I knew that I wasn’t a girl and if I wasn’t a girl then I must have been a boy. Somehow this got back to my parents and my father hit me until I cried and I promised that I would never call myself a boy again.

Sometimes a girl would look at me and I would forget how to breathe and I told myself that it was just because I was shy but it never seemed to happen with boys.

In the beginning of fourth grade I heard the word gay used as an insult for the first time and it was directed at my older brother and I was confused because the only time that I had ever seen gay used was in the book Pippy Longstocking. In the book it meant happy and I was wondering why happy would be an insult.

At the end of fourth grade I was so tired of being asked who my crush was and not having an answer that I opened my yearbook and closed my eyes and pointed to a person at random and did this three or four times until the person my finger landed on was a boy. From that moment on he was who I said my crush was whenever I was asked. His name was John in case you were wondering.

In fifth grade I got my first crush on a fictional character. It was Ginny Weasly but in my head I justified it by saying that I was just so happy with Ginny and Harry’s relationship. At this point I began thinking the reason I didn’t feel like a girl because I read so many books with a boy as the main character. And maybe I didn’t like boys because that main character always kissed the girl. I stopped reading at that point.

My mother made me start wearing bras in the fifth grade and I can remember hiding under the comforter on my bead in just my underwear and new bra, crying that first morning she made me put it on because it felt so wrong and I didn’t want anyone to be able to tell that I was a girl. Later that day we went to Costco and I remember that I hid in the bathroom stall and I took my shirt off and stared at my chest and cried instead of peed because I knew that even if I took the bra off people would still be able to tell that I was a girl because I had boobs now.

In sixth grade the first couple of the school got together and they held hands on the playground and kissed once and I was confused because I kissed a friend once and got in so much trouble but they could kiss and hold hands and face no consequences.

In seventh grade I started thinking girls were so pretty and sometimes I couldn’t take my eyes off them and there was this one girl in particular, she played softball and the clarinet and was in all but two of my classes and she wore skirts with t-shirts and had dark brown hair and eyes and then she moved away and we never spoke again.

In 8th grade I was told by a friend that this friend of another friend of her’s liked me and my heart stopped and I turned bright red and stammered out a very not convincing no-homo that I’m sure she didn’t at all believe.

In ninth grade I became an Ally but I would do that obnoxious straight person thing where I would say 100 times in a sentence that I am straight but support the gays no-homo.

In tenth grade I identified what I was feeling as what can be described at “homosexual tendencies”, but I was so scared of being gay that I justified it in my head by saying that I wasn’t feeling any sexual or romantic attraction to these girls, just aesthetic, so I’m probably asexual and not in any way a lesbian. And after all, I had a crush on Evan and John, remember?

In 11th grade I realized that yes, I am defiantly attracted to girls. Not at all asexual like I once thought. 11th grade was the year of very intense gay feelings for people that never quite went away, but I always managed to convince myself that it would never work because they were straight. As it turns out, only one of them are actually straight.

11th grade was also the start of all the self-hatred. Because I was disgusting for liking these girls and if any of them knew what I was feeling they would all hate me and I would never be able to make friends again. Gay marriage hadn’t yet been legalized and I was so worried for my future and whether I would be able to get a job or adopt kids or live a happy life.

In 12th grade I went to prom with a beautiful girl. Just as friends of course, but I still remember her red dress and the way her hair curled down her back and the shade of her lipstick. And I might have had a mild, no, correct that, major crush on her too. And I danced with a different girl at the end of the night, just before it closed at midnight as the lights were starting to come back on and people were starting to exit. When we were done she kissed the back of my hand like I had done to my friend all those years ago and her lipstick stained my skin and shoulder and in that moment I wasn’t afraid of who would see me or how I would be perceived. In that moment I thought maybe gay can be okay.

Sense I’ve left high school I’ve done a lot. I’ve gone from being completely closeted to coming out to a friend, and then another friend (all over text mind you, because I’m too scared to do that sort of thing in person) to saying the words “I’m a lesbian” out loud for the first time. I’ve gotten my first binder and I’ve changed my pronouns and name (more times than I can count before I finally found one I liked and told others). I’ve made so many gay friends and I’ve become comfortable with myself as a result of their support. I’ve gone to my first and second pride and I’ve become the vice-president of the gay club. All that’s left now is for me to kiss my first cute girl and live happily ever after

#long post #tyler said a thing #tyler wrote a thing #becoming gay #LGBT #lesbain #non-binary #positivity #growth

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terrieallison510 · 6 years

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Trans in the South: Meet Kids Finding Acceptance in the Bible Belt

Awesome Black Metal Stuff!

Fluttering around her balcony garden, Allie pauses to check on her plants and herbs, her long golden hair spilling over her shoulders and down her back. She beams, marveling over her growing cabbage plant.

“I got this from school,” the nine-year-old says proudly. “That’s the first plant we ever had in the garden.”

Allie, whose name has been changed to protect her privacy, then bounces across the balcony to see if any eight-legged tenants had checked into her bug hotel, then back again to run her fingers through a hanging Boston fern named Max.

With her booming personality and bubbly chatter, Allie is an exuberant, confident third-grader. She is also a transgender child living in southern Alabama, a bastion of conservative values, gun shows and Republican voters.

“I have so many friends like, ‘I can’t believe you live in Alabama, especially having a child that’s transgender,” says Allie’s mom Kimberly, who was instantly smitten with Southern hospitality. “When we go out places, everybody’s so friendly and so nice. They all want to talk to you.”

After all, Alabama is home to Roy Moore, the embattled Senate candidate who campaigned on anti-LGBT vitriol and still garnered 48 percent of the vote. Alabama was ranked the number-one most religious state by the Pew Research Center and the state doesn’t have a non-discrimination law covering gender identity or sexual orientation.

Yet southern Alabama has been a kind of haven for Allie and her family.

“Since we’ve moved here it’s like almost every stereotype that I’ve had about Alabama has been kind of destroyed,” Kimberly says. “I definitely worry about her safety here, but honestly she is at risk in even the most liberal areas of the country as well. There’s hate and misunderstanding in regards to the transgender community in every part of the country.”

The warm welcome Allie has gotten in southern Alabama was a far cry from the chilly reception the family received at her former New Hampshire elementary school. Her transition from male to female at the age of six was begrudgingly tolerated at best, Kimberly says.

The principal’s response, she says, was “‘We’ll comply with what you want but we’re very clearly not excited about it.'”

When Kimberly and her fiancé, Joe, met with the principal of her new school in Alabama, they were fully prepared to homeschool Allie if her transgender status was met with criticism or judgement. Instead they were greeted with open arms by the school’s principal.

“She was like, ‘”Look, a student’s a student. My job is to take care of all the kids and make sure they’re all safe and they are all in an environment where they’re comfortable and they can learn,'” Kimberly recalls the principal telling her. “‘And just cause your kid’s transgender doesn’t change that.’ I was like, ‘Hoo, are we sure we’re in Alabama?’ It was awesome.”

All over the Bible Belt, transgender children and their families are finding acceptance and support in traditionally conservative towns. The tide is slower to change here than in more liberal locales, but there are signs that even the most conservative areas are not just tolerating the LGBTQ community, but laying out the welcome mat.

In Mississippi, the controversial H.B. 1523 law is still in effect, allowing legal, religious-based discrimination against LGBTQ people and families, yet the small town of Starkville proudly put their rainbows on display this year for its first-ever Pride parade. It was the largest parade in the city’s history, according to local reports.

Transgender advocates say each experience of acceptance creates a ripple effect that helps bust stereotypes about both transgender people and Southern values.

“The stereotype of conservative communities, [that] there’s an outcry against these young transgender kids, it’s just not true,” says Jennifer Grosshandler, mother of a 12-year-old trans daughter and co-founder the the GenderCool Project, a newly launched nationwide nonprofit that works with transgender children and teens to help them share their stories. “Conservative towns and conservative communities are full of awesome people who are going to support these children. The more stories are told, the more we normalize this conversation.”

There are no hard numbers on the population of American children who identify as transgender, but a 2018 study published in the journal Pediatrics found that of nearly 81,000 ninth and 11th-grade students surveyed in Minnesota, about three percent – or more than 2,100 students – identified as transgender or gender nonconforming.

“What we are trying to show is that there’s no harm in acceptance or simply tolerance,” says GenderCool co-founder Gearah Goldstein, who is herself trans. When communities accept transgender children, “the end result is a thriving child, a thriving family and in essence, a thriving community. Because no one is being harmed.”

Nearly 500 miles away from Allie’s balcony garden, 15-year-old Landon is living openly in his suburban east Texas town. He was chosen as one of The GenderCool Project’s five champions – trans teenagers from across the country that are excelling in sports, school, activism and the arts – and has been been advocating for transgender rights all over Texas, from speaking out against the state’s bathroom discrimination bill at the state capitol to posing for photos with actress Laverne Cox at scholarship event.

“People definitely have these stereotypes about what it means to be a queer person in the South,” Landon says. “I even have these perceptions of the South: extremely conservative, Trump flags around every corner. And, in some cases, that’s true.”

But living in plain sight, he says, are legions of LGBTQ southerners and their allies.

“What I found so surprising is the massive community that we have here,” Landon says. “People that are proud and out and who are able to live their lives at work, at school and with their families.”

It’s only when transgender people bump up against outdated fears and opinions, or are grilled about how and where they use the bathroom, Goldstein explains, that they are forced to validate their existence time and time again.

“It’s so important that people can see Landon and go, ‘Yeah he’s a good dude, whatever. Oh he’s trans, OK,” Goldstein says. “And you can say, you know, nothing to see here. It’s not a big deal.”

That’s what makes Landon such a good role model for his entire community, says Aaron, his dad, and for everyone else who might not have met a transgender person.

“People have given him a chance and gotten to know him, just as a kid,” Aaron says. “And then he just gets gets to be another person judged on his actions, his character his accomplishments.”

Landon himself doesn’t view himself through a trans lens, and he doesn’t want other people to, either.

“I’m not Landon the trans guy,” Landon says. “I’m so much more than just my trans identity, such as an artist, a musician. I play the trumpet in my school band, I like to write poetry, I like to take pictures, I like to work out with my dad. It’s so much more than just being trans.”

Aaron admits he had a learning curve for parenting a transgender child. As he and his wife Erika watched Landon repeatedly throw fits over dresses and skirts as a young child, and demand a “boy short” haircut, they assumed Landon would eventually come out as a lesbian.

For Aaron, the struggle to accept the idea that his child might be gay stemmed, in part, from being raised in the deeply conservative Pentecostal church.

“It was probably an annual, if not more frequent sermon on the evils of being gay,” Aaron says in a soft Texan drawl. “I was kind of told what I should believe on it and once those sermons were over I didn’t have good reason to think about it again.”

Landon began his transition at age 11, with an email to his parents to finally share his secret — that he was meant to be a boy. He agonized over each word, terrified of what hitting “send” would mean for him and his relationships.

“It was such an uncertain action. I remember writing in my journal that I was pretty sure my parents would be supportive, but I was still scared to death of how this coming out and how these few words would change my life forever,” Landon says.

The email was as life changing for his parents as it was for Landon.

“The three of us just hugged and cried,” says Aaron. “We assured him that everything was going to be OK and we didn’t know what we needed to do, but we were going to find out.”

Though Aaron left the church 10 years ago over a difference in ideologies, the idea of a transgender child seemed completely foreign – and terrifying. He carried a lot of fear of what Landon’s life as a trans man might hold.

“I had to let it all out so I’d go outside or in my car,” Aaron says, “and I mean I would just cry and cry.”

It was meeting a transgender man who had built a successful life for himself at a local PFLAG chapter that convinced him to let go of his gripping fear and see that Landon’s life could be just as rich and full as he’d imagined. They’ve also found a tremendous amount of resources for Landon, all just a short drive away, including a medical clinic that specializes in treating transgender patients.

As Landon began his public transition, he and his parents realized almost everyone was willing to embrace him for who he was.

“I have had almost no detrimental experiences in my personal life with those I interact with daily,” he says.

Still, he’s had his identity questioned since he was a child, from the grandparents that insisted on gifting him a pink bike instead of the blue he asked for to the anti-trans bathroom bill supporters who want him out of the men’s room. Even his otherwise supportive high school pushed back, telling Aaron and Erika that Landon needed to use the nurse’s bathroom. His parents told them, firmly, that Landon would use the boy’s room or the school would face legal action.

Acceptance at school, by their peers and the faculty, is a critical step to success for transgender children like Allie and Landon. But even more important than acceptance, Goldstein says, is inclusivity. “That’s where it’s truly important, where, if you do not feel like a connected part of society, that damage is really unimaginable,” says Goldstein, “You’re not just helping the trans kids, you’re helping the entire school by being inclusive.”

Yet the family isn’t blind to the safety concerns that transgender people face daily as they decide when to disclose and to whom. In eastern and southeastern Texas alone, there have been four murders of transgender people in just over a year, including one just miles from Landon’s home.

As a “cis-passing, white male,” Landon says, “I am far less vulnerable than so many transgender individuals. [But] I recognize that these privileges very much impact how innately safer I am, and at a lesser risk of being physically harmed.”

Still, avoiding risky situations is an ongoing conversation Landon’s parents have with him.

“I am aware of how I need to navigate potentially dangerous situations,” Landon says, “and I acknowledge that I may not always be safe, especially with how openly I share and disclose my trans identity and experiences.”

Landon has become an outspoken, go-to voice for transgender rights. After his transition, he got his principal’s support to open a middle school Gay-Straight Alliance chapter.

Last year, at just 14 years old, Landon testified before the Texas legislature against the state’s so-called bathroom bill that would prevent transgender people from using the restroom that corresponds with their gender identity.

“Because I have a strong support system at home and in my community and among my friends, it’s important for me to be open and be vocal and fight for those who can’t,” he says. “Being visible in the South for me is not a choice.”

Earlier this spring Landon took the stage to share his story at an area Human Rights Campaign gala. “His success is a credit to an entire community of support. It just wasn’t one person or one family,” Aaron says. “When people come up to us saying, ‘Oh you must be so proud of him.’ We thank them as well for their part to play in who Landon is.”

Like Landon before her, Allie began blazing her own path from a very young age. “She’d put on a dress and then play with cars,” Kimberly says. By the age of two, “it kind of started turning into princesses and tea parties and she always wanted to do dress up stuff.”

By four, Allie began referring to herself as a girl during playtime and would role-play female characters, such as a mom or sister. Kimberly floated the idea to herself that Allie might be gay, but didn’t give it too much thought. Her concerns were more for the reception that Allie might get while out in traditionally feminine clothing.

“I didn’t know what other people were going to do. Where we lived in New Hampshire, it wasn’t the greatest area,” she says. “I was afraid, too, that she would feel bad about herself. That people, other kids would tell her the opposite of what I’d been telling her her entire life which is you do you, you’re fine.”

Then, when Allie was six and in the first grade, she chose to dress up for Halloween as a female character from the fashion doll franchise Monster High, complete with a wig and makeup.

“When we were out trick or treating, she ran into several kids that she knew from school and they didn’t recognize her at all,” Kim says. “That, I think, was one of the key things that got her to finally be like, ‘This is who I am.”

A few weeks later, Allie’s struggle with her gender identity came to a head. “She told a teacher there that she wanted to die because everybody thought she was a boy and she was a girl,” Kimberly says. “It was terrifying. You never think a child that young is going to have thoughts like that.”

Kimberly wracked her brain and blamed herself. “I was like, I’ve been as supportive as a I can and my kid still wants to die. What did I do wrong?” she says. “And how do I fix this?”

Their pediatrician diagnosed Allie with gender dysphoria and told Kimberly and Joe to follow her lead in terms letting Allie live openly and fully.

“We asked [Allie,] ‘Do you want us to refer to you as she and her, and a girl? Do you want me to say my daughter instead of my son? And she was like ‘Yes, that’s what I want.'” Kimberly says. “And I said OK.”

They started by taking her on a shopping spree for a new wardrobe.

“It was all the sparkly tutu-y skirts,” Kimberly says, “and anything that had sequins and glitter and bows.”

When she went back to school as Allie and with she/her pronouns, the reaction was mixed – and not just from the school staff.

“They decided that I could go to the girls bathroom,” Allie says. “There was this girl. I was in first grade, she was second grade and she didn’t like that I was transgender. She was like, ‘You’re supposed to be a boy, you’re supposed to go in the boys bathroom.'”

When asked what she thought about that, the light dimmed from her eyes and she dropped her voice.

“Didn’t really like it,” she says, before quickly changing the subject back to her garden.

When Kimberly and Joe decided to move from their rough-edged New Hampshire neighborhood, they cautiously took up an offer from Joe’s brother to join him in Alabama. “The stereotypes about Alabama are, we hate the gays, and rednecks and Confederate flags,” Kimberly says. “I was like we’re going bring this kid to the school and they are going to be like, “That child is an abomination’ or something.”

But the exact opposite happened.

While Allie’s principal in Alabama, her teachers, the school nurse and the secretary that handles student files knows that Allie is transgender, they have not disclosed to anyone in the community, including her friends and classmates.

Allie is free to disclose that she is transgender, Kimberly says. “I dread the thought that friends might reject her or someone might harm her in the future,” she says. “As of right now, she understands that not everyone agrees with and accepts who she is and that while she shouldn’t be ashamed of who she is, she should definitely be cautious.”

But for Allie, being transgender is almost an afterthought in her daily life. She’d much rather talk about her cats or her latest comic book ideas.

“I wouldn’t go up to somebody and be like, ‘Hi my name’s Kim and I identify as a female and I have a vagina.'” Kimberly says. “Anybody that’s cisgender doesn’t have to tell their friends what genitals they have, so why does somebody who’s transgender have to do that?”

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The incredible adventures of Nate Powell

The Little Rock native is the first cartoonist to win the National Book Award. His graphic novel 'March,' the memoir of U.S. Rep. John Lewis, may well be the mother text for a new era of nonviolent resistance.

If you've followed the quality and depth of graphic novels over the past 20 years, you'll know how odd it is to say that Little Rock native Nate Powell is the first cartoonist ever to win the National Book Award. That's no knock against Powell, by the way. As a longtime fan of the format, Powell admits it's surprising to him, too.

At the National Book Award ceremony in November 2016, Powell shared the prize with writer Andrew Aydin and U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) for the "March" trilogy. Part memoir, part history, part handbook for a new generation of nonviolent social activists to which the books are dedicated, the series employs Powell's black-and-white imagery and a moving script by Aydin and Lewis to powerfully chronicle Lewis' Alabama youth, his awakening to the injustices of Jim Crow, and his trial-by-fire young adulthood, when, as the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the future congressman helped spearhead the effort to break the back of institutionalized segregation in the South through nonviolent protest.

The award was a bright way station on a still-winding road for Powell, who has been playing in punk bands and writing and drawing underground comics and graphic novels of his own since he was a teenager growing up in North Little Rock. While the National Book Award is a silver feather in the cap of the 38-year-old artist, Powell sees the bigger accomplishment of the "March" trilogy — with its account of how patriotic Americans once met hate, police batons and fire hoses with love and open hands and somehow won the day — in what it may mean to readers-turned-leaders in the next four years. With President-elect Donald Trump ascendant and progressives warning that nonviolent protests of a size and vigor unseen since the 1960s are necessary if we are to preserve not only the nation's social progress but perhaps the American experiment in representative democracy itself, Powell hopes "March" may someday be seen not just as a piece of history, but as one of the principal texts in the coming fight for the soul of the nation.

Lewis, repeatedly jailed, fined and beaten as a young man in his quest for equality, has called that kind of protest "good trouble." Powell has been getting up to that kind of trouble for years, and shows no signs of stopping any time soon.

Soophie

Born in Little Rock in 1978, Powell grew up all over America. His father was career Air Force, and Powell's boyhood included stints living near bases in Montana and Alabama. When he was 10, his dad retired from the military, and the family returned to Arkansas and settled in North Little Rock.

By then, Powell said, he'd been into comics for years, thanks mostly to 1980s TV shows featuring the Incredible Hulk, Wonder Woman and Spider-Man. He's been drawing since he was a small child, and began to take seriously the idea of writing and drawing his own comics in the sixth grade.

Very much a part of the 1980s generation obsessed with toy-centric kids' shows like "G.I. Joe" and "Transformers," Powell soon started buying the comics associated with those brands, along with the early "independent, gravelly, black-and-white" incarnation of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles before the series hit the big time and became lunchbox worthy. Looking around in the local comic book store for another series in the same vein of "G.I. Joe," Powell came upon "The 'Nam" by writer Doug Murray, a series that ran between 1986 and 1993.

"It was fiction, but it was more or less a realistic, unflinching account of drafted teenagers who were forced to serve in the Vietnam War," Powell said. "Growing up in a military family, being a G.I. Joe kid in the Reagan era, this comic, 'The 'Nam,' really opened a lot of doors to me to begin having real conversations with my dad, to understand stuff like cognitive dissonance, and to understand the moral and ethical quandaries of war and political structure."

Powell said the comic book and the conversations it spawned with his father also opened his eyes to the idea that a lot of what he had read about war in "G.I. Joe" comics had nothing to do with the reality of war. Those realizations were soon buttressed by other, gritty titles in the more realistic comics of the late Reagan era. Soon, Powell was reading edgier underground comics by artists like Chester Brown, Geof Darrow and Frank Miller while expanding his artistic horizons through the well-stocked Japanese anime section of a neighborhood video store.

"That kind of changed my path in life," he said. Powell, along with his friends Mike Lierly and Nate Wilson, would go on to write and self-publish a comic book series called "D.O.A.," with the first issue appearing in September 1992.

The same year, Lierly, Powell and other friends at North Little Rock High founded the pioneering and beloved local punk band Soophie Nun Squad, which didn't formally call it quits until 2006. Part band, part arts collective, part performance art troupe, Soophie's shows were an explosion of expression and creativity, with most songs driven by a chorus of voices. The band recorded almost incessantly, and after Powell graduated from North Little Rock High in 1996 — after which he attended George Washington University in D.C. before transferring to the cartooning program at the School of Visual Arts in New York — Soophie toured annually between 1997 and 2006, including three tours of Europe in 2002, 2003 and 2006. In all, the band played over 400 gigs in the U.S. and 14 countries.

Powell remembers his time with Soophie fondly. During the latter half of the 1990s, he would work six months out of the year in different places throughout the country, then rendezvous with bandmates in Central Arkansas to record and plan the next tour.

Even as he was living the punk band dream with his friends, the urge to be a comic book artist never left him. Powell said that as high school came to a close, he took his cartooning to the next level by dedicating himself to art as a career. Powell remembered that his parents, while always supportive of his art, weren't immediately on board.

"You've got to remember this was 1996," he said. "This is peak Clinton era, middle-of-the-road, middle-class prosperity. There was definitely a comfort zone that I was in danger of violating by saying, 'Well, I'm going to throw it all away and go to art school so I can be a comic book artist.' There were definitely some intergenerational issues and some class issues there between my parents and I. It was a bit of a struggle to actually push my way through and convince them of my argument." Powell said that struggle would continue to some extent until 2003, when his first commercially produced book, "Tiny Giants," a collection of his previously self-produced comics, was published by Soft Skull Press.

"From my parents' perspective, it was the first time they could have a tangible example of something they could be proud of," Powell said. "I think once they got over that hump, by seeing a physical product that someone else had lent some approval by publishing, then they were like, 'OK, this really is something that's serious.' " From then on, Powell said, his parents were "staunch allies" of his cartooning career.

Maralie Armstrong-Rial became a member of Soophie Nun Squad in 1997, soon after starting at North Little Rock High in the ninth grade. Powell, she said, was one of the first people she met after moving to North Little Rock. She remembers Powell and the circle of friends who formed the core of Soophie as friendly and welcoming. "They were hilarious," she said. "I didn't like going to school, but I liked going because it meant I could see them and hang out."

Soophie was like an extended family, Armstrong-Rial said. While every member had his or her own level of influence over what she called "the project" that was Soophie Nun Squad, she said, Powell was the one who pushed for action over talk.

"He helped organize all the energy people had," Armstrong-Rial said. "We'd talk about a tour, about this, about that, and he would say, 'Let's get it done.' He handled some of the nitty-gritty things people didn't jump to so much."

Armstrong-Rial said she was first exposed to Powell's cartoons through his work as an illustrator with the North Little Rock High School newspaper. "I'd keep those," she said. "They were very much in line with what he cared about in the world."

Eli Milholland, an early member of Soophie who has been married to Armstrong-Rial for 15 years, said that Powell became a source of creative inspiration soon after he met the young Nate in elementary school. "He drew every day, every chance he could find, during school and at home," Milholland said. "In the following summers, he and his other comic book friends started to flesh out what would become his first self-published comics. Throughout the next six years, he produced comic books, poetic and emotional zines, social and political cartoons for school newspapers, and self-published cassettes and records of local bands."

Milholland said the bonds of his Soophie family are still as strong as his blood family, even though they're scattered across the country. That includes Powell, who now lives with his wife, Rachel, and two children in Bloomington, Ind. Like Powell, Milholland remembers the Soophie tours as a time of exuberant creativity.

"I recall being on what I imagine was our third European tour with Soophie and I looked over at Nate, gazing out of the window of the van at some mountains as we were driving across whatever country," Milholland said, "and I saw him as the 12-year-old that I had met many years prior. I started to wonder how we got all the way across the globe in a van full of kids, performing music to strangers based on the desire alone. It was because of Nate. He had the drive and courage to contact strangers and set up those tours, the practical and the philosophical abilities to make them all run so smoothly. We all had the desire to see them happen, but it was Nate that made sure that they did."

While Powell wouldn't trade his time in Soophie for a different past, he said he can't help but wonder how his present might have been different had he farmed all his creative energy into cartooning and building his comic book career, as did many of his classmates at the School for Visual Arts. Almost every decision of his early life, he said, was structured around recording or touring with Soophie Nun Squad.

"One reason I think my comic career didn't really take off until about 2008 was this structure built around Soophie Nun Squad," he said. "Once we stopped being an active band in 2006, all of a sudden it became very clear to me that I was now free to structure my time any way I wanted. ... There is a part of me that wonders about that alternative timeline where I would have put everything in the comic basket, but Soophie Nun Squad is a very special entity. It's one that — especially in hindsight — is so centered around this familial bond that we all shared. The level of love and dedication and friendship among band members of Soophie is so strong."

'The Nine Word Problem'

Powell graduated from SVA in New York in 2000 after winning awards and grants for his work as a student cartoonist. Having started work as a caregiver for the developmentally disabled the previous year, Powell would work in the field as his day job for most of the next decade, taking jobs all over the country for several months a year before regrouping with his bandmates for what he called "Soophie time." Meanwhile, Powell continued self-publishing comics through his Food Chain imprint in the early years. While at SVA, Powell had made contacts that would be crucial to his future career in the arts, including befriending Chris Staros and Brett Warnock, who would go on to become the founders of the small graphic novel publisher Top Shelf Productions, based in Marietta, Ga. Top Shelf would eventually publish Powell's award-winning graphic story collections "Swallow Me Whole" in 2008 and "Any Empire" in 2011.

Powell quit his career as a caregiver in early 2009 and started working as a cartoonist full-time. It's a job that requires him to constantly work on at least two projects to stay above water financially. Unbeknownst to Powell, by the time he dived into life as a full-time illustrator, the project that would eventually win him the National Book Award had been in the works for years.

Andrew Aydin is the digital director and policy adviser for Lewis, who represents Georgia's 5th Congressional District. An avid comic book reader and collector since he was a youngster, Aydin was already working for Lewis when he came across a historical oddity that melded his interests in comics and the history of civil rights struggle, a title called "Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story."

Long out of print, the short 1957 comic book played a crucial role in the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and '60s by telling the story of the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56. Published on pulp paper by the hundreds of thousands, the comic was used as a teaching tool in the early days of the civil rights movement, handed out to young people who wished to join the struggle against segregation. Aydin would go on to write about the importance of the comic book to the movement in his graduate thesis at Georgetown University.

Spurred by the idea of teaching nonviolence through comic books, Aydin spoke to Lewis about doing a similar project: a graphic novel version of his story to help a new generation of activists. With some badgering, Aydin eventually convinced Lewis of the value of the project, and would later conduct over 30 hours of interviews with the congressman. He turned those interviews into the 300-page script for what would become the first book of the "March" trilogy.

With a draft of the script in hand, Lewis and Aydin signed with Top Shelf Comics in late 2010, and the search was on for an illustrator who could strike just the right tone. Presented with the work of several artists who had previously worked with Top Shelf, Aydin and Lewis eventually settled on the art of Powell. Working in Powell's favor was that he was then finishing up work on another graphic novel, "The Silence of Our Friends," a fictional story of the civil rights movement set in Texas.

"We got the final versions back, and we were like, OK, that's it," Aydin said. "Maybe two or three of the pages that Nate did to try out for 'March' actually ended up in the final version of book one." Powell formally signed on with the project in November 2011.

Like a lot of Americans, Powell said he had a bare outline of the history of the civil rights struggle but was light on specifics. It's an issue that is so prevalent, Powell said, that the Southern Poverty Law Center calls it "The Nine Word Problem."

"It's the idea that most kids graduate from high school knowing nine words about the civil rights movement: 'Rosa Parks,' 'Martin Luther King,' 'I have a dream.' That's absolutely true, if your history class even gets to the movement, which mine never did."

Armed with Aydin's script, an original copy of the "Montgomery Story" comic Aydin had bought him on eBay, and a copy of Lewis' best-selling 1998 autobiography, "Walking with the Wind," Powell set about educating himself. Having spent part of his childhood in Montgomery, just 40 miles from the little farm in Troy, Ala., where Lewis grew up, Powell said many of the locations in the script and memoir were immediately familiar.

"The landscapes that he was describing from his childhood were things that I literally knew like the back of my hand," he said. "A lot of the locations in the 'March' trilogy, I'd spent time there. I'd grown up down the street from them. I was able to explore them in my own memory as much as I was able to explore them through the archives."

Focusing mainly on Lewis' Alabama childhood and coming of age in an era of unrest, the first book of "March" helped Aydin and Powell learn the collaborative process. "I was able to learn a lot about how Nate functions," Aydin said. "What his skills are, where he likes to put a splash page or things like that. I tried to write it best I could to fit with Nate's talents."

Aydin and Powell said that from the beginning, one of the main challenges of the trilogy was humanizing figures that have long since been enshrined as legends, including Lewis. "What we were trying very hard to show and to show fairly was, who were the real people in '63, in '64, in '65?" Aydin said. "Not how they're seen today, but who were they then based on their actions and words? Who were they when they were on the front lines? They're different people."

Powell agreed. "We wanted to actively reject this urge to make the civil rights movement a story, in hindsight, of gods and kings," Powell said. "We wanted to try and illuminate the people who had been swept under the rug, like the Bayard Rustins and the entire female makeup of the movement."

"Part of what helps people gravitate toward 'March' and feel a deep connection to it," Aydin said, "was that we showed human beings before they'd been turned into gods. We need that. When we put them on a pedestal, we remove our own responsibility to be able to do something with hard work in the same way."

"March" was initially conceived as a single, massive book, but a decision was made to split the project into a trilogy. Both Aydin and Powell agreed that worked to the benefit of the project as a whole. The first book of "March" was published in August 2013 to almost immediate critical acclaim. While Powell said graphic novels are a "small pond" where it's hard to find either lasting success or failure, something was clearly different about the appeal of "March," especially in the way it quickly made the jump outside normal audiences of the medium.

"Once that book came out," Powell said, "the real game-changer was when we realized what it meant that teachers and librarians were incorporating the book into schools and institutional settings. English teachers were using "March," but it was kind of a shock that history teachers were using "March" as history. It is history, that's true. But it meant we had to give ourselves a crash course in what it meant to follow historical guidelines to make sure it stayed in history classes."

That realization led to what Powell called "a radical shift" in the amount of research they did for books two and three. While book one, which mostly dealt with Lewis' childhood and coming of age, could rely largely on Lewis' accounts, as the focus of the trilogy pivoted toward well-known historical events, including the 1963 March on Washington and the Freedom Rides that challenged segregated interstate public transportation, Powell said he, Aydin and their editor at Top Shelf were forced to take on what he called the "second full-time job" of researching every aspect of the period and the events they were describing.

"It was this increasing shift by which the books were being taken more seriously as history, and as memoir, and as fine art, but then the responsibilities on the creative and editorial end were increasing radically. By the end of 'March: Book Two,' and during all of 'March: Book Three,' we were spending so much time digging into the rabbit hole of history and uncovering things [that it] was kind of like pushing along this giant snowball that was 'March' as an entity."

That quest for historical accuracy included not just reading every published book they could find about the movement, but digging into primary source documents as well. Doing so allowed 'March' to actually move the ball on the documented history of the time. In one case, Powell said, the minutes of a SNCC meeting held just before the first Freedom Ride in 1961 revealed that every other historical text available had erroneously named the wrong person as one of the original 13 participants. In another instance, a deep dive into FBI documents obtained by Top Shelf editors through the Freedom of Information Act revealed that Rosa Parks, whose simple act of defiance had sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, was a keynote speaker during an event on the steps of the Alabama Capitol after the bloody 1965 Selma to Montgomery march that spurred President Lyndon Johnson to sign the Voting Rights Act.

"If Rosa Parks decided to bookend the civil rights movement by speaking at this event on the Alabama state Capitol steps," Powell said, "one would think history would have that well-documented. ... That's a perfect example of how history is a living creature. We were actually able to find some photo stills that may have been FBI shots from observers in the crowd that actually showed what Rosa Parks was wearing. So 'March: Book Three' is the first book that actually transcribes and gets into Rosa Parks' speech on the steps. It's transcribed from FBI surveillance documents, but it just got lost in the shuffle."

Time and time again

The second volume of "March" was released in January 2015 to huge critical acclaim, and went on to win the Eisner Award for the year's best reality-based graphic novel. When the third book appeared on Aug. 2 last year, it immediately shot to the top of the New York Times' best sellers list, where it and the other two books in the series stayed for six weeks. Nominated for the National Book Award for Young Peoples' Literature, Book Three — which ends with images of Lewis attending the 2008 inauguration of Barack Obama — won the prize Nov. 16, a week and a day after the surprise election of Donald Trump as president. Aydin sees that as the culmination of a trend that had dogged the publication of the three books, and which reveals their necessity.

"When Book One came out, the Supreme Court had struck down a section of the Voting Rights Act," Aydin said. "When Book Two came out, Ferguson happened. And when book three came out, Donald Trump happened," Aydin said. "I think what's happening in our nation has been this steady progression toward a necessity for 'March' ... . There is immediacy to it that we didn't expect. We always pitched 'March' as being a handbook. That was the idea. But we're lucky we had the idea when we did so it's available and it's out there. If we were just starting it now, it wouldn't be there to help, or at least be a founding document in whatever this new struggle will be."

"I felt increasingly, especially while we were making Book Three, that we felt like we were watching something unavoidable unfold, and we had to get in and push back against it," Powell said. "We had to push with a particular side of history to make a future that wasn't as dark as maybe it appears to be right now. It's been very intense."

Powell, who is working on a new graphic novel of his own called "Come Again," along with a project with writer Van Jensen called "Two Dead," agreed that the "March" trilogy has a new power and relevance since the election. America just made a collective choice to wind back the clock on social reform several decades, he said, but the books can serve as a guide to turn the nation away from the dark future he fears.

"It shows the successes and failures of a massive social movement to make the world more balanced and more just for everyone," he said. "But particularly, it shows a roadmap by which people can learn from those mistakes, can adapt, with a lot of the successes, and push them in new creative ways. ... We're living in such an urgent, grave time. This is not a drill. That's where I kind of return to the recognition that 'March' is a tool. It's personal, it's political, it applies to all of us, but at the same time it's the document of a group of young people and their experiences changing the world, as young people have done time and time again."

The incredible adventures of Nate Powell

#The incredible adventures of Nate Powell

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