photo by: Contributed

Author Nico Lang during a previous reading for a book tour in Hartford, Connecticut, earlier this year. Lang will come to Lawrence's Raven Bookstore, 809 Massachusetts St., Thursday night for a reading and book signing.

Over a decade of reporting on LGBTQ+ issues, Nico Lang has noticed something missing in discussions about transgender kids in state legislatures and in the media — namely, just how ordinary these kids are.

Lang, whose work has been featured in publications like Rolling Stone, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, is the founder of Queer News Daily and has spent over a decade tracking LGBTQ+ issues across the U.S. In recent years, Lang said that meant reading about legislatures introducing bills that would curb rights for trans people, especially for trans children.

But the way legislators described kids’ daily lives felt “alien” to what Lang had seen over years of reporting on the trans community.

“They don’t know anything about (trans) kids and don’t know anything about their lives,” Lang said.

That’s part of why Lang wanted to write a book about the day-to-day experiences of being a transgender child or teen: “American Teenager: How Trans Kids Are Surviving Hate and Finding Joy in a Turbulent Era.” The book follows eight real transgender, nonbinary and genderfluid young people from across the U.S. and showcases all kinds of things from “their daily lives, their hopes, their dreams, their aspirations,” Lang said.

On Thursday, Lang is coming to Lawrence for a reading and book signing from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Raven Book Store, 809 Massachusetts St., in an event supported by PFLAG Lawrence, the Trans Lawrence Coalition and PFLAG Kansas City. Lang hopes the visit can shed light on the lives of trans youth and help people connect and feel less lonely during a trying time.

“It means a lot to share a space with people who know what they are experiencing,” Lang said.

Legislation targeting trans people has been on a steady rise across the country in the last five years. According to data from the Trans Legislation Tracker, an independent research organization tracking bills that impact trans and gender-diverse people across the United States, 947 bills were introduced across 49 states this year that seek to “block trans people from receiving basic healthcare, education, legal recognition and the right to publicly exist.” 118 of those bills were passed into law. In 2021, 143 anti-trans bills were introduced across the country, with just 18 being passed into law.

In Kansas, the GOP-led Legislature overrode a veto from Gov. Laura Kelly earlier this year to pass SB 63, a bill that prohibits health care providers from using surgery, hormones or puberty blockers to provide gender-affirming care to anyone younger than 18 who identifies as a gender that is different from the sex they were assigned at birth. A Douglas County family has filed a lawsuit to challenge the ban, as the Journal-World reported.

These laws, Lang says, reflect a major lack of understanding or knowledge about what it is like to be trans. Despite the intense political focus on trans people, they make up less than 1% of the U.S. population as The Associated Press has reported. Because many people don’t have personal experience with these issues, Lang thinks there’s a vacuum of knowledge about trans people, and that bad actors have filled it “with disinformation or hatred.”

In the book, Lang wants to fill that vacuum with stories of real kids and their experiences.

“These kids are wonderful. They are ordinary kids, which is the point,” Lang said. “They are lovable, infuriating, weird, idiosyncratic and funny — and so human.”

Some of the inspiration for Lang’s reporting comes from “fly on the wall” documentaries like “Grey Gardens” or “Hoop Dreams.” Lang would spend about two and a half weeks with each family and “embed” in their lives. If the family went to the town’s homecoming game, Lang went with them. If they went to the grocery store, Lang went with them there, too. Lang talked with the kids about topics good, bad and mundane to try to help readers really connect to their family and community.

“I wanted the book to be as immersive as possible, that at the end of the book you get to know these kids so well,” Lang said.

Seeing these ordinary teenage lives helps “demystify the idea that there is something salacious or untoward” about the existence of a child who doesn’t conform with their sex at birth, Lang said.

That said, it’s sometimes impossible to ignore the unique burdens that these kids face. On top of the “mundane, growing-up stuff” like high school drama, they are also dealing with restrictions passed by state legislatures that are sometimes “trying to erase (them) from existing,” Lang said.

Lang recalled one student, named Wyatt, who said he felt “his childhood has been stolen” by “lawmakers who won’t let him be himself.” Hearing these types of sentiments from the kids “newly enraged” Lang.

“Kids all across the country are dealing with that. It just needs to stop,” Lang said.

This will be the first time in Kansas for Lang, who is looking forward to coming to Lawrence. Lang said the conversations with families and other people during the book tour have been wonderful and “therapeutic.”

In a time when both queer community members and allies are feeling outraged at the state of American politics and attacks on their community, Lang said these events bring together people to share their feelings and frustrations with those who understand where they are coming from.

“It feels like we’re all alone, but that’s not true,” Lang said. “I think being reminded of that is valuable and very life-giving.”

More information about the event is at the Raven Book Store’s website.

photo by: Contributed

The cover of American Teenager: How Trans Kids Are Surviving Hate and Finding Joy in a Turbulent Era by Nico Lang.