We Are Stronger Than Censorship Conversation with Kyle Lukoff

This interview between Kyle Lukoff and We Are Stronger than Censorship was originally shared on September 25, 2024. Watch the full interview below and read on for a condensed version of the conversation with Kyle. The conversation has been edited for clarity.

Lee Wind (he/him): Hi, everybody! My name is Lee Wind. I’m a frequently challenged author of books like Love of the Happy Peach, a picture book. And also I’m the Chief Content Officer for the nonprofit Independent Book Publishers Association, which we call IBPA for short.

Book banning has become a bit like a runaway train with efforts to restrict the availability of books, featuring queer black and other underrepresented characters, themes and history at an all time high. This is really about the chilling effect. It’s not so much about the 10 books that end up on the ALA’s list of top most banned books. It’s about teachers and librarians being afraid to bring in books they know will be helpful for their students, for their patrons, because they’re afraid of the blowback.

So that’s created this chilling effect that is really impacting independent publishers much more than the corporate publishers who are also selling Bibles or their political books. And this is impacting creators, authors, illustrators, translators, and young readers, maybe most of all because it’s further marginalizing those with less privilege, less access, and less representation.

So, in response to all this, IBPA and EveryLibrary Institute teamed up to create the We Are Stronger than Censorship program. For every book that [was] banned or challenged between September 1st and September 30th, 2024, we [bought] two or more books from independent publishers and donate[d] them via regional freedom to read and national organization partners turning negativity and fear into positivity and love in the form of books.

[We have a creator of one of those books here with us today.] Kyle Lukoff. Kyle, can you say hi?

Kyle Lukoff (he/him): That’s me, I’m the author of When Aidan Became a Brother, which was published by Lee and Low, as well as many other books, some of which have also been on banned or challenged lists.

Lee: Can you pitch us on When Aidan Became a Brother please?

Kyle: Yeah, I will do that in one sentence because that’s how I talk about it. When Aidan Became a Brother is about a young transgender boy helping his family welcome a new baby.

Lee: Awesome. I have a theory, which is that most of the books that I write are kind of like I’m writing them for my childhood self like the books that I wish I had had, that I didn’t, as a young, gay, closeted Jewish kid growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia. And so I want to play a game. I want to imagine that we have a time machine—maybe it’s the size of a microwave oven—and if you could send your book back to your younger self, I’m curious what that would have meant to you.

Kyle: First off, I think it would have been very confusing to me, because this book has my name on it. Well, this book has my last name on it, and when I was, you know, 6 or 7, I had a different first name, so I might have thought, oh, weird. I have a relative named Kyle who wrote this book.

But then, also, I don’t think that this book would have made much of an impact on me, because, you know, I was 6 or 7 in 1991 or 1992, when trans identity certainly existed and trans people certainly existed, but the larger cultural framework for understanding it was not yet in place. So I think if I had this book when I was younger, I think I would have just been very confused.

And what’s cool now is that when I read this book to 6, 7, 8-year-olds today in 2024, they’re not confused. They know what’s going on. They get it. They have the language. And I think that this book is much more transformative in a world that is already primed to accept it than having it sort of like drop down from the sky as an as an anachronistic phenomenon.

Lee: As an adult, was there a healing in the writing of this for you?

Kyle: Only professionally. By the time I wrote, When Aidan Became a Brother, I’d been an out trans adult for over a decade. So sort of the early stages of me, figuring out who I was, and resolving, you know, squaring the circles of my past had mostly been done. When Aidan Became a Brother, I think, helped me prove to myself and then to everyone else that not only was I capable of writing a good picture book, but that trans stories could be more than just stepping stones for understanding. They could also be literature in and of themselves.

Lee: Hmm, thank you. Yeah. And it’s beautiful. I I love this book.

So I asked your publisher if they could share a bit about the the meaning of your books, especially in the face of book bannings and the chilling effect it has, and I wanted to share what their thoughts were, and then get your reactions and hear what you think about it. Here’s what the Lee & Low team shared.

“LEE & LOW BOOKS INC. Is honored to be part of this inaugural group of fiercely independent children’s publishers, for We Are Stronger than Censorship. Our beloved award winning picture book When Aidan Became a Brother by Kyle Lukoff, and illustrated by Kaylani Juanita tops our list of known banned or challenged books. It’s a universal and relatable story for any child concerned about being a good big sibling, but also offers readers a glimpse into the everyday life of a trans child and his family. It’s for these reasons, and so many more, that When Aidan Became a Brother needs to be readily accessible across all communities. Lee & Low trusts our Black, Indigenous, people of color, LGBTQ+, and intersectional storytellers to share their truths. Lee & Low trusts librarians and educators for their professional expertise. And, above all, we believe young people have the right to access and read the books in which they see themselves.”

What are your thoughts on that, Kyle?

Kyle: My thoughts are that I will always be so proud and honored to be a Lee & Low author. And a thing that I really appreciate about Lee & Low, something that I appreciated about them before before I was one of their authors, is that they are very specific about where their values lie. Lee & Low does not simply say, “We want all children to see themselves, or we want all artists to succeed.” They are very specific about championing artists and authors of color and other marginalized people. That’s where they put their money. That’s where they put their resources. That’s where they put their time. That’s where they put their energy, and that is also how they try to hold other publishers to account for not being as diligent as they should be, I guess, in this regard. I think that that sort of moral clarity is really one thing that is needed in the whole book banning conversation because I see so much rhetoric going on about like all people and everyone and all of us, when really it’s queer people, people of color, Black people, Indigenous people, immigrants like specific groups of people that are specifically being marginalized and that are like specifically the targets of this movement. And I appreciate, as always, Lee & Low’s precision and specificity, and speaking about exactly who they are fighting for and why.

Lee: Yeah, and they also released an annual survey that kind of gets into how are we as the overall publishing industry doing in terms of diversity? And we’re not doing that good. So it’s interesting that, like you’re saying Kyle, the the challenges and the bands that are happening are really attacking books that are not celebrating patriarchy and whiteness. They are the other books. They are the books that are celebrating queerness and that are celebrating Black identities and history. And it is all the sort of like, you know, the under-resourced, underrepresented books that are that are offering that representation. Finally, we’re making a little bit of traction. And these are the books that are being attacked.

That’s a really good segue into the fact that Banned Books Week is not a celebration of books that are banned. It is a celebration of the importance of books and of public access to books that libraries and schools provide and really letting folks who can’t afford to buy books still have access to the stories that can be life changing and and life saving, especially when we talk about books with queer content like our books. These really do have that kind of impact. And I wonder, is there a book that changed your life like? Or is there a library story or another book memory that you wanted to share with us?

Kyle: I can’t really talk about any specific books that changed my life because my entire life has always been books. I don’t know who I would be without every single book that I ever read, even the ones that I hated or didn’t finish or whatever. And also for the last—gosh!—12–15 years, my life has been like bookstores and library stories, so I could do this forever.

But I want to tell one specific story. It’s very brief, and it’s very funny. I was a school librarian at a small, independent elementary school in New York City, and one of my students checked out the graphic novel Drama by Raina Telgemeier that has, I think, like two boys kissing or something. It’s like a very tame, gay, romantic subplot. Not too long later, the mom came in, and she was carrying the book. And she was like, “My kid checked this out, and I just don’t think it’s appropriate for them.” And I said, “Oh, why?” And she said, “I just. . .” and she looked at me and like, I’m obviously precisely what I am, and she’s like, “Well, I just think that it’s not.” And I was like, “What about it?” And she could not say to my face what she did not like about that book. And she never brought it up again because these people are cowards. And sometimes when I’m asked “What would you say to the people that are trying to ban your book?” I usually don’t want to talk to them. I usually don’t have an answer for that question, but I will never forget that one woman who could not say to my face exactly what she didn’t like about that book, and it’s a great memory.

Lee: Thank you for sharing that. It makes me think of how so much of this is about trying to force us back into the closet as queer people. It’s our visibility that is being contested. I would love to hear what you hope each reader gains from reading your book.

Kyle: I don’t have an answer to that because that depends on who’s reading it, and I think that every book is a relationship between the reader and the text. But one time I read this book to a class of, I think three-year-olds, maybe four-year-olds, and there’s always a time for question and answer. And usually when it’s older kids, they ask questions about what it’s like to be an author. Where did you get your ideas from? Why did this happen in the story? But these very small children where all their questions were, why do babies cry so much? How come you have to change their diapers? And just like very specific questions about what it’s like to live with an infant. And what was funny to me was that the director of the early childhood program said, Oh, friends, let’s ask Kyle questions about being an author and about the book, and I was like, they don’t know what that is like. They have no conception of jobs, and that’s fine. They are relating to this book based on their own experiences, and that’s all that I really want for it.

Lee: That’s cool. Yeah, there’s definitely this thing where it’s like the book is yours in the manuscript form. And then it it kind of becomes sort of ours once you have a publisher involved and and an illustrator. And then it becomes the readers when they experience it. I had a question about the illustrations. One of the illustrations that really resonates for me as as I’ve read your book multiple times are the balloons.

Kyle: Yeah, I’ll show that illustration because it’s lovely. “It’s a baby.”

Lee: And was that something that the illustrator brought to the project?

Kyle: Yeah, I don’t think I gave Kaylani any notes at all. I just delivered the text and all of the great details, like, there’s like. There’s a there’s a page where it says 50,000 names for babies and babies where Aiden has crossed out the word boys and girls, there are a couple of small changes that I asked her to make, but when I saw the initial sketches I knew that she deeply understood exactly what this book was trying to do, and the illustrations add profound level of meaning to everything that’s going on.

Lee: Yeah, it’ amazing, that magic of words. And then, it’s somehow synergistically so much more.

Thank you so much. Really glad that you were here with us for this panel.