Stonewall Book Award Honoree, Nico Lang, visited New Mexico State University to host a reading and Q&A of their book “The American Teenager: How Trans Kids Are Surviving and Finding Joy in the Turbulent Era.” Lang’s novel depicts vivid and heartfelt snapshots of the lives of eight transgender and non-binary teens from across America.
“I essentially wrote a fly on the wall documentary where I gave these kids a platform to talk about their lives and just tell us who they are, and what that really looked like is that on the ground,” Lang said. “I would spend two and a half weeks with each family, kind of just doing whatever they did.”
The idea behind Lang’s novel was to authentically share the diverse experiences of families with transgender youth, highlighting their complexities, challenges, and resilience. Lang said they wanted to counter common assumptions about trans families and show that their struggles are often not centered around being trans but about broader family and societal issues.
Lang said they seek to support others by storytelling, providing opportunities for visibility, and encouraging ongoing activism. They mention that their work as a journalist includes helping younger queer journalists develop their voices, recognizing that advocacy is an ongoing process that needs fresh leadership for the future.
Through the hardships of the process, Lang maintained a focus on the need to advocate for oneself and others, to “keep showing up, keep fighting,” and to ensure that new generations are equipped and inspired to continue the movement for transgender rights.
“The really tough thing is that I was going from family to family to family, that it would be like three weeks on and two weeks off, three weeks on, two weeks off,” Lang said. “I did that for nine months, like it really, really, really took a toll on my body. Especially because I wasn’t able to physically distance myself from these folks. I was in their space all the time, taking on all their emotions, taking on all their trauma, all the stuff that they were going through, and I found it tough to really disentangle myself from that.”
The event was brought together in partnership with PFLAG, which was established in 1995, focuses on education, advocacy, and support for LGBTQ+ people and those who love them.
Cassandra Calloway, president of PFLAG Las Cruces, has had her own journey with having a daughter who is a part of the LGBTQ+ community. When uncertain about what to do with the hardships she and her daughter faced, she was advised to go to PFLAG.
“From there, it just became something that I do,” Calloway said, “I love the organization and being there for other parents who might feel the same way I did and needed support and didn’t know where to go and can get it.”
“To be able to pick up a book and see yourself as a non-binary, as a person, as a trans person, to be able to see somebody wrote a book and that somebody cares about what you have to say, and that your existence is real and that it’s out there, and like Nico said, you can be anything you know that you want, and to get those stories out there, I think it’s important,” Calloway said, “I think that sometimes people don’t humanize the community.”
Lang distinguished between “accepting” and “affirming” by describing acceptance as a shallow form of recognition, essentially tolerating someone’s identity without deeper understanding or support.
In contrast, affirmation means truly seeing and believing a person when they share who they are, and actively conveying that they possess the same dignity and worth as anyone else, according to Lang.
“[Affirmation] says that you have the same dignity and worth as anybody else, no matter who you are, and you can be affirmed for being a queer person, for being a trans person, for any kind of background you come from or belief system that you may hold,” Lang said.
One of the attendees, Jacob Castillo, expressed the importance of books like American Teenager.
“I think these books are important because they can show not how those kids are different from us, but how they are the same,” Castillo said. “I think one thing about our country is that we express our differences, but that can blind us in terms of how we can all be better, and we can all be better by doing better and acting better with each other first.”
Lang’s book, “The American Teenager: How Trans Kids Are Surviving and Finding Joy in the Turbulent Era,” can be found on PFLAG’s website, along with resources for LGBTQ+ youth.
