In a time when cisgender policymakers continue to make decisions that can dramatically affect the lives of transgender teens, it can sometimes be hard to remember that the estimated 300,000 youth in the U.S. who identify as trans are, above all, still just teenagers.
That’s precisely what award-winning journalist Nico Lang set out to highlight in their new book, “American Teenager: How Trans Kids Are Finding Joy in a Turbulent Era.”
After writing about the struggles facing young transgender people for more than a decade, Lang felt it was time to let trans teens tell their own stories — about their struggles and victories, from the mundane to the marvelous — through their own words.
Starting in the fall of 2022, Lang, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, embarked on a nearly year-long journey across the United States to document the lives of transgender and nonbinary teens and their families.
For about two-and-a-half weeks at a time, Lang assumed the role of a temporary member of seven families around the country — in states ranging from conservative havens like Alabama to the Democratic stronghold of California — where the author bonded with their subjects, attended birthday parties, watched movies, went to Applebee’s and even met their crushes.
“That’s really the purpose of this book,” Lang told the Daily News. “[For] you, as the reader, to feel like you know them like they’re a person in your life, like part of your family. And the goal with that is that if you feel like you know these kids so well that they’re like someone you’ve known their entire life, you might then vote for their rights.”
Over the past few years, conservative lawmakers across the U.S. have stepped up the attack on the basic rights of transgender youth — from deciding what books they can read to denying access to medically necessary care — as part of what the Human Rights Campaign describes as a “coordinated push led by national anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups” to restrict their freedoms.
Just this year, more than 650 anti-trans bills have been introduced in legislatures across the nation, advocates say, making it the fifth consecutive record-breaking year for the total number of bills targeting the transgender community.
That’s due, in part, to misconceptions about transgender and nonbinary people, according to Lang.
“A lot of Americans still have all these questions about trans people,” they told the News. “They don’t know trans people and they get tripped up by this confusion, then they use that confusion as an excuse to vote away their basic protections.”
Lang hopes their book, which quickly became an Amazon bestseller after its release on Tuesday, can help break the cycle of misinformation.
Lang’s journey started in Sioux Falls, a somewhat progressive city located in deep-red South Dakota, where 15-year-old Wyatt Williams — a high school student with a stellar GPA but who’s definitely not the best dancer in his ballet company — recalled spending part of his early teens “staying home feeling sick about what [his] future might be” as anti-trans laws began to take over the nation.
Lang then traveled to Alabama, West Virginia and Texas, where they met a 19-year-old named Ruby Carnes, whose Episcopalian church held a renaming ceremony celebrating her “true self after 18 years of hiding.” Lang followed Carnes as she got ready to move to California after an executive order signed by Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott directed health officials to investigate gender-affirming care for transgender youth as “child abuse.”
Their journey also took them to Illinois, where Lang spent time with a Muslim teenager; Florida, where they met siblings Augie and Jack; and finally to Lang’s home state of California, where a young advocate for transgender rights “enjoyed the perks of her liberal bubble, even as it appeared ready to burst.”
“I wanted kids to be centered in their own stories. I wanted them to be able to lead the narrative on their lives, to be able to tell us who they are through their own words,” Lang said, adding that hearing from their families was equally important to give readers a more “holistic view” of their lives.
“A lot of parents will read this to feel a little less alone, because [raising trans kids] can be lonely,” Lang said. “You don’t really have a community around that, and you feel like you’re doing this all on your own. And that can be really scary.”
