When youre the only Black kid in the honors program or any program at your mostly white high school or one of a handful of Black graduate students in your PhD program or one of two African American women on the faculty at your Pac10 employer its not your gender nonconformity that sets you apart from your peers In those environments your Blackness is the first thing people notice about you Still there are other ways of being differentand feeling differentthat cant be attributed to race especially if youre one of the people whose awareness of the unwritten rules of what it means to be a boy or a girl or a man or a woman is tempered by the fact that most of those rules dont feel quite rightIn Gender Studies True Confessions of an Accidental Outlaw Ajuan Mance gives comic treatment to the challenges complexities and occasional absurdity of life at the crossroads of race gender and geekiness This graphic memoir answers important questions like How many preschoolers have to mistake you for your dad before you actually start to forget your own name if a Black girl is awful at doubledutch jump rope is it a reflection on her gender identity racial identity or both and is viola player a...
