42 pages • 1 hour read
Juno DawsonA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
The Introduction to This Book Is Gay is written by David Levithan, an American young adult fiction author. Levithan is a gay man who wishes that he had a book like This Book Is Gay while growing up. He spent a large portion of his life lost and confused about his gay identity despite obvious signs like kissing other boys. He hopes that the book can give younger LGBTQ+ people what he lacked in his own youth.
Chapter 1 introduces readers to the “member’s club,” Juno Dawson’s tongue-in-cheek euphemism for the LGBTQ+ community. Dawson opens this chapter with an illustration of “Le Club Secret” and a line of people waiting to be let in by a tough-looking bouncer (1). This illustration sets the chapter’s light-hearted tone while introducing readers to the frequent use of illustrations throughout the book.
Dawson focuses on the pressures LGBTQ+ people feel to be cisgender and straight. This pressure is reinforced by a general lack of education about LGBTQ+ issues. Dawson presents This Book Is Gay as an instruction manual for LGBTQ+ youth who lack the resources from school and family to learn about LGBTQ+ identities.