When you're 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 Pac-10 employer, it's not your gender non-conformity 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 different--and feeling different--that can't be attributed to race, especially if you're 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 don't feel quite right.

, 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 double-dutch jump rope is it a reflection on her gender identity, racial identity, or both; and is viola player a gender or just a sexual orientation? Ajuan Mance's comic Gender Confessions take up each of these questions and more, as it invites to share in those moments that mark the path of a gender explorer.