I was never the fastest, funniest, the tallest, and certainly not the best looking, but I always fit in. I had a gang that sort of we teased each other but never bullied each other. So I don't know what it's like to be ostracized, to be attacked by somebody who feels they have strength in numbers because they think they're the the normal and you're the abnormal. What it's like to be a five year old and and have your teeth kicked in
and what you do to carry that forward in life. I once was a teenager who didn't feel seen in the world, who didn't feel like I had any life experience, and didn't give me the resources or any type of guidance on how I was going to navigate young adulthood as I went into adulthood as a black queer person. My guest today is George M Johnson. He's an award winning black non binary
writer, author, and executive producer. With his brother, he wrote the New York Times best selling All Boys Aren't Blue, discussing their adolescence growing up as a young black queer boy in New Jersey. My book does not introduce them to these things. It is reinforcing them with the knowledge and the tools as they are already dealing with these things such as racism and anti blackness and homophobia. As a former journalist, George knows how to put words to paper.
It's written for Teen Vogue Entertainment Tonight, NBC BuzzFeed, and he's recognized. Salute to Excellence Award by the National Association of Black Journalists, hundred most influential of African Americans in 2020, and he's honored as one of TIME one hundred's next most influential people in the world. Hi. It's Tony Chapman. Thank you for listening to Chatter That Matters presented
by RBC. If you can, please subscribe to the podcast. And ratings and reviews, well, they're always welcome, and they're always appreciated. George M Johnson, welcome to Chatter That Matters. Thank you. I wanna begin by just taking me back to, you know, 10/31/1985. So you're born on Halloween? Yeah. You talk a lot about your supportive family, and more than once you mentioned nanny. Yeah. You know, she was my grandmother, from Spartanburg, South Carolina.
You know, even though we lived in New Jersey, she kept much of our southern roots and southern traditions live through, you know, the foods that we cooked, her accent, just, some of the colloquialisms and her wisdoms that she used to teach us. Although she was, like, an older grandmother, she was a cool grandmother. Like, she liked
to do fun things. She would take us on vacations, and she she actually liked hanging out with us, playing cards with us, and gambling with us, and going to the casino, and just so you, like, you had, like, this fun side to her, but she also was very, you know, powerful in the ways in which she wanted us to focus on our education and kinda raised us all together like we were like a tribe in a sense, so that we all learned how to, you know, protect one another and cover each other.
But she just had, like, this emotional capacity for anything. There wasn't a problem that you could be having that she, you know, you couldn't turn to her and talk about. I wonder if she's with you now. She would say, and I stayed so young because of having you and your brother, Garrett in her life in the sense that just feeding off each other. And you talk about us, and then obviously Garrett's played a major role in your
life as well. So tell me a little bit about your younger brother. Yeah. You know, we grew up really close. We're only three years apart. We also went to college together. And in many ways, we're, like, more than best friends. I'm, like, we're already siblings, but it's, like, we just get each other and know each other inside and out because, you know, we really, really grew up very,
very close to one another. And now Gee has a child called baby Gee, and now I'm extremely close with Baby G and like now me and Baby G have our own relationship too. I guess it was just extraordinary because I was, you know, so effeminate and he's definitely much more masculine than I am, but we never saw that in each other, we just saw each other, you know? It never really came up, you know. Other people would bring it up, but we
never really brought it up. And I think that's what I appreciate about having a younger brother who was just so confident in me being, his older brother. When I was reading some of the articles that you'd written and some of the that you're into, you said that, you know, even at age five, I knew something was different. I was attracted much more to boys than girls. I was
very effeminate. Did you have anybody to talk to? Was your grandmother or anybody there to help you sort of come to terms with that, or was that just something you sort of had to compartmentalize on your own? I think it was something I kinda had to figure out, you know, for myself because it wasn't like I knew what was going on. Right? So it wasn't like I could just fully verbalize what I was feeling in those terms because I didn't really have the language yet to verbalize it.
But I do think that, like, my family could notice my mannerisms at that point were a little bit more, as society would deem a little bit more effeminate, a little bit more soft spoken, a little bit more sassy at times, and so I think, you know, my family did notice that, but they didn't try to, like, punish me for just being what I was naturally being. And I think they realized early on I wasn't trying to imitate anything. I was actually just being
myself. And so I do think that that helped because I do know kids will get punished for not being tough enough and boys don't cry and all of that stuff, but we never had that. Like, it was always like an open space for us to just actually be who we naturally were. You know, you talk about this wonderful inclusive space being with your family and nanny and gee, but when you walked out of that, even at age five, my heart really went out to you. But the fact it wasn't so much you were
ostracized, it was violent bullying. How did it feel like to walk out of a door where you felt comfort and confident that you are who you are and there was a the thought authenticity was celebrated and to suddenly have to go out there and even play act just to survive? Yeah. It's just isolating, I think, is the best way to describe it. Because even within your own family, if you don't have too many images of yourself, you still tend to maybe isolate yourself a little bit or stick to your own.
So even though I'm super appreciative, because I did, you know, me and my cousins used to hang out all the time, like, it was great, but I would also run into, you know, just situations where I just didn't feel like I fit in. And so, yeah, you tend to just kinda isolate yourself. It's like you try to find little pockets of where you could fit in and little
pockets of happiness that you could sneak in. But it's tough. It's tough because you're really just trying to navigate your safety in many ways at that point. And you were violently attacked when you were five too. Right? I mean, there was there was some physical abuse. Yeah. I mean, me and my cousins got
jumped. It's, like, hard to pinpoint, like, whether the attack was just because of me being, like, effeminate or if this was because my cousins were older and they had gotten to some beef earlier that day in school, and I just happened to be a casualty of it. But, yeah, as a five year old, I definitely experienced trauma that was really, really tough. I guess because I've written a book and I've processed it so many times, I kinda understand,
you know, how life works and and things. But that can be tough for those who are out there who have never had the, opportunity to process it, which is why I talk about it, because I hope that people who do read it can, you know, get the opportunity to process it themselves. How important is
writing? I've had people that have dealt with a lot of trauma in their childhood and the ones that seem to find a way through it, not hide it, not bury it, not surrender just to a therapist, but actually write about it. They find that that's, you know, one of the great pathways to coming to terms with it. Writing is therapeutic for me to get it out, I guess, on paper and like, to be able to just like release it from my body has been extremely
helpful. All avenues of how we have to deal with trauma are necessary. For me, I do prefer to write through it. It allows me to kind of read it and allows me to kind of process it in a way that maybe I hadn't thought about. And once I start writing it out, I start to maybe remember other things, too, that, maybe I had just buried that really needed to be said out loud. And so, yeah, I do think
writing is like a very healthy form. Journaling is a very healthy form of like dealing with, you know, some of the anxieties from day to day, honestly. The last thing about your youth that I used the word code switching, the sense of hiding aspects of your identity. How did that help you? And as you look back in your life, did it help you just get through the day or is this something that helped you come to terms with the fact that some people would judge you
without even really knowing what was inside you? I mean, I think code switching in many ways, especially, just as a Black person, as a Black queer person, I mean, I think we still have to do it throughout life. I don't think it ever stops. I think we have to navigate certain rules in certain spaces by, you know, sometimes hiding certain parts of ourselves. And like I said, I don't think it always comes out of a place of wanting to fit in as much as it comes
out of a place of wanting to be safe. And so I think, like, the ability to do it has just been something about how we've had to adapt to culture and society for us to survive it in many ways. And so I did it as a child. There are still times I do it today where I give public appearances and public speeches all the time. I would love if I could just curse in all of my speeches. Right? Because that's how I normally talk. I talk with curse words.
So when I'm doing public speeches, though, I have to switch. Our ability to have to do that is a lifelong thing. Most children, you just especially Black children, Black queer children, you adapt to it really quickly. How do you learn what rooms you feel safer in versus which ones you don't, and you move in a way according to, I feel like, your safety. And interesting you talk about Virginia Union University and how that was a place for not coming out as much as is coming into who I really was.
Yeah. I think, you know, going to Virginia Union, one, you know, it's a historically black college, so it put me right back in especially after going to Catholic school for four years, then going right back into a institution where it's 95% African American and Black, you know, it was a beautiful experience because I got to feel back at home again. Even if I was queer, I still felt back at home because I was surrounded by people who looked like me and went through similar
circumstances to myself. I think in going to Virginia Union though, that's when I really started to meet other queer people. And that was life changing for me because it was like, Oh, like, we I'm not by myself anymore. And even if we were a even if it wasn't a whole lot of us, it was more than I ever had in New Jersey. And so, it was, again, I felt like at Union I was
constantly running into the things that I had been running away from. But now, I had the opportunity to embrace those things in a way that, I had lost. And so at Union is really when I started to gain my, you know, queer identity as I, started to date guys and, you know, go to gay clubs, and, you know, after I turned 21 and go to my first pride parade that summer and, like, all of those things happened while I was, you know, in college or about to graduate from college. And how did you
change when you walked into your home? Because you said, yeah, it's a celebration, but there was times I still even had to code switch at home. It was still a little bit of play acting because I just didn't feel like I was ready to, like, tell my family I was gay. So I think that was really the, the main part of the acting. Like, I didn't have to, like, change how I walked or how I talked or how I did anything. It just was more so of, like, keeping part, a part of my life away from them.
And so, in Virginia, I would, you know, go to the gay clubs and do everything, but in New Jersey, I wouldn't do that. Like, I would kind of just stay home. Or if I went to New York City, to the city, I wouldn't tell them I was going to hang with, like, a bunch of my gay friends in the city, you know. And then I think I finally got to a place where I felt comfortable and then I started like I was probably around like 25. I started bringing like my gay friends home for like Christmas and
Thanksgiving or events and things of that nature. And so it just started to blend my world with my family's world. When we return, before I get to my three takeaways, George talks about how he was able to turn his early life lessons and experiences into a best selling book, which in turn saves lives of others just like it saved him. Hi. It's Tony Chapman. I wanna talk to you about the RBC purpose framework. This is a bold commitment to make a meaningful
difference in our communities. By 2035, RBC will make a philanthropic investment of $2,000,000,000 to support community ideas that help seed, scale, and sustain solutions in three key areas where RBC believes they can have equitable opportunities for prosperity, including food security, housing stability, health services, and financial well-being. When communities thrive, we all prosper, and that matters to you, to me, and to RBC.
When I thought about what all boys aren't blue had done, I feel like that's the present, and it helps the future. But it's like sometimes we need to go back to the past, retell those stories too, because they give us a road map and they give us a blueprint of where we are today and how we got here today. You don't have blackness without queerness. You don't have queerness without blackness. They all go hand in hand together. My guest today is George M Johnson. He's an American author. He's a
journalist. He's an activist. He identifies as a queer African American, and he's best known as the author of the memoir manifesto, All Boys, Art Bleu. How did that come about, and how did it feel when you suddenly put that out to the public world? It was tough because we were in the pandemic. I oftentimes grapple with what my actual excitement level was for when my book came out
because we were all stuck in the house. So it was not the happiest moment, you know, it was a very hard moment because I was, you know, hoping that the book would get to anyone because we had no bookstores open at that time. And fortunately, it did work, and people were able to get the book and word-of-mouth spread about it. And to me it just felt great to put this story in the world because I saw so many people say that this was like the first time they felt reflected in a
book. That was all I wanted. I wanted to put a story out there that, you know, could talk to the 14, 15 year old me that needed a book that was like this to help them navigate, their way through life. And that's been the most beautiful thing about it. You write flamboyance and it's almost like now you've become, and I mean this with passion, a crusader. I told you my story, but there's a lot more stories that need to be
told. Tell me about what made you shift from, I'm gonna just share my story to now becoming a curator and an amplifier of others. It got to a place where I was, like, realizing that people, younger people, you know, were, like, we've we have a hero in you. Like, you know, and they were, like, this is so cool. Like, we get to meet you, we get to talk to you, we read about your life, and you help us so much, and you're like a hero to us, and I was like, Well, who
was the heroes to me? Like, who were my heroes? And then it like, some of these people that I'm researchin', I didn't know they were queer, and so it it kinda started to spark the idea of, like, how do we go back in time and tell these stories of our, queer ancestors who have either been whitewashed or have either just not been told at all, in the proper light. Pay homage to the totality of who they were as people while also
giving their stories to a new generation of people. I do want people to see, you know, me as someone that is fighting to put our culture out there and all of those things, but I also want them to be able to know that Marsha P. Johnson was a role model too, and, Gladys Bentley and, you know, James Baldwin and, you know, Richard Bruce Newjay, like all of these people also existed too, and, like, less, like the more y'all learn about them, the more you'll in turn learn
about yourself and learn about the fact that you have like history and legacy here. So like you're not some anomaly that's happening like that we've always existed here. The easy way would have been a, a sort of a historical piece. You combine poetry and essays and these beautiful illustrations to bring it to life. And it was almost counter what I'd call this multimedia TikTok world that you brought it back to almost like what I would have found
if I was a historian looking a hundred years ago. Yeah. That was a very active choice. I didn't want it to just be about the Harlem Renaissance. I wanted it to be the Harlem Renaissance. And so I wanted a person to feel fully submersed in the Harlem Renaissance. And that's why even the audiobook has music from several of the people that are profiled because it was like, I need you to feel like this is Harlem. And The New Negro by Alain Locke, you know, it did the same
thing. It was combining many of these same things. And it's like, if I'm gonna do a text about the Harlem Renaissance, then it needs to really feel like the Harlem Renaissance. And I want you to be wowed by the color of it and the flamboyance of it and all of the things that, made the Harlem Renaissance what it was, which was poetry and essays and personal, reflection and, you
know, illustrations. And so, it all just came together really nicely, which I'm super excited for because sometimes these things come in my head and I'm like, I could see it in my head. I don't know how we turned it into a book. You've become this positive force. I mean, they're calling you a hero, you're a crusader, you're opening people's eyes, but you're still running into a very thick wall. I call ignorance up there. I mean, people are trying to ban the book. How do you
come to terms with that? Is this just something that that you can say over time, it can change if we keep elevating these stories and celebrating them, Or do you just come to the realization that they're in that castle and they'll never lower a drawbridge and who cares because the rest of the world is worth celebrating? Yeah. I always say it's not my job to always erase the ignorance of others and it's definitely not my job to erase
the ignorance of an oppressor. It is the job of those who sit across from Thanksgiving tables and think that it's okay that we can sit across from this table even if we have differing opinions that could kill someone. Like, that's a problem. It is your job to do that. It is your job to get your cousins and your aunts and your uncles who think that book banning is okay when you know it's not
okay to understand why, right? That can't be the job of the writer, and it can't be the job of the librarian, and it can't be and kids shouldn't have to become activists to fight for their own rights because one parent has an issue with a book that their child probably doesn't have an issue with, because that's actually what we run into the most, is that the kids do not have issues with these books. It
is the parents. I've just had to, like, going through this journey realize, one, they're not reading the books, so you can't, like, you can't fight that type of fight with a person who's never even read the book. So this is like an ideological war, so you have to fight it from that standpoint, and what you have to realize is sometimes that ideology shifts, but these people, they throw, like, noodles at a
refrigerator, tryna see what sticks. And I feel like with book bans, it's interesting because it's like, what we're seeing is, like, the same books are getting banned but we know more books are coming out every year so how are you keeping up with the new queer books that come out every single year and the new Black books that come out every single year and the new Latinx books that come out, like, y'all not y'all your mission makes no sense because y'all have no actual
system of keeping up with how many new texts are still coming out that are gonna be available to teens every year with the same topic that you keep the same 10 books attacking. Right? Because the and so I feel personally, like, we're winning in that regards because I have a new book out that introduces 14 more queer people into the world to young adults, you know? So unless they catch it, like, are you going to ban it? Do you even know it
exists? You know, you're based in LA and you're, you know, you would argue that American content is the dominant culture around the world. As a Canadian, I'm always fascinated to know how does that exist in your country when what I see from the outside in is, oh, I'm a diehard Republican, a diehard Democrat. How do you find a place in that says that we can still create this without it driving you crazy? Because to me, it's like these
opposing forces. I, I don't understand how America could produce such content, such books like yours, and yet have that mentality even at the dining room table. There are just so many factions of each of the binary parties where it's like, there's a huge swath where you wouldn't be able to tell if they're a Democrat or a Republican. Even though they may have chosen a party, it's like, there's no, like,
monolith to it. And so it's like, you have the far left and then you got the model right and then you have Republicans who are now like, Look, I'm voting for the other party, right? Like, it can be daunting because it's like you don't know what people really feel, and I kinda talked about this the other day, how, like, some people are like, I don't think books should be banned, but I also
wouldn't let my child read your book. Right? That's a interesting person that you're dealing with, and I find myself dealing with a lot of those people. You feel like the right to have the choice for the book should exist, but I also wouldn't let my child read that book. I don't know, there's a belief that children can't deal with heavy topics. I was a teenager
when nineeleven happened. You're afraid of your child reading about a book about war and about death and about the it's like we live through it. We're watching we watch it happen. You don't want your child, you know, to read about a book about reproductive health or that has sex in it, and it's like your your child, your daughter just lost her rights with Roe v Wade two years ago. She needs to be able to read books about this. No, the heavy topics are
happening to them right now. They need these books. What do you bring to an audience that when you walk away or that somebody comes up at the end of it and looks you in the eye, not just there to sign your book, but looks you in the eye and says, you said this and it mattered. What do they say to you? Parents walk up to me and they'll instantly start crying because of how the book helped change their child's life. I've had people say that the book saved their lives. People come up to me and
have me sign their book in their chosen name. Seeing me, actually seeing me and talking through the things gave them enough courage and confidence to say, I finally wanna change my name. I've gotten letters of, you know, kids who decided to, you know, live in their new identities, and parents thanking me, and teachers thanking me, and librarians thanking me, because they're like, I had there was a quiet kid in my class, and I couldn't reach him, and they saw your book on the shelf, and all of
a sudden, it's a brand new person. There are a lot of heartbreaking stories because there are a lot of parents who are just trying to protect their queer kids. But what they appreciate the most is, like, that somebody out there is just fighting for them as hard as I'm fighting for them. And for me, I'm I'm just forever grateful for to be able to do that work. My last question to you is where do you take the fight next? For me, what's most important is the expansion, of the work into TV and film,
into other mediums, whether it's podcast. I think that's how you get beyond this is making it so accessible that you can't block it. Right? So it's like, okay, you banned the book, but there's a podcast that they can listen to about the book. Okay. You banned the book, but we did a mini series about it, or we made a movie about it or we made this about right like creating as many avenues to tell these stories is just as important as telling
the story in and of itself. That's what my fight becomes it's as I continue to write these stories also finding newer ways to tell these stories that, create more access points for those who need to hear it. I'll always end with my three things. I'll just say the first thing I love is strength in numbers. Like, no matter what they're gonna do, there's more books, there's more stories, there's gonna be multi image. We're gonna release an onslaught of content and
creativity that moves people and opens their minds. I love that, strength in numbers because at one time in your life, you didn't have the strength in numbers. I think instead of running from running into, it's such a beautiful way of describing, instead of coming out, like all of a sudden, okay, I'm different. You're saying, no, it's not about, am I different? It's about who I am, why I matter. And I think it's just such a great insight for people because everybody seems to
struggle with what is just human nature. And the last thing that, you know, you talk about who are my heroes, whether it was gee or nanny or someone else in there, but somewhere in your life along the way, pass the torch to you and probably some people looking down in the heavens saying, keep going, man, because you're not afraid to, to have these conversations like your nan wasn't afraid to go to the casino. So for all that and more, you know, I just really appreciate you joining me
in Chatter the Matters. Yes. Thank you. Once again, a special thanks to RBC for supporting Chata that matters. It's Tony Chapman. Thanks for listening, and let's chat soon.