"sarah hoffman" Archives - Page 3 of 24

Jacob’s New Dress Hits Bookstores!

February 25, 2014 by Sarah

Jacob’s New Dress will be showing up in bookstores this week; Amazon has been shipping it for two weeks. Our first interview about the book and our writing process is up at tipsylit, and our first review is up on Kristine Asselin’s blog. We’ve gotten great reviews in Publisher’s Weekly and Kirkus, on Amazon, and from authors Diane Ehrensaft (Gender Born, Gender Made), Melissa Atkins Wardy (Redefining Girly), and Leslea Newman (The Boy Who Cried Fabulous, Heather Has Two Mommies, and so many other fantastic books). Leslea writes:

Three cheers for JACOB’S NEW DRESS! This is a wonderful story that shows us all that there are many different ways to be in the world. Like Marcus Ewert’s 10,000 Dresses, this book has the ability to save lives and change the world. Everyone should read it.

AND IN ULTRA-EXCITING NEWS, we just got word on Friday that the book is already going into its second printing! And it’s not even officially released until March 1!

We have been delighted with the response to the book so far. A huge thank you to all of you who have bought, read, and reviewed the book. We have been getting emails, messages, tweets, and posts from readers around the world who are sharing the impact that the book has had on their lives and their children’s lives. They’ve sent photos of their kids reading the book, and shared news of bringing the book into their children’s schools and libraries, and told stories of tears and recognition and comfort. These are utterly gratifying, as they are the reason we wrote this book.

Thank you for all of your support as Jacob gets launched into the world.

No Name-Calling Week

January 20, 2014 by Sarah

This morning Sam had his nose buried in Mad Magazine when I interrupted him to tell him it was No Name-Calling Week.

Thousands of schools across the country are celebrating the tenth anniversary of No-Name Calling Week, an annual event started by the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) and inspired by the young adult novel The Misfits by James Howe*. No-Name Calling Week promotes kindness and compassion to eliminate bullying of all kinds, and it’s got a really great curriculum and set of activities to start a dialog about kindness.

I told Sam that his school doesn’t celebrate the week—the school counselor told me, when I asked her to start it at our school, that they didn’t want to do it because expected every day to be no-name calling week, not just one week a year.

Sam said, “People don’t really call each other names at my school. Except the eighth graders. They’re crazy, and they throw balls at each other. But they don’t bother anyone else.”

I sat with that for a moment. Really? No name-calling? All those years of Sam being called derogatory feminine names and being hurt physically and emotionally, of stress and strife and fighting with the school to protect Sam from bullies? They’re really over?

I leaned over and asked, “Do you feel like the bullying experiences you had when you were younger are behind you?

He considered my question. “Yeah,” he said simply, and put his face back into the magazine.

To think: our work to educate the school paid off. Sam’s work as a self-advocate paid off. The school’s anti-bullying work paid off. I am not complacent; I know that life is not always going to be smooth for my gender-expanding boy, that our work is not over, that even if it were over for Sam we’d need to bring it to the wider world. But this is a moment to savor.

* Have you read it? I’m admitting freely that most of what I read these days is young adult fiction, and handed to me by Sam. This is one I handed to Sam, to show him other nontraditional kids celebrating who they are instead of being taken down by bullies. Plus it’s funny. You should read it.

Skirts for Sasha

November 14, 2013 by Sarah

Last Monday, gender-nonconforming 18-year-old Sasha Fleischman was riding the bus home to Oakland from Berkeley when fellow rider Richard Thomas lit Sasha on fire. Thomas, 16, allegedly assaulted Sasha in this way because Sasha, a biological boy who identifies as “agender,” was wearing a skirt. Sasha, still in the hospital, suffered second and third degree burns and will face a long recovery; Thomas was charged as an adult with aggravated mayhem and felony assault, both of which have hate crime enhancements.

Since the incident, there has been an outpouring of support for Sasha. The community quickly raised over $20,000 (donations can be made here), and students at Sasha’s school wore skirts last Friday on Skirts for Sasha day. Tonight there will be a Stroll for Sasha organized “to send the message that love is more powerful then hate and violence, and to celebrate our vast diversity” and “to join together in celebration of a million different ways to be who we truly are.” Local readers who would like to attend: meet at Oakland High School at the corner of Park and Macarthur at 5:30pm; spaghetti dinner at St. Paul Lutheran Church afterward. All are welcome.

There has been so much love and support for Sasha, and so much broadening of awareness around gender, in and outside of Sasha’s community. Naturally a part of the support that we see is outrage. Outrage that one person would do this to another, outrage that it happened in the progressive Bay Area, outrage that a person–a teenager–should be punished simply for being themselves. We are fortunate that we have this outrage within and among us, fortunate that an event like this does not go unnoticed by all but the victim, fortunate that the awareness of gender diversity has grown so much in recent years that there even IS this outrage around us. Often, such awareness grows by leaps and bounds only after a shocking or tragic event. And so we sit–and donate, and act up, and stroll–and we try to hold this thing in balance, this thing which holds us in a place of both love and outrage, this thing which both changes the world and also which seems like too high a price for any one person to pay.