Children are receptive to talking about gender creativity, confirming the importance of the book as a means to instigate this dialogue at an early age.

Of course, I can't separate my queerness from my brownness - if anything, my queerness amplifies my brownness, and vice versa - but I spent so much of my early twenties trying to erase my differences, often without awareness of what I was doing.

My art career often feels less like an art career and more like a career in educating, usually by using my body.

When I wouldn't leave home without my blue contacts or when I was bleaching my hair, I didn't have the language to articulate that I was trying to assimilate to whiteness. If anything, I was trying to "look normal."

Now is not the time for Canadians to be sanctimonious. It is time for us to be prudent and active.

Making music has been connected to one of my greatest heartaches, because my own music has never quite connected with audiences. But it was this heartache that pushed me to explore other artistic avenues, like writing and filmmaking, and I ultimately feel most at home in a multidisciplinary environment.

I especially worry about the ways Canadians can be glib about our supposed difference from the US in our "acceptance" of "diversity."