Me though? I was only interested in comics.' Growing up, Rebecca assumes sex is just a scary new thing they will 'grow into' as they get older, but when they leave school, start working and do grow up, they start to wonder why they don't want to have sex with other people. I thought including them was a good idea, but they would be more useful in a more clearly noticed location.PRISM AWARDS FINALIST 2021 GREAT GRAPHIC NOVELS FOR TEENS - YOUNG ADULT LIBRARY SERVICES ASSOCIATION (YALSA) 2022 'When I was in school, everyone got to a certain age where they became interested in talking about only one thing: boys, girls and sex.

The book includes trigger warnings on the copyrights page, but I didn’t notice them until I was finished with the book. Either way, I really enjoyed this book and thought it was a satisfying and informative graphic memoir.

But they packed a lot into this book so it might have been too much to also go into autism as well. I’m not asexual, but I am autistic, and I found myself wanting a bit more of a look into how the two overlapped for Burgess, or how they found them to be interconnected. It got across the intense societal pressures to fit in and get into a relationship that is in the background of almost all of our media, as well as broader family/interpersonal pressures.

I liked that the book focused on the full scope of how complex life can be and how a bunch of different issues can affect someone deeply without anyone noticing. The art is expressive and full color, which I think in this case adds to the overall package. I’d been following Burgess’s work for a while so was excited to see this book pop up on their Twitter, and it lived up to my hopeful expectations. It also covers OCD, anxiety, and touches a bit on autism, so it manages to cover a lot of ground in 208 pages. How to Be Ace is both a good coming of age memoir and a great primer of what asexuality is and how the social pressures to have sex and find a romantic partner can be very damaging. This is another winner from Jessica Kingsley Publishers, which I’ve become increasingly aware of in the last year as a great specialty publisher.

How to be ace rebecca burgess