ADVOCATES

JOEL KIM BOOSTER

34 · Excellence in Action

BY MARGARET CHO

When we wrapped Fire Island, which Joel Kim Booster wrote, produced, and starred in, we were given a gift of shorts that said IT’S GIVING MOVIE. That’s exactly what I think when I look at Joel. He’s giving star. He’s giving excellence. He’s giving the queer Asian Americans something truly amazing to aspire to. And he’s giving laughter and lots of important observations on race, class, culture, sex, and being gay in all of those realms. He’s giving voice to the previously unheard and unknown. He’s giving a gorgeous face to the invisible. As a fellow Asian American queer comedian, he’s giving community. And together, we are giving family.

Cho is a comedian and Emmy-nominated actor

GEORGE M. JOHNSON

36 · Challenging Censorship

BY JASON REYNOLDS

Brave is an overused word. A word, I’d argue, that has become milquetoast and cliché. So despite the urge to do so, I will refrain from calling George M. Johnson brave. I’d rather consider George urgent, because urgency implies spark and pulse. It connotes importance and immediacy, and in George’s case, a personal constitution that propels them toward the melee of hate and censorship, not to oxygenate the fearmongering, but to stand in the love they have for the children they serve through their writing and advocacy. When their debut memoir, All Boys Aren’t Blue, became a focus of growing book-banning efforts in 2021, George responded with that trademark urgency—contesting not only the censorship of their work, but threats to other such works across the country.

In the opportunities I’ve had to spend time with George, we’ve typically laughed and traded notes about how much of their fortitude comes from their family. And perhaps that’s what drives George: they see children, more specifically Black children, and even more specifically queer Black children, as their family. They are George’s nieces and nephews who deserve to laugh as hard as George does in the