A Conversation with Nico Lang About “American Teenager”

Diana Ruzova

1 year ago

Award-winning LGBTQ+ journalist Nico Lang (they/them) has written a debut ethnography, American Teenager (Abrams Books, October 2024), which profiles eight young people in various stages of gender affirming care. The book sheds light on what it’s like to be a transgender teenager in America today, both the challenges and the deeply relatable heartwarming mundanity of the human condition.

The forward calls out some startling statistics: up to 260,000 trans Americans and their families have become ‘internal refugees,’ meaning they have to relocate from their hostile repressive state to a more supportive one. This is due to recent legislation in several states, targeting parents of trans youth who allow their children to undergo hormone therapy and other transition-related procedures. These laws deem their actions (what many see as parental support) as a form of child abuse. In fact, studies show that gender-affirming care early on makes a huge positive impact on a teen’s life. American Teenager is an essential read for all genders. It does an excellent job humanizing the contemporary trans experience. And research shows that when a cisgender person knows a transgender person (young or adult) they are more likely to support and empathize with the trans community more generally.

I gave Lang a call on a hot late-summer day in September. We discussed what sparked the idea to write American Teenager, how they went about conducting the interviews, and what their mood board looked like for the project (surprisingly eclectic).

Diana Ruzova

What sparked the initial idea to write American Teenager? Why were you the person to write it?

Nico Lang

I’ve been an LGBTQ+ journalist for over 10 years now. And a lot of that work, at least since 2016, has been about the rights of trans kids. I’ve corresponded directly with families of trans youth all over the country. I must have talked to over 100 families at this point. It’s just such a big part of my work. And I already had these connections. I knew these families. I knew their kids. I’m friends with some of these moms now. As a journalist, you’re not really supposed to be friends with the people that you cover. But if you’ve known these people for years and years, they share so much of themselves with you, and you share so much for yourself with them. It’s just kind of inevitable that you become part of their community, whether you’re supposed to or not, and because I had those connections in place already I had that trust built in. I knew I could go so much deeper than a lot of journalists have access to on this really important topic. I had a responsibility and the access to do it. Why wouldn’t I write this book?

Diana Ruzova

Walk me through the process of writing this book. How did you select the subjects?

Nico Lang

The first three families were families that I knew already, but that I felt had so much more depth to their stories than I previously got to explore. Susan Williams is the founder and executive director of the South Dakota Transformation Project, which is the state’s largest statewide trans advocacy group. She’s doing incredible work. I’ve known Susan for a long time. I stayed in her house during a road trip. I went on a road trip across the country to all these different states that had been impacted by anti-trans legislation, because I wanted to meet people and talk to them about how this had been impacting their lives. And to really see with my own eyes the impact on local communities so I could better understand this as a reporter. I literally self funded that trip, because my publication wouldn’t pay for it, and I knew it was important to do. I’m somebody who needs to feel rooted to the ground when I’m reporting a story. So I got to know Susan’s family really well. The Alabama family I knew because I had profiled them for Rolling Stone. As a journalist, people don’t want to open up to you if they don’t trust you. So having that foundation in place is so critical. For the third chapter…I knew Mykah because I profiled a queer youth summer camp in West Virginia that’s doing really incredible work by teaching kids how to do advocacy and fight for their own rights in a state that can be incredibly hostile to their existence. Mykah’s story is incredible. A black, gender fluid, young activist with this incredibly buoyant spirit and personality, which is so fun and vibrant and one of a kind. So I wanted to give them essentially a spin off by including them in this book and just talking about their story. As for the other families, it was mostly referrals. I wasn’t really didactic about who I wanted to include and why, but I do think that there were certain intersections I was really interested in exploring, like talking about AAPI stories and the trans space is really rare.

I’m essentially publishing people’s therapy sessions. They’re talking about this incredible trauma and these things that have happened to them in this comprehensive way. And we’re covering a lot of ground, and you have to do that really quickly and all at once, so we can all leave each other happy and satisfied, and that’s a lot to ask from folks. So you’re having to really spin a bunch of plates all at the same time. And to be honest, I’m still shocked that this book turned out as well as it did. I wasn’t always sure that it would, because a book like this has never been written before. I’m so grateful to all these families, because if anybody really took a risk here, it’s them. They’re just putting so much of themselves out there. Maybe this is cheesy, but I just really want to validate their courage.

Diana Ruzova

Wow, yes. So, you would visit the families for two and a half weeks. What was the interview process like?

Nico Lang

There were essentially two modes. One mode was therapy mode, where we would sit down, usually somewhere in their house, and we would have these really long conversations, often spanning like an hour, an hour and a half, and we would really go over everything. We would talk about the good stuff, the bad stuff, the in-between stuff, likes, dislikes, who are they as a person, because I just felt like I really wanted to see the whole person. I didn’t want this to be like a snapshot of anti trans hate or just a moment in their lives. I wanted it to feel like you’re really getting to know these people. So, the discussions were just incredibly wide ranging, and it was a nightmare to transcribe all of it, but we did it.

Then on top of that, it was really just doing whatever they did. You know, if the family liked movies, I watched movies with them. If they were having an Oscar party, I was having an Oscar party with them, too. The journalist George Plimpton would always do what his subjects did. Like, if he was profiling a football player, he’d get on the field and carry a football. I wanted to see the world the way they experience it. So, part of that was just doing the things they do in their daily lives. For one of the teens, I went to school with him for the day. I went to class with him. I took a test with him. It really put me into the headspace of being like an ordinary teenager again, because I think I’d forgotten what it was really like. There’s all this certainty and uncertainty all at the same time, and you’re just fighting for your voice in your space. And if you’re a trans kid doing that, you’re also fighting for your rights, and it’s just this big pot of confusion. And it just really reminded me, what it’s actually like to be a kid.

Diana Ruzova

I’m curious why it was important to include such specific details about each teen? For example, the details about Rhydian’s job at the movie theater five days a week, and his clothes smelling like burnt popcorn.

Nico Lang

I didn’t want this book to feel really explain-y. My mood board for this book was John Steinbeck, David Sedaris, and the movie Hoop Dreams, which, if you’ve never seen it, is this incredible documentary following these kids through high school as they pursue their dreams of being drafted into the NBA. And it has this incredible specificity of detail, like the way the camera hones in on certain things, or the way it emphasizes certain things. It really tells a story through visuals. I tried to remember that when I was writing this book, because I wanted it to be very show, don’t tell. I wanted it to feel really immersive. My editor was like, you’re going way overboard, because there’s actually too much, and it gets to be really overwhelming, so there was trial and error.

Diana Ruzova

What is the story behind the title? Why is the title so important?

Nico Lang

The title is really important to me. Because when I was thinking about this book and thinking about what it would be called, I knew I didn’t want it to be a trans pun, because everything is always a trans pun. And I went through all of these different titles. Oh God, this was a month long process, Diana, it really was a whole journey to figure out what this book would be called. And I just didn’t know for a while.I think it was just “untitled project” in my mind. But I was sitting in the car one day, and my husband, Christian was in Starbucks getting one of his giant bladder buster coffees he always drinks. And I was listening to the radio and the song by Ethel Kane came on, called “American Teenager.” And I thought to myself, there’s the title. I’ve always really loved things that are named after songs. There’s this tradition in film where romantic comedies are named after songs. The logic goes: because you love that song already you’ll love this movie. It isn’t necessarily true, but it kind of brings you in with a good vibe and a good spirit that a romantic comedy hopes to instill in you, right? And it wasn’t that I wanted people to feel the way a pop song makes them feel, but to come in with maybe a different vibe to this book than you would expect, because this book is so different from what people might anticipate. American Teenager reminds us of the universality of identity. It gets us past these really small boxes that we want to put these kids in, and reminds us that they have lives that are just as big and full as everyone else’s, and they deserve rights and protections.