Mike Curato is finally getting the queer Asian community talking

While talking to author and illustrator Mike Curato, I can’t help but feel like we could be close friends. As I ask him questions about his experience in the publishing world and his hot takes on the gay community, I find myself agreeing with basically everything he says. And it’s this kindred bond with someone I’ve never met, this comfortable sense of familiarity with a fellow queer Filipino, that sits at the heart of his latest graphic novel, Gaysians, which was published earlier this month.

Gaysians is Curato’s first adult book. The bulk of his previous work involves children’s picture books, but he’s also the genius behind Flamer, a young adult graphic novel about a teenager on a path of self-discovery. It was this coming-of-age story that put Curato on conservatives’ radars. Like many other innocent stories about the queer experience, the graphic novel was placed on banned book lists, and Curato found himself on the receiving end of right wing hate. But the gays are resilient, and Curato is back with a newfound sense of strength.

Based in Seattle, Gaysians follows four queer Asians navigating shame, love, and safety. As they go through the world, ostracized by the struggles they face due to their marginalized identities, they find comfort and belonging in each other. It’s a book I’d recommend to every queer Asian out there. Whether you’re perpetually single or in a committed relationship, whether your parents call you every day or they pretend you don’t exist, you’ll find an experience you can relate to in Gaysians. It’s both touching and terrifying to empathize so much with these characters’ struggles. But it’s a necessity for us to share our stories, more so now than ever. 

Curato and I had a riveting conversation about his career and what he hopes people learn from Gaysians. He shares his thoughts on the current state of our corporate, commercialized Pride, kink discourse, and what Asians in the gay community need to confront. 

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Ryan Quan: This is your first adult book. How was the transition from creating kids’ picture books and young adult books to something more explicit?
Mike Curato: It was really liberating to work on an adult book. I had no filter. It was very refreshing, and I got to talk about a lot of things that I've had a lot of time to ruminate on and that I didn't have an appropriate audience for before, so I'm excited to have my work read by adults who have been through the same stuff as I have, and hopefully they feel at home in the book.

RQ: Are you worried at all about that transition and people looking into your history as a kid's picture book illustrator and author?
MC: I feel like the people who are going to make a stink about that sort of thing would find something to be mad about no matter what I do. So I'm just living my life. That's kind of their problem.

It's an adult book. It's marketed as an adult book. I'm not trying to sell this to kids, so they can work that out on their own. You know? We all got one life to live, baby. I don't have time to worry about people trying to set limits on me.

RQ: And your last book, Flamer, was one of the most banned books of 2022. What was that experience like, being on the receiving end of that reaction?
MC: It really fulfilled a lot of my worst fears. Being a gay man working in children's publishing, there's always this specter of what people might say about me. It's an old story—how queer people are hypersexualized and accused of being predators—and that is what happened to me, over things that were taken completely out of context. It's a book about teens, for teens. And the book banners have really misled others to believe that I'm peddling pornography to kindergartners, which is not what it's about.

And I started working on this book in 2020 before any of this nonsense even started. I mean, it was 2021 when a Texas lawmaker created this McCarthy-era style list of books to be investigated. And you can imagine what types of books are on that list. There are 850. Flamer was one of them.

I'd already been working on Gaysians, and it just reinforced the need for me to continue working on it and to lean in to being as honest and unfiltered as I could be. Because they're attempting to erase us, to erase queer people of color from visibility. And I just refuse to have a part in that. So we just need to shout louder, and I hope that this book does that.

RQ: Has there been a lot of support that has come out in response to that same banning?
MC: Absolutely, I think I've gotten way more support than pushback, honestly, since all this began. I mean, I also changed a lot of my social media settings, because haters to the left, but I've just experienced so much support.

And I really appreciate when people take the time to investigate something before they just follow suit. Because most people who have gone along with the book banning movement haven't even read any of these books, right? They're just told what to do, and they go ahead and do it.

I did hear from people who are like, “Oh, I wouldn't have read this, but now I have, and I'm so glad that I did.” And it's also funny, because book banning, it's an attempt to suppress and silence, but it also makes the book so curious to people, and so I think if you're going to tell a teenager not to read something, that's what they're going to read.

RQ: In Gaysians, (one of the characters) AJ attends his first Pride parade. How do you feel about how Pride has changed so much since the beginning, since Stonewall?
MC: I'm young enough that I wasn't around for Stonewall, but I'm old enough that I experienced Pride before it was corporate, before its corporate overtake. It’s interesting—especially in the current political climate—how corporate support of Pride has really scaled back significantly because it's not in vogue at the moment. 

RQ: How do you think this will affect the future of Pride Month? What can people from within the community do to fill in the gap that corporate support is leaving?
MC: I think I'm excited for the children to see again what the essence of Pride is. I don't think Pride is going to go away at all. I really don't think it is. I see a return to a more politically aligned Pride. And in this online age, I think it's so important to have these moments of coming together in person, because it does something for the soul. And I think it's also important for people to see. I think focusing on showing up for each other, experiencing joy and struggles together is what's going to see us through as it has seen us through in the past. So, you know, we lose a lot of dollars, but we have this legacy of grassroots organizing. We have very clear examples of how it was done in the past. And I just hope that people embrace that legacy.

RQ: Every year, the straights and the gays alike have their opinion on whether kink belongs at Pride. What's your take?
MC: Absolutely, kink belongs at Pride! I think it's an interesting part of the corporatizing of Pride. It goes hand in hand with the whitewashing of the rainbow, where there's this expectation of gay people to assimilate into hetero culture. And why? Why do we need to do that?

I was not a sex-positive person for a lot of my life because it was just ingrained in me through my community I was raised in and the religion I was brought up in. I had so much shame built in about my body and my desires, and I think it's important for that visibility. I think if you are down on people for their kinks, I think that says more about you and the stuff that you need to work through than the people that are just really comfortable in their bodies and trying to express themselves. We need to celebrate our bodies and what we want to do with them. Gear and kink, it's not for everyone, but we can respect what brings other people joy and still have our own boundaries.

RQ: Asians within the gay community have come a long way, but what else do you think needs to change for us?
MC: Something that I do discuss in the book is this proximity to whiteness, this sort of assimilation into gay white culture that I know I've gotten swept up in before as well. But we're still not centered. We're kind of a part of that but still not equal.

I think a lot of us, myself included, need to work on making sure we're showing up for not just our own Asian community and carving out our own spaces, but also showing up for other queer people of color.

(In Gaysians,) I also talk about racial power dynamics in relationships, which I think is a part of that proximity to whiteness. Obviously, I do not think there's a problem with an Asian person being with a white person. That's not a problem. I think it's just about recognizing power dynamics and being aware of why you're in this relationship and your role in it. Because I have witnessed some unsettling situations in my time as well, which is also in the book.

I feel like there's a lot of stuff in this book that we, as gay, Asian people, know all about and experience and talk about amongst ourselves, but isn't necessarily something that we put down on paper or talk about in media. It'd be healthy for us to have some conversations, air some stuff out.

RQ: If you could give a message to all the homophobes and transphobes, the Andrew Tates and J.K. Rowlings of the world, what would it be?
MC: Oh my, several expletives come to mind. But, do better! Work on yourself. I think if you hate a type of person so much that you take precious time and resources out of your own life to try to erase a community of people who you don't know personally, I would say you’ve got to do some work. You've got some things to figure out. I don't know what demons you've got lurking in your closet, but maybe it’s time for some spring cleaning.