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Now with 20 additional alternatives and Kate Bornstein’s urgent new essay, “Hello, Cruel Gender,” this edition of Hello, Cruel World offers a much-needed and unorthodox catalog of alternatives to suicide for all of us — ranging from the playful to the irreverent to the controversial, fun, challenging, zealous, and easy. With love, humor, and grit, Bornstein dares readers to re-envision the gender system, encouraging us to unleash our hearts’ desires and journey toward an emphatic embrace of life.
“This book is written for the teen locked inside each of us,” writes Paul Preciado in a new afterword to the book. “The one who has lost their dream, forgotten their infinite desire for transformation, the one who has gotten used to accepting the desires of others rather than pursuing their own.” Here is a trove of insights, at once intimate and edgy, to keep every freak out there alive.
Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ+ Nonfiction, 2007 Finalist
Stonewall Children’s and Young Elder Literature Award, 2009 Honor Book
Collected in
Recommended Reading: New and Bestselling Books for ChildrenNewHello, Cruel World!: Science-Based Strategies for Raising Terrific Kids in Terrifying Times (Hardcover)
By Melinda Wenner Moyer
$30.00
On Our Shelves Now
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From the author of How to Raise Kids Who Aren’t Assholes comes a science-based, hopeful guide on how to raise children who will not just survive, but thrive in this challenging, terrifying world—and who could ultimately help save it.
In the blink of an eye, our kids will be adults facing countless serious threats—climate change, gun violence, political polarization, and disinformation, to name but a few. We’re not going to be able to solve all these intractable problems before our kids grow up—so how are we to prepare them for an impossibly complex and scary future?
Plagued by this question, award-winning science journalist Melinda Wenner Moyer interviewed parenting experts and researchers across multiple fields—psychology, education, information literacy, technology, business, and even addiction. What she discovered: even in these uncertain times, we can still teach our kids how to take care of themselves, fight for what they believe in, and bridge divides
There’s very little good news out there in the world right now. I’m reeling, you’re reeling, we’re all reeling.
But today I want to focus on our hopes for the future — a future that is being shaped by our parenting. We are raising the next generation of humans, who will ultimately determine what becomes of the world.
I’ve been talking with many of you for years now. In my threads, in the chat, in the comments section, and via in several book-related surveys I shared here in the newsletter, we’ve been connecting and discussing our concerns about the state of the world, where it’s heading, and what it all means for our children. You’ve posed so many smart questions about raising kids in this unique (and honestly pretty terrifying) moment, which I spent a lot of time reflecting on.
If you have been reading this newsletter for a while, or if you read my first book How to Raise Kids Who Aren’t Assholes, you know that anxiety is my biggest motivator. When I’m scared, I turn to the research for answers. I try to understand where we as parents actually have have control and impact — where we can focus our efforts to make the most difference.
I wrote How to Raise Kids Who On June 18, 2025, the United States Supreme Court voted to uphold Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for minors, including puberty blockers and hormone therapies, effectively shielding similar bans in over 20 other states. While not surprising, this is a significant blow to healthcare access for thousands of trans kids throughout the country, and paves the way for further states to establish bans — or significant resistrictions — on gender-affirming care for minors. Kate Bornstein has for two decades inspired fans and readers by mixing feminist sensibility, queer theory, performance art and personal experience. That Hello, Cruel World is heart-felt and friendly reflects parentage by Lutheran minister and 1939’s Miss Betty Crocker. Aimed more at trannies and freaks than at gays and lesbians, it addresses sickness in the American family, stifling conventions of compulsory heterosexuality and mean-spirited republicanism fostered by James Dobson and Pat Robertson, but not disavowed by Mary Cheney.
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It’s hard to know what to do or how to fight back when the powers that be are making so many paths to leading full lives inaccessible. But we do know this: we want everyone to survive this moment, even when it feels hopeless. We have to take care of each other. Above all, we have to pool our resources and make sure we all have access to the tools we need.
That’s why we’re making DRM-free (easily shareable) copies of Hello, Cruel World (Second Edition) available to download for free from our website through June 25th. Download a copy for yourself or send it to a friend, a
Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws
This “gender outlaw” was born in Fargo, North Dakota as Al Bornstein, but completed sexual reassignment surgery in 1986. Ze published hir theoretical autobiography, Gender Outlaw, in 1994 and My Gender Workbook in 1997, which used paradoxes and puzzles to transcend sex- and gender-binaries.
Part One of Hello, Cruel World takes “either/or” and twists it Möbius strip-style into “neither/both.” Ze combines snappy prose with kitschy graphics in this user-friendly, impressively edited little handbook to save teens from self-mutilation and suicide, rates among which ar