Nonbinary identities have been denied and ignored throughout history, but with the dawning of social justice language and the ease with which we can communicate new ideas through technology, more and more attention is being given to non 'traditional' identities such as nonbinary genders every day - and the change is finally starting to reflect itself in our fiction!
In Zoe Marriott's The Name of the Blade trilogy, sixteen year old Mio, a Japanese teen living in London, encounters a race of Japanese fox spirits called Kitsune - and all of them are nonbinary pansexuals. Major characters such as the king of the kitsune and Mio's close friend Hikaru display their gender fluidity with ease and comfort, and the narrative never uses them as tokens or uses their gender to other them. The Kitsune switch pronouns depending on whichever form they're currently in, and their pronouns are respected by the narrative and by other characters.
Jack, Mio's lesbian best friend, begins a tentative romance with Hikaru after realizing she is not in fact male, and doesn't hold Hikaru's male traits against her, even when she's in a male body. (*I'll use female pronouns for Hikaru right now, because at the point I'm in in book 3 now, Hikaru is in a female body and using female pronouns.)
Historically, Kitsune have been portrayed as nonbinary and pansexual in several myths and legends, with human characters realizing that the beautiful fox spirit in the forest and the wizened old man that helped them on their journey were actually the same person.
When Hikaru, in male form, tries to kiss Jack and she reveals she is attracted to female, she asks her "is this one of those weird human sex hang-ups?" and promptly reveals that she subscribes to neither gender, instead switching into a female form in order to make Jack more comfortable.
Jack herself remarks that she's always thought of gender as a social construct, but still has trouble reconciling her feelings for Hikaru at first. She does, eventually, come to accept that, although she first met her in a male body, Hikaru is neither truly male or female, and comes to respect her identity for what it is.
This truthful, varied exploration of gender identity and the nonbinary spectrum is decidedly lacking in the young adult genre, and it's interesting to note that authors like Zoe Marriott - who is open about her own identity as an asexual person - are finally beginning to break down these barriers in representation to accurately portray their readers.
The Name of the Blade trilogy features a cast of main characters of colour - Mio, her parents, and her love interest are all Japanese, as are the fox spirits - and Jack and her sister are biracial, with Barbadian Ancestry.
Hopefully, we'll begin to see stories in the genre that can match these in both intensity and diversity. If you like a bit of katana-wielding bad assery with your nonbinary characters, The Name of the Blade is the series for you!
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