"A fierce and brilliant book. Mary Zaborskis argues that the U.S. and Canadian states queeredminoritarian populations in order to unfit them for full citizenship. Deep in the archives ofindustrial schools, Native American boarding schools, and schools for the blind, Zaborskisdemonstrates that these institutions targeted the sexuality of Black, Native, poor, and disabledstudents, preparing them for futures that would never come to pass. By attending to theexperiences of actual children caught up in this biopolitical project, QueerChildhoods challenges pieties about education, the Child, and a queer future untroubled by theseviolent legacies of exclusion." - Heather K. Love, University of Pennsylvania "Smart and provocative. Mary Zaborskis grapples with a history emergent in queer theory. Howdid specific institutions queer children against their will, for almost two centuries? That is, howwere children from minoritized backgrounds 'sexually othered'—made 'strange,' thus queer—sothat they could be forced into normalizing scenes that guaranteed their failure to assimilate tonorms? Here, the act of 'queering' is not to be embraced. It's a barbed dynamic that aims tomanage lives and threaten certain futures. What a rending read—riveting and necessary." - Kathryn Bond Stockton, author of The Queer Child, or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century
