Back in 2017 and 2018, YouTuber Miles McKenna came out and transitioned online, respectively, not only for himself, but for other teens to help navigate their identities and take charge of their own-coming out stories. Fast forward three years later and the social media personality has released his own book, appropriately titled Out!: How to Be Your Authentic Self, to reflect on his experience while continuing to help others that are going through their own journeys.
“It’s been a long time coming,” Miles tells Celeb Secrets about his book. “It was originally supposed to come out in May and I was going to have a book tour, but then like, you know, the world is hurting so there’s no tour. But there’s still a book and it’s here for National Coming Out Day! So it all makes sense.”
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Out!: How to Be Your Authentic Self dropped on Tuesday, October 6, which was just in time for National Coming Out Day that just happened this past Sunday (October 11). When speaking about why he wanted to change the narrative from a YouTube video to print, McKenna says that he was tired of seeing queer creators being silenced on the Internet and needed to find a way to reach out to teens just like him that may be struggling to find help or someone to look up to.
“My first ever coming out on YouTube wasn’t even like a coming out. It was just me as a teenager being like, ‘hey, I’m not making videos in my car anymore or in my bedroom because I can’t live there anymore cause I came out.’ So it wasn’t necessarily me having that moment with my audience, but just being like, ‘please, is there someone else out there that feels the same way I do because I feel so alone,'” Miles recalls. “Then years down the line, having my job and being a YouTuber, coming out again in a much more formal way of like, ‘I need you guys to do a couple of things and that’s say a different name and pronoun because I’m coming out and transitioning.’ I chose to write this book in 2018 and that was kind of the rise of a lot of queer creators being silenced, not just on YouTube, but the Internet as a whole.”
“A lot of time if kids are on a laptop at a library or at their schools there are parental controls. It will sensor things that aren’t ‘family friendly’ and somehow LGBTQ + stories have been included in that algorithm. So a lot of kids who need these stories and messages and need an escape to see people just like them aren’t able to get that. I grew up loving Tyler Oakley and Hannah Hart, buying their books and being like okay, ‘well you can’t sensor that’ cause it’s in the print. So I wanted to make a book as well so at least a kid could go to a library or take picture at a Barnes and Noble and be like, ‘oh, someone else else’s is jut like me.'”
Throughout the book, which can be described as “the ultimate coming-out survival guide,” readers will be met with validation, inspiration, and support—whether they’re exploring their identity or seeking to understand the experience of an awesome queer person in their life. Covering topics from how to stay safe when coming out in a toxic environment, how to handle your birth name, hairstyles for your identity, to correct pronouns for bathroom passes and recipes for a “very gay” cake, McKenna tells us that the book shows a more serious side of the content creator and anyone can benefit from reading it, no matter what age or gender you are.
“I use comedy a lot in talking about trauma and also just generally on the Internet, so it was weird when writing a book because you have to convey that in a different way,” he says. “I can’t use the inflections of my voice when I’m being sarcastic and so writing it was so different. Also sitting with it, it’s not like I just say something to a computer screen and then the next day it’s out. It’s like kind of living with this and a lot of things were hard to write and hard to talk about.”
“And then you kind of look at it from different perspectives. Like if a parent’s reading this, is this going to be beneficial to them? Or is it just beneficial for the kid? I wrote things in a different way and told my story in a different way so that no matter who’s viewing it, they’re getting something good out of it.”
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You can purchase Out!: How To Be Your Authentic Self on Barnes & Noble and Amazon. A portion of Abrams’s profits from the sale of this book will be donated to GLSEN.
With reporting by Caroline Renezeder.
