Guest Blogs – Page 10

Resilient Butterflies: On Rigoberto González’s The Mariposa Club

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:42:24-05:00November 10th, 2014|Categories: Archive, Guest Blogs|Tags: gay, PoC, Trans|

We are thrilled to introduce one of our new contributors, Sonia Alejandra Rodríguez! She will be writing mostly about Latina/o characters and representation in queer YA. We are so happy to have her on board! by Sonia Alejandra Rodríguez The Mariposa Club (Alyson Books, 2009) Rigoberto González’s [1] The Mariposa Club (2009) is the first novel in a three part series followed by Mariposa Gown (2012) and Mariposa U (forthcoming 2015). The series stands out as the first of its kind because it’s the first to center queer Latino youth characters. The series is a part of a [...]

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Liraz’s Asexual Armor: Second-Guessing AceAro Representation in YA

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:42:24-05:00November 3rd, 2014|Categories: Archive, Guest Blogs|Tags: Aromantic, asexual, Representation|

Asexual Awareness Week has ended, but Aromantic Awareness Week has just begun! We were not aware of it until a couple days ago so do not have a separate series (though many of the posts from last week touch on it). But we're thrilled to present this fabulous guest post from Sarah (who is also helping to run LauraLamFans)! Minor spoilers for Dreams of Gods and Monsters by Laini Taylor. by Sarah When I re-immersed myself in reading YA books freshman year of college, I knew I was asexual, but I was still content to turn to popular romance-heavy young [...]

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Straight is Not My Default: Understanding Katniss Everdeen as an Ace Aro

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:42:24-05:00October 29th, 2014|Categories: Archive, Guest Blogs|Tags: Aromantic, asexual|

For Asexual Awareness Week we reached out to bloggers who identify somewhere on the asexual spectrum to write posts related to asexuality and YA. We’re happy to bring you the third post in this series! Check back every day this week for more posts from other great guest bloggers. by Nakia I was seventeen when I read Mockingjay. I’d read the first two books in The Hunger Games series less than a year earlier, a recommendation from my contemporary literature teacher who convinced me that it was worth my time if only because the protagonist was a woman of [...]

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Reading Without Role Models: Asexual Awareness Week Day #3

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:42:26-05:00October 28th, 2014|Categories: Archive, Guest Blogs|Tags: asexual|

For Asexual Awareness Week we reached out to bloggers who identify somewhere on the asexual spectrum to write posts related to asexuality and YA. We’re happy to bring you the third post in this series! Check back every day this week for more posts from other great guest bloggers. by Em Murphy When I realized I was asexual, everything made a lot more sense. I was in my last year of college and when I finally acknowledged that I wasn’t attracted to anyone, it made me a lot more comfortable with myself and with how I interacted with other people. [...]

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A Journey of Discovery: Asexuality and Fanfiction

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:42:27-05:00October 27th, 2014|Categories: Archive, Guest Blogs|Tags: Aromantic, asexual, Fan Fiction|

For Asexual Awareness Week we reached out to bloggers who identify somewhere on the asexual spectrum to write posts related to asexuality and YA. We're happy to bring you the second post in this series! Check back every day this week for more posts from other great guest bloggers. If you missed the first one, here it is! Warning: This post contains slightly mature content. It may be inappropriate for young audiences. by Dragon A I discovered my asexuality through fanfiction. Put like that, it sounds slightly ridiculous. However, if I was not such an avid reader of fanfic I'm pretty [...]

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Let’s Save Some Lives, Shall We? Asexuality in Mainstream YA

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:42:27-05:00October 26th, 2014|Categories: Archive, Guest Blogs|Tags: asexual, Representation, Visibility|

We're thrilled to bring you our first guest post for Asexual Awareness Week! We reached out to bloggers who identify somewhere on the asexual spectrum to write posts related to asexuality and YA. Check back every day this week for more posts from other great guest bloggers! by Teresa Santos How many mainstream YA books have you read with canon openly asexual characters? None? Don't worry, you won't be the only one. After all, the number of such books is a shiny, round zero. But, you might say, what about Liraz in Daughter of Smoke and Bone? What of [...]

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How about NO?

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:42:27-05:00October 24th, 2014|Categories: Archive, Guest Blogs|Tags: gay, Queer Guys, Representation|

Your fave is problematic; deal with it. Disclaimer: I’m not here to bash authors or to tell you not to pick these books up. I’m just being honest about what I believe is not good LGBTQIA+ representation at all. Spoilers for WINGER. When I say queer I mean LGBTQIA+. We have all been there. You hear about this AMAZING BOOK, everybody in the blogosphere/BookTube/Twitter is talking about it and giving it 5 stars left and right…so you decide you have to read it! And you do. You spend money on a book you feel is going to rock [...]

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Minor Queer Characters in YA

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:42:41-05:00September 5th, 2014|Categories: Archive, Guest Blogs, Teen Voices|Tags: Representation|

The unfortunate truth is that most mainstream YA centres around a boy-girl romance with maybe a bit of magic or tragedy or dystopian violence thrown in. That's it. There's very little room on the Teen Fiction shelves at Barnes & Noble for books about girls who kiss girls or boys that kiss boys simply because - apparently - the readership isn't quite "ready" for those themes yet. Now, obviously, I understand that Barnes & Noble (and other bookshops) can't physically make their shops any bigger just to please the fairly minuscule percentage of their readers that are a) [...]

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We Are Not Just a Diversity Checkbox Part 3

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:42:41-05:00September 5th, 2014|Categories: Archive, Guest Blogs, Teen Voices|Tags: asexual, Bisexual, Representation, Stereotypes|

There are people who partially fit the stereotypes of their sexuality (butch lesbians, effeminate gay men, sex-repulsed asexuals, etc.) but in media they are often presented as caricatures. These negative portrayals in media lead to real-life queer people who fit these stereotypes being attacked by other queer people, mostly due to the fear of exposing the MOGII community as a whole to the negativity attached to those stereotypes. In both fiction and in real life, all members of the MOGII community deserve to be respected and respectfully represented, regardless of how they express themselves. Instead of telling MOGII people [...]

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The Impact of Representation

By Vee|2016-05-24T14:52:10-05:00August 27th, 2014|Categories: Archive, Guest Blogs|Tags: Representation|

I had something else I was going to write on representation. But then I heard about Robin Williams, and I thought of other things. About feeling alone. About depression, that horrendous, hideous beast that traps you and makes you feel like there’s no reason to get out of bed. I thought about my depression, which I still struggle with. What I struggled with during high school, particularly (I hesitate to say because of) my struggles with my sexuality, with not feeling like I belonged anywhere, especially when I was still in the closet. It was lonely. God. I [...]

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