Let’s Talk: What is Easy and What is True?
by Adriana L.
I try to avoid using the bathroom when I’m on campus. As a student employee and part-time student—someone who can expect to stay on campus for anywhere from four to eight hours on any given day—this is a pretty ambitious feat. Some days, it’s just not feasible. True, there are a few departments with gender neutral bathrooms (which are a blessing), but I can’t always be near them. Because of what I’ve got going on downstairs, when I’m faced with male and female bathrooms, the ladies’ room is my closest choice.
If there’s a wait for the stalls, students towards the back of the line narrow their eyes at me or cross their arms over their chest. If I’m at the back of the line, the next person to come in might stop short in the doorway and do a double take—or, even better, look at the sign on the door to make sure they’ve walked into the right bathroom. When I’m rinsing my hands in the sink, I can see the person at the sink beside me taking in my buzz cut or trying to catch a glimpse beneath my jacket to see if I actually have breasts. Their body language, their reactions, all pose the same question: “Do you even belong here?”
My only option is to offer these people a small smile, some kind of gesture that says, “I don’t want to hurt you. I’m just here to pee.” I am expected to smile at people who make me feel unwelcome; I am expected to present myself as non-threatening when people subtly call into question my very existence.
These small moments, these negotiations expected on my part, are only a small fraction of the hundreds of microaggresions that queer people incur on a day-to-day basis. They are inescapable; they keep us aware nearly every moment of every day that we fall outside of the norm. These reactions, paired with the constant perpetuation of dominant identities, ensure that we stay uncomfortable—that we always remember that we are other.
So how are microaggressions used (or misused) in queer YA, how are they perceived, and to which audiences do those treatments of microaggresions appeal? (Big questions, I know.)
Generally speaking, there are two main camps that a majority of visible (read: buzz-worthy), mainstream queer YA tends to fall into: Queer Tragedy™ and Queer Utopia.
What I call Queer Tragedy™ is akin to the Bury Your Gays trope, except it doesn’t always involve the death of queer characters. These are stories where (often) a queer character’s internal and external conflicts revolve around their identity, which inevitably leads to some kind of tragic climax, whether it be physical assault, rape, a hit-and-run, a suicide attempt, a severe case of bullying, being outed, being thrown out of the house or disowned, being publicly ridiculed or humiliated, etc. These kinds of stories rely on some kind of external force reminding the protagonist why they cannot be themselves.
Let me be perfectly transparent: these stories are absolutely necessary. We all know the statistics; we all know that members of the queer community are at great risk of being raped, beaten, bullied, and—yes—killed. We know there’s still miles to go until we reach a point where all queer people feel safe in public. If these stories come from a place of truth and awareness—for instance, Meredith Russo’s If I Was Your Girl—then they can be incredibly powerful. I am in no way implying that these stories can’t or shouldn’t be written. These narratives shed light on the very real ramifications of openly identifying and/or presenting in a way that doesn’t fit “the norm.” We need these stories to keep ourselves woke, to validate the very real fears and issues that so many experience.
Conversely, the Queer Utopia is formed when a contemporary story is set in the present day, the protagonist is out and proud—probably has been since before the story even began—and no one gives them any problems about it whatsoever. Their parents, friends, family, and peers are 100% supportive, and they live in a wonderful utopic community untouched by bigotry or prejudice.
Let me, once again, be perfectly transparent: these kinds of stories are vital to the community as well. They give queer characters the opportunity to address conflicts outside of their identity—because, guess what, identity is only one sliver of who we are and what we have to deal with. (Novel idea, I know.) Plus, these kinds of narratives provide queer readers with hope; they show us that there’s life outside of the closet and that, yeah, it can be kind of great, especially when you surround yourself with the right kind of people. It can be so exhausting to read book after book just saturated with queer suffering—to be hit over the head again and again with the reminder that you have to work overtime to find any semblance of happiness when it seems to come so easily for everyone else. These stories give us that much needed break, and dare to imagine other possibilities for queer youth. Like I said, vital.
Keep in mind that it’s not my intention to frame this as a false binary (how I hate those), or to imply that there aren’t a ton of incredibly valid queer books out there that fall into neither category and do a great job of addressing the middle ground. (Hint: there definitely are.) I am referring to a very specific subsection of queer YA here: the kind that sells the most, the kind that is reviewed widely and often, the kind that is promoted and recommended the most frequently, the kind of queer lit where every reader—whether they are queer or not—knows that this book “is about queer stuff” the instant they see the cover. Those books. The books that come to define our community whether we intend them to or not. You know the ones.
And a grand majority of the most popular, visible queer YA explores either the Queer Tragedy™ or the Queer Utopia, which is highly problematic in terms of how microaggressions are either used or overlooked. When it comes to the Queer Tragedy™, microaggressions are plot devices used as a precursor to the inevitable, climactic Tragic Moment in the story; they are positioned as conduits for tension, a quick and dirty method to forecast what is to come. On the other hand, contemporary stories that fall in the realm of Queer Utopias are great, but somewhat unrealistic, as they tend to write away the daily struggles that so many still endure. Many queer narratives set in a Queer Utopia fail to acknowledge that while being queer may not necessarily be a major conflict, it’s still a huge part of how others see us and treat us and it still shapes our perspectives and influences how we carry ourselves through the world. To negate the microaggressions we are forced to internalize is to do queer readers a disservice in favor of painting a more palatable picture.
Holistic merit or no, these these books sell. They fly off the shelves. They’re mentioned in every blog post and video titled “LGBTQIA+ Recs” or “My Fave LGBT books.” They are lauded by the reading community, even accepted by the elite reviewers with hundreds and thousands of followers on any given platform, and brought up again and again whenever anyone so much as comments on queer representation in YA. (“Yeah, okay, but don’t you all have
Whether the author intended them to or not, these two popular types of stories—and the subsequent attention they receive—end up reinforcing and further perpetuating an overly-simplistic view of queer lives, one that is “easier” to believe. They reinforce the way many cisgendered, heterosexual readers prefer to see us: either staggering under the weight of piled-on suffering or happy as a clam. Why? Because these extremes seem to “make sense”; they’re the kinds of stories we see plastered on the news every day, what we see shared profusely on social media, the type of stories that kick-start hashtags and social movements. They are the most visible narratives, and they make the microaggressions we face fit into a nice box. Either they will accumulate and lead to Queer Tragedy™ or they simply don’t exist at all, or at least not in a way that can’t be overcome with a simple shift in perspective. Mind over matter and all that.
Again, it is not my intention to imply that queer YA falling into these categories are one-dimensional or one-note. Many stories that revolve around tragedy or explore what HEA looks like can embody all the complexity of the queer experience (or, at the very least, one version of it); these stories can be nuanced and contain multitudes. They are valid.
Whether these books are #ownvoices, whether or not they subvert tropes, whether they come from a place of awareness or truth, whether they portray well, whether the direction of the story is earned or warranted—these are discussions to be had on a book-to-book basis. But when the reading community at large keeps toting out the same books, stories either laden with queer suffering or stories that neglect the very real matter of microaggressions, it makes you wonder. As a queer reader, it makes me wonder every day. Why do so many readers seem to prefer these versions of queer life? Why is it so hard to believe that many queer individuals are forced to internalize the microaggressions they face on top of everything else going on with their lives? We know that queer characters should be afforded as much complexity as cis/het characters, so why are these the narratives dominating our attention, and the attention of non-queer reading communities? And the only answer I can come up with is because it’s easy.
No, these are not the only queer YA books out there, not by any stretch of the imagination, but they are the most celebrated—and that scares me. That scares me more than I can say.
It’s not necessarily a failure of imagination on the part of authors, but on the part of readers and reviewers. What is popular, what is recommended ten thousand times over, is just the tip of the iceberg. We can’t see queer rep as a quota to be met with one best-selling book here and there, but we must keep searching for the queer YA that bridges the gap between these two extremes, that occupies that middle ground of fluctuating emotions that so many experience on a daily basis. We cannot perpetuate the idea that a queer character’s validity boils down to whether their identity is a source of suffering or a source of adversity that can be easily overcome.
Queer Tragedy™ reinforces the idea that queer individuals indeed have something to fear, that they should stay scared; it’s what keeps me looking over my shoulder when I’m walking back to my car alone, it’s what makes me stomach clench when someone gives me a strange look. I’m always waiting for The Big One—the one irreversible consequence of being queer that will come to define me, whatever it might be—because that is what Queer Tragedy™ teaches me to expect. Similarly, I don’t open up about people double-checking the sign on the bathroom when they see me standing inside, or the overwhelming anxiety I experience when I’m invited to attend a formal or professional event and I’m expected to present a certain way, or how hopeless I feel when I see new parents so eager to gender their children because it only reminds me of how needlessly confused I was for so long. I constantly wonder if these are issues that only exist in my head, or if I just made them up, because the widespread acceptance of Queer Utopia teaches me that if nothing inherently bad is happening in my life, then everything should be peachy keen.
Look: both kinds of narratives exist to address a certain need, but they aren’t all that we have. They should not define what the term “queer YA” calls to mind for so many readers.
There is no one universal queer experience; there are no stories about queer characters that aren’t important or that aren’t needed. We need to hit every note imaginable. What I am saying is that it’s easy to default to these two narratives, especially when it comes to queer YA recommendations. What’s easy and what’s real are two very different things. What’s real is much more complex than can be explored in a single blog post. Many of us are subjected to a life of microaggressions, of tiny negotiations that reaffirm our fear that we don’t—or can’t—belong. Happiness and exhaustion are not mutually exclusive concepts, and I keep coming back to microaggressions because they are an undeniable answer as to how that can be true; they’re what often discourage so many people in the community, even on their best days.
While I wouldn’t consider it queer lit, Stephen Chbosky kind of nailed it on the head in his one-hit-wonder, The Perks of Being a Wallflower: “So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I’m still trying to figure out how that could be.” That is a very real truth for so many of us that isn’t celebrated—and isn’t always visible—nearly enough.
That’s why I implore you to read widely and to think critically about the queer YA you consume. Don’t stop at representation and assume that all is well. Don’t gorge yourself on best-selling queer YA and assume your work is done. No, we can’t all read and review every piece of queer lit ever, but we can use the resources we have to find more of those under-celebrated queer YA books that dare add these and different narratives into the mix. We have websites like LGBTQReads, queerya, I’m Here, I’m Queer, What the Hell Do I Read?, thelesbrary, lgbt-ya, queerbookclub, WNDB, and so many more. (Seriously, a perfunctory Google search will do wonders.) While Queer Tragedy™ and Queer Utopia exist for completely valid reasons, there is more to queer YA, and we should celebrate (and strive for) even more nuanced representations for every gradient on all the spectrums. Every experience deserves to be acknowledged, and I invite you to explore as many as possible.
—
Adriana is a Hispanic, pansexual, nonbinary, aromantic writer who runs a BookTube channel called perpetualpages. In their free time, they vigorously retweet discussions about marginalized voices on a Twitter account of the same name, regularly get lost in the vortex of K-Pop MVs on the internet, and marvel at the number of unfinished manuscripts on their hard drive. Now that they have graduated with a B.A. in Creative Writing, the world is their oyster. Or something like that.The Love That Lives Here: On Queer Girls, Transboys, and Sex on the Page
by Anna-Marie McLemore
Sex-on-the-page. Doesn’t that sound like some kind of drink book lovers should come up with? Like sex-on-the-beach, but more bookish. (Paging Dahlia Adler, because I think she would have some ideas about what should go in this.)
The fact that I’m talking about drink recipes probably gives away the fact that I’m a little uncomfortable with what I’m gonna talk about right now. But I’m gonna do it anyway.
For anyone who doesn’t know, I’m a queer girl of color, and I’m married to a transgender guy I met as a teen, and who I refer to online (with his permission) as the Transboy. I’m in my twenties now, and as much as I may try to convince my parents that all the Transboy and I do behind closed doors is read Andrea Gibson poetry, I think you all can guess what we’ve been doing in the last decade. But when I came up against the question of whether to show on-the-page sex in my second novel, WHEN THE MOON WAS OURS, I did some of the finest hand-wringing of my writing career to date.
That question—whether to depict sex between a queer girl character and a trans guy character—became a battleground for my own identity. I wrote those scenes. I took them out. I toned them down and put them back in. I tried to make them tamer. But in a moment of deleting them again, I asked myself: Why was I embarrassed about two characters falling in love the same way the Transboy and I had? Why was I ashamed of seeing this on the page, when it was what had passed between us when we were teens?
If I thought these scenes were too much, too explicit, too “dirty” even, what was I saying about my own community? What was I saying about the boy I loved?
What was I saying about myself?
Was that really what I believed? That where heterosexual couples deserved detail and texture, we deserved fade-outs?
That was when I put those scenes back. If I’m proud of everything the Transboy is, if (on my good days), I’m proud of what I am, what was “dirty” about the kind of queer love we’ve shared since we were teens? What could be “dirty” about LGBTQ characters living in their own identities, falling in love, having safe, consensual sex?
Am I saying a book about LGBTQ characters has to contain and depict queer sex? Absolutely not, no more than I’d say that of books about heterosexual couples. But I had to go all in for MOON. I wanted to show a trans guy of color loving a queer girl of color, understanding the expectations society sets on both their bodies and identities. I wanted to show a queer girl loving a trans guy not because of what he is, not in spite of what he is, but for who he is. (Author Meredith Russo poignantly addresses themes of desire and identity from her perspective as a trans woman. If you haven’t already, go forth and check out IF I WAS YOUR GIRL and Meredith’s Twitter.) Though I never want to see trans characters depicted as objects, I did want to help make natural the idea of a girl desiring a trans guy, because that’s the love I live.
No two experiences of marginalization are the same, but there are parallels. The closest I can get to personally understanding how falling in love must have felt for the Transboy comes from my experience as a Latina girl. When anyone showed interest in me, there would always be that question, if they liked me because I was Latina, in spite of me being Latina, or if, maybe, they saw me for me. When I fell in love with the Transboy, I realized he saw me as who I was instead of just what I was. And he couldn’t let himself fall for me until he knew that I could acknowledge his transness but also respect that it was only one part of him.
The decisions I made in MOON came from a place of wanting to give my queer and trans characters what so many other characters already get. The space to be seen as desirable while also having desires of their own.
As Vee wrote about last fall, transgender characters should not exist as vehicles for the growth of cisgender characters. When the kinds of narratives Vee cautions against emerge, I think it’s often because these stories see characters only for their transness. They’re viewed as belonging to cis characters. The cis characters—who, as Vee mentions, are centered in the story—get to judge them as being worthy of being loved (or not). They get to declare them as resources to learn from (or not). As important as it is to acknowledge transness, if that’s all we’re acknowledging, we fail to see the person. And in doing that, we fail to see anything but our own opinion of their identity. Trans characters should never be reduced to this, to becoming moments of insight.
The Transboy started out as my crush. He became my fiancé, then my husband. But one thing he never became was my learning experience. Sure, the Transboy has taught me a lot since we met as teens. But if I’d approached him as a learning experience, I never would’ve learned anything.
In WHEN THE MOON WAS OURS, Miel and Sam understand a lot about each other, from the oddness their town assigns to them, to their lives as people of color (Miel is Latina, Sam is South Asian). But Miel is far from a perfect friend to Sam. She fucks it up sometimes. Sometimes she pushes him too hard for answers he’s not ready to give, and he responds by doing the same to her. But they know each other. Before either is an object of the other’s desire, they know each other.
This is how I love the Transboy. Yes, I fuck it up sometimes, but I love him as who he is, not what he is.
In her powerful essay “Who Can Tell My Story?”, Jacqueline Woodson addresses a question she’s been asked many times: “How do you feel about people writing outside of their own experiences?” And she does it brilliantly by raising another question: Have these writers, who either have written or who want to write outside their own experience, been in the houses of those they want to write about? Do they know them enough to be writing them?
Woodson’s illustration—both the literal houses of our grandmothers, our families, and also the figurative houses of our communities—has stayed with me, resonating with my experience as a queer woman of color. And when I think about the question I came to writing MOON, her illustration comes back even more sharply. When I was so resistant to showing these characters acting on their love, what did that say about what I thought of my own house? What had I let the world tell me about my own house?
This—my identity as a queer woman of color, my heart that loves a trans guy—this is my house. This is who I am, and this is who I love. I will not draw the curtains. I will not turn off the lights. I will not let anyone decide the love that lives here is too dirty to be seen.
If I had decided that my own queer characters were not allowed to have sex on the page, it would have meant drawing the shades and turning out the lights on them, and on me and the Transboy. It would have meant deciding that the love I live every day deserves to exist only in the dark, behind heavy curtains.
This is my house. This is the love that lives here. And I will open the windows and let the light in, even, especially, when that means being seen.
—
Anna-Marie McLemore was born in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, raised in the same town as the world’s largest wisteria vine, and taught by her family to hear la llorona in the Santa Ana winds. Her debut novel, THE WEIGHT OF FEATHERS (out now from Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press), was a Junior Library Guild Selection, named to YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults, and a finalist for the William C. Morris Debut Award. Her second novel, WHEN THE MOON WAS OURS, will be released on October 4, 2016, and WILD BEAUTY is forthcoming in 2017. You can find Anna-Marie at annamariemclemore.com or on Twitter @LaAnnaMarie.
Welcome to GayYA’s 2016 Blogathon!
Hello and welcome to GayYA’s 2016 Pride Month + 5th Anniversary blogathon! We’re so thrilled for our upcoming month of posts!
For our 2015 blogathon intro we said that GayYA has many goals, but everything we do essentially comes down to one purpose: get more LGBTQIA+ YA published. That’s still true, but now that we have a good selection of LGBTQIA+ out there (and more on the 2017 horizon!) we believe it’s important to look beyond simply getting more published– we need to ensure that these books are getting into the hands of teens that need them, and that these books are actually what teens need. The theme for our 2016 blogathon is uncovering the areas of LGBTQIA+ YA that still need work. We’re hoping to look at these areas from perspectives we don’t usually hear, and start discussions about how to proceed. To do that, we’re featuring posts from authors, librarians, editors, agents, publicists, teen readers, and more, for the entire month of June.
We’ve got a great selection of posts and range of topics! For example, Anna-Marie Mclemore is talking about the intersection of race and sexuality and her journey to writing sex on the page, editor Andrew Karre shares one of the reasons he’s excited to see more LGBTQIA+ writers, and young adult Booktuber Adriana explains what they want to see more of in LGBTQIA+ YA.
(We’ll also be hosting some fab Twit Chats, giveaways, and challenges… more on those, later!)
We hope to use this opportunity to spread the love far and wide for LGBTQIA+ YA, uncover the areas in which more work still needs to be done, and start discussions about what to do in those areas! We so look forward to sharing these posts with you. If you’re feeling them, we’d love to have your help in promoting your favorite posts in this blogathon to your own networks! Spreadin’ the love far and wide, y’all. 🙂
Stay tuned for our first post….
Vee at BEA: Recap!
As I write this, I’m listening to Halo by Beyonce. I kept hearing it in my head when I was at BEA and BookCon.
Everywhere I’m looking now
I’m surrounded by your embrace
My chest kept getting super tight at BEA and I couldn’t understand why, until I started realizing I was becoming overwhelmed with everyone’s love and support and belief. I had to keep reminding myself to breathe it all in.
The expo itself was so entirely overwhelming. People had kept telling me “it’s bigger than you could possibly imagine” and I was sort of like “pshaw, uh huh.” And then… then I got there. And it was bigger than I possibly could have imagined.
The major purpose of the expo for me was to connect with publishers. I was super super nervous to go up and start introducing myself, though! The first booth I went up to was Quirk Books. I was getting all set to introduce myself and hadn’t even opened my mouth before Blair Thornburg, who was at the booth, was like “oh, you’re Vee!” After that I felt a little braver approaching other booths!
I got to interview 5 amazing authors (here’s some snippets & highlights of the interviews!):
- Leigh Bardugo, author of The Grisha Trilogy and Six of Crows. It was such an honor to be able to meet and interview her– Six of Crows is one of my like all time top ten favorite books. Honestly I was sort of blanking out the whole time because I was so psyched to just be doing it, but I think the interview went really well! It will be up for our June blogathon. 🙂
I have a pretty varied peer group, so it would’ve been weird to write teams or groups of people that didn’t reflect that. So it was a pretty natural thing. I felt coming out of the Grisha Trilogy that I actually could’ve done a better job with representation in terms of, well, everything. The Grisha trilogy is a very white, very straight series of books. So I wanted to move away from that.
- Audrey Coulhurst author of the forthcoming F/F YA Fantasy Of Fire and Stars– we chatted about horses, her first signing, and of course F/F fantasy!
Back when I was querying I had one agent tell me he wanted me to resubmit and he wanted the world to be homophobic, because he thought it would up the stakes if there was more risk for them to be together. But when I read Malinda Lo’s book Ash, one of the things that really struck me about that book was that there wasn’t any homophobia, it was just a world where it didn’t really matter who you fell for, like it wasn’t even really talked about. And for some reason it had never occurred to me, like “ooh! I could write a fantasy like that” and so that’s… I very deliberately made the choice for it to not be about their gender but it’s actually just about the fact that she wants to marry his sister instead, and that’s really problematic.
Julia was handing out buttons! “I WANT A FUCKING UNICORN”
- Julia Ember author of Unicorn Tracks– Julia was so so lovely! I got the best swag of the entire conference from her. 😀
Before I wrote my manuscript, and it’s my first published manuscript but it is not in any way my first like written book– I hadn’t actually written an F/F. Which is quite weird, because I mostly date women. So it was quite strange that I hadn’t written an F/F and I really wanted to, and I had this idea that I wanted to write one with a happy ending because I’d just had a really traumatic break up and I needed something that was going to make me better while I wrote it.
- Caleb Roehrig, author of Last Seen Leaving– Caleb and I were both slightly food-deprived and wholly overwhelmed by the massiveness that was BEA, so some of our questions and answers were a little off the wall (frex: I learned some fun facts about the population living around Lake Superior). But we also discussed new narratives in LGBT+ YA and our favorite LGBTQIA+ YA books, so I’m really excited to share that interview.
When I was fifteen or sixteen, this is the book I wish I could’ve read. There was no such thing as gay interest YA back then– there was barely YA! And I thought, I was like a mystery/suspense junkie and I just wanted to read a book where somebody like me was the hero. And it’s been so baffling to see how many books now address LGBT
Also:
Listening to @findmereading ‘s BEA interview with @MikalebRoehrig and I am SO CHARMED. Sneak peek: “Rrrrrrrr” “arrrrrrrr?” “rrrrRRRRRrrr” A+
— Maria (@morehappygirls) May 30, 2016
First signed ARC of WHEN THE MOON WAS OURS! I am a happy trans
- Anna-Marie McLemore author of the forthcoming When the Moon Was Ours. I was even more overwhelmed that day than I was the day before, so Anna-Marie very kindly put up with my staring off in the distance for minutes on end trying to remember what on earth I was going to say. I also got the first signed ARC of When the Moon Was Ours! I already had quite the haul and Anna-Marie was like “I almost feel bad giving you another book to take home” and I was like “no, literally you don’t understand I would get rid of every single one of these books in order to take this one home.”
I had to get that voice out of my head that said brown girls, queer girls, trans guys, of color guys didn’t get happy endings. I had to get that voice out of my head because it was there. It was there with me when I was falling in love and it stayed with me for a long time. So, I had to get out of the place of thinking that I had to impose about what the world had told me about my life onto these stories.
Michael and I at the People Magazine Party! (do we looked shell shocked because we were shell shocked)
Michael Waters and I went to the Simon & Schuster party, and then!! (!!!!!!!!) The People Magazine party! Jennifer Weiner invited me after what happened on Twitter, and I’m so so grateful to have had the opportunity! It was such an incredible but surreal experience. The party was held on the top floor of this ridiculously fancy hotel. At one point Maggie Stiefvater just walked in and we were like “UM, okay.” And we were pretty sure we saw Jodi Picoult, too. So, yanno, whatever. It’s cool. A highlight of the night was meeting Sarah Dotts Barley, the editor at Flatiron, who published the marvelous book If I Was Your Girl.
Other highlights:
- Laurie Halse Anderson kissed me on the cheek when I went to her signing (which basically means we’re married now, right? Don’t take this away from me).
- Shannon Hale was the sweetest. She signed my book “To Vee, who is a super hero” so basically my heart is just </3
- The We Need Diverse Books: Love & Loss panel was the best panel I have ever, ever been to. Everyone was such a delight to listen to and said so many incredibly smart things. Edi Campbell did an awesome recap of it, which I highly recommend checking out!
- I picked up a number of fantastic looking LGBTQIA+ YA, and I’m so looking forward to reading all of it!
One of my fav parts of #BEA16?
Friends gave @LaAnnaMarie my number and the games begun.
This went on for a while. pic.twitter.com/rd7ucqIa4Y
— Eric Smith (@ericsmithrocks) May 15, 2016
- Eric Smith’s phone adventures! After I interviewed Anna-Marie, she told me she’d gotten Eric Smith’s number without him knowing and was spamming him with ridiculous pictures. On the last day when I was on my way out of the Expo floor I walked by Eric Smith while he was talking to a group of people about someone having gotten his phone number and guessing who it might be. After I walked past them I stopped, turned around, came back and said “I know who has your number and it’s not John Corey Whaley” then turned around and walked away again. So, yanno, if you ever need advice on how to social, I’m here for you.
- I got to dissect and discuss my current WIP with Heather Anastasiu on the car trip back (she was my carpool buddy!) and for the first time in months I’ve been taking time every night to write.
- David Levithan. ’nuff said.
Standing in line for my last signing (for Nicola Yoon’s The Sun is Also a Star!) I kept tearing up. I couldn’t stop reliving all of the amazing things that had happened to me the past few days. I did my best breathing in all of the amazingness.
I’m so ridiculously grateful for everyone who supported me on the way to get to BEA. I’m so grateful to everyone (friends and strangers!) who donated, who shared my GoFundMe, who told me that the haters could suck it, who greeted me excitedly at BEA. You made this one of the best experiences of my life, and one of the most motivating.
Last year, my mother was diagnosed with metastasized breast cancer. I’ve been her primary caretaker, which means dropping everything in my life when she’s having a bad day and being consistently bogged down in frustration or fear. Being a primary caretaker has made me unable to do many of the things I’ve wanted to do with GayYA. This whole year I’ve felt useless and pathetic, and I’ve felt that GayYA has been useless and pathetic.
Because of all your support, I now know others don’t see it that way. Because of your support I feel so rejuvenated and am so ready to get the heck to work on all of the GayYA things! I’ve decided to take a gap year before I go to college, and one of the main things I want to focus on is building GayYA into the best resource possible. I want to do everything I can to push for more and better LGBTQIA+ YA and to make sure it’s getting to all the teens that need it. LGBTQIA+ YA changed my life– more than that, it actually saved my life. And I know it can do the same for other teens, as long as we keep getting it published and getting it out to them.
One of the really interesting things was seeing the publishing world for how it truly is for the first time. I was discussing this with some of my friends– in our little corner of the internet you forget just how white, straight, cis and able-bodied the publishing world is. It can often seem like there’s nothing left to fight against, and it’s just confusing why things aren’t better yet, because everyone you interact with on a daily basis already gets it and is pushing for more. But when you’re at a place like BEA and actually interacting with the publishing world you’re like… wow. Diversity advocates are not the majority, and we still have so much work left to do.
I learned so much and pushed myself places I wouldn’t have been able to go before during BEA. I made so many valuable connections and now understand how to connect with publishers so much better than before. I’m going to do all I can to give everything that was given to me back into the community. BEA was an incredible incredible experience, and I am so grateful.
So thank you. Thank you so so much.
What We Missed: January – May 2016
What We Missed in January
January 1st – Raise the Stakes by Megan Atwood (T)
January 5th – The Impostor Queen by Sarah Fine (B)
January 5th – This Song Is Not For You by Laura Nowlin (A)
January 5th – This Is Where It Ends by Marieke Nijkamp (L)
January 14th – Colors by Russell J. Sanders (G)
January 19th – We Are the Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson (G)
January 19th – Burn (Four Sisters #2) by Elisa Sussman
January 20th – The Raising (The Torch Keeper #3) by Steven Dos Santos (G)
January 21th – Fake It (The Keswick Chronicles #1) by Victoria Kinnaird (G)
January 21th – Like I Know Jack by MC Lee (G)
January 26th – Shallow Graves by Kali Wallace (B)
January 26th – Any Other Girl by Rebecca Phillips (Gay parents)
January 28th – The Sun Dragon by Annabelle Jay (B, L)
February
February 1st – Tagged Out by Joyce Grant (G)
February 2nd – Symptoms of Being Human by Jeff Garvin (Gender fluid)
February 2nd – Spirit Level by Sarah N. Harvey (T)
February 8th – The Abyss Surrounds Us by Emily Skrutskie (L)
February 9th – Bleeding Earth by Kaitlin Ward (L)
February 11th – Finding the Sky by A.M. Burns (G)
February 18th – Dreams of Fire and Gods by James Erich (G, B)
February 25th – Radio Silence by Alice Oseman (A) (UK release)
February 25th – Ball Caps and Khakis by Jo Ramsey (G, Queer Spectrum)
March
March 1st – Under Threat by Robin Stevenson (L)
March 3rd – The Star Host by F.T. Lukens (B)
March 8th – Seven Ways We Lie by Riley Redgate (P, A)
March 8th – On the Edge of Gone by Corinne Duyvis (T)
March 10th – Fjord Blue by Nina Rossing (G)
March 24th – Refraction by Hayden Scott (G)
March 24th – As Autumn Leaves by Kate Sands (L, Queer Spectrum)
March 29th – The Great American Whatever by Tim Federle (G)
March 29th – My Year Zero by Rachel Gold (B, L)
April
April 1st – The Island of Beyond by Elizabeth Atkinson (Middle Grade)
April 1st – South of Sunshine by Dana Elmendorf (L)
April 5th – The New Guy (And Other Senior Year Distractions) by Amy Spalding (MC has two moms)
April 5th– Away We Go by Emil Ostrovski (B)
April 7th – The Ongoing Reformation of Micah Johnson by Sean Kennedy (G)
April 12th – My Seventh-Grade Life in Tights by Brooks Benjamin (Middle Grade)
April 14th – Tharros (Book #2) by C. Kennedy (G)
April 19th – Saving Montgomery Sole by Mariko Tamaki (Lesbian moms, Gay secondary character)
April 19th – Pride: Celebrating Diversity & Community by Robin Stevenson
April 21th – Unicorn Tracks by Julia Ember (L)
April 26th – Drag Teen by Jeffery Self
May
May 3rd – If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo (T)
May 3rd – Ask Me How I Got Here by Christine Heppermann (B)
May 5th – Rufus + Syd by Julia Watts and Robin Lippincott (G, L)
May 12th – Bitter Moon Saga (Books #1-4) by Amy Lane (B)
May 17th – Gena/Finn by Hannah Moskowitz and Kat Helgeson (B)
May 19th – Magic Fell by Andi Van (G, T)
May 31st – Without Annette by Jane B. Mason (L)
May 31st – Frannie and Tru by Karen Hattrup (G)
May 31st – The Inside of Out by Jenn Marie Thorne (L)
–
You can send us comments, suggestions or titles we might have missed at: nadia@gayya.org or tweet us@thegayYA with the info!