New Releases: May 2015.
May 1st (USA)
Flesh and Bone (Luminis Books, 2015)
Flesh and Bone by William Alton — (G,Q)
Goodreads Summary: “A literary novel for young adults that deals with a despairing teen uncertain about his sexual preferences who turns to drugs, alcohol, and unreliable friends for solace.
Told in a series of images and fragments, Flesh and Bone is a raw and real portrayal of a teen struggling to find love in his life. When Bill’s father leaves and he and his mother move far away to live with her parents, his whole world implodes. His grandparents are cold and distant, his mom is distant both physically and emotionally as she deals with her own struggles, and his dad is just gone. Bill explores his sexuality with multiple partners as he searches for love and compassion and turns to drugs and alcohol to dull the pain of loneliness. Flesh and Bone is a powerful tale that sheds light on the dark places of the soul.”
May 5th (USA)
Stonewall: Breaking Out in the Fight for Gay Rights by Ann Bausum — (NON-FICTION, Q)
Goodreads Summary: “That’s the Stonewall. The Stonewall Inn. Pay attention. History walks through that door.
In 1969 being gay in the United States was a criminal offense. It meant living a closeted life or surviving on the fringes of society.
Stonewall (Viking Books for Young Readers, 2015)
People went to jail, lost jobs, and were disowned by their families for being gay. Most doctors considered homosexuality a mental illness. There were few safe havens. The Stonewall Inn, a Mafia-run, filthy, overpriced bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village, was one of them.
Police raids on gay bars happened regularly in this era. But one hot June night, when cops pounded on the door of the Stonewall, almost nothing went as planned. Tensions were high. The crowd refused to go away. Anger and frustration boiled over.
The raid became a riot.
The riot became a catalyst.
The catalyst triggered an explosive demand for gay rights.
Ann Bausum’s riveting exploration of the Stonewall Riots and the national Gay Rights movement that followed is eye-opening, unflinching, and inspiring.”
May 7th (USA)
Witches by A.M. Burns — (G)
Witches (Harmony Ink Press, 2015)
Goodreads Summary: “Thom Woodmen, a bigfoot or Oh Mah, who lives in a human world, is bonded to Ben Steele, an average teenager. Thom has barely adjusted to his new status as a Guardian when he discovers others working against him and there’s a price on his head. Then an intruder appears in his family’s territory, and he senses strange energies coming from Ben.
While they struggle to find out who wants Thom dead, Ben is tested to confirm Thom’s suspicions—Ben has magic. Ben shows promise, but he just wants to stay the normal human within their group of friends. After more attacks, Ben begins to see how magic might help him protect Thom—if only he can learn enough before the witch who is hunting them closes in for the kill.”
May 7th (UK)
This is Not a Love Story by Keren David — (B)
This is Not a Love Story (Atom, 2015)
Goodreads Summary: “Kitty dreams of a beautiful life, but that’s impossible in suburban London where her family is haunted by her father’s unexpected death. So when her mum suggests moving to Amsterdam to try a new life, Kitty doesn’t take much persuading. Will this be her opportunity to make her life picture perfect?
In Amsterdam she meets moody, unpredictable Ethan, and clever, troubled Theo. Two enigmatic boys, who each harbour their own secrets. In a beautiful city and far from home, Kitty finds herself falling in love for the first time.
But will love be everything she expected? And will anyone’s heart survive?”
May 12th (USA)
Vanished by E. E. Cooper — (B)
Vanished (Katherine Tegen Books, 2015)
Goodreads Summary: “Gone Girl meets Pretty Little Liars in this fast-paced psychological thriller full of delicious twists and turns.
Friendship. Obsession. Deception. Love.
Kalah knows better than to fall for Beth Taylor . . . but that doesn’t stop her from falling hard and falling fast, heart first into a sea of complications.
Then Beth vanishes. She skips town on her eighteenth birthday, leaving behind a flurry of rumors and a string of broken hearts. Not even Beth’s best friend, Britney, knows where she went. Beth didn’t even tell Kalah good-bye.
One of the rumors links Beth to Britney’s boyfriend, and Kalah doesn’t want to believe the betrayal. But Brit clearly believes it–and before Kalah can sort out the truth, Britney is dead.
When Beth finally reaches out to Kalah in the wake of Brit’s suicide, Kalah wants to trust what Beth tells her. But she’s swiftly realizing that nothing here is as it seems. Kalah’s caught in the middle of a deadly psychological game, and only she can untangle the deceptions and lies to reveal the unthinkable truth.”
May 14h (USA)
After I Wake by Emma Griffiths — (L)
After I Wake (Harmony Ink, 2015)
Goodreads Summary: “Award-winning teen poet Carter Rogers has made a lot of bad choices in her life, one of which led to losing her hand to frostbite. After a failed suicide attempt, Carter wakes up and takes a hard look at the person she’s become. As her disappointment over her botched effort fades, she begins to accept herself and look forward. Righting past wrongs won’t be easy, but armed with the support of her mother and her friends, and with a new perspective on life, Carter sets out to fix her relationships with the people she cares about and the world of poetry.”
May 14h (USA)
Read Me Like a Book (Indigo, 2015)
Read Me Like a Book by Liz Kessler — (L,B)
Goodreads Summary: “Ashleigh Walker is in love. You know the feeling – that intense, heart-racing, all-consuming emotion that can only come with first love. It’s enough to stop her worrying about bad grades at college. Enough to distract her from her parents’ marriage troubles. There’s just one thing bothering her . . .
Shouldn’t it be her boyfriend, Dylan, who makes her feel this way – not Miss Murray, her English teacher?
A thought-provoking coming out story from a highly skilled author.”
May 19th (USA)
The First Twenty by Jennifer Lavoie — (L)
The First Twenty (Bold Strokes Books, 2015)
Goodreads Summary: “Humanity was nearly wiped out when a series of global disasters struck, but pockets of survivors have managed to thrive and are starting to rebuild society. Peyton lives with others in what used to be a factory. When her adopted father is murdered by Scavengers, she is determined to bring justice to those who took him away from her. She didn’t count on meeting Nixie.
Nixie is one of the few people born with the ability to dowse for water with her body. In a world where safe water is hard to come by, she’s a valuable tool to her people. When she’s taken by Peyton, they’ll do anything to get her back. As the tension between the groups reaches critical max, Peyton is forced to make a decision: give up the girl she’s learned to love, or risk the lives of those she’s responsible for.”
May 21th (USA)
Out of Order (Harmony Ink, 2015)
Out of Order by Casey Lawrence — (B)
Goodreads Summary: “Corinna “Corey” Nguyen’s life seems perfectly average for a closeted bisexual whiz kid with her eyes on college and a budding romance with her friend Kate. Sixteen and navigating senior year with her tight-knit group of best friends through crushes, breakups, and pregnancy scares, Corey mistakenly believes that running for valedictorian and choosing the right college are the worst of her worries. That is, until prom night, when she’s left alone and in shock, hiding inside a diner restroom, the only witness to a multiple homicide.
With graduation looming, the pressure is on for Corey to identify the killer and ensure that the crime that has changed her life forever will not go unpunished.”
May 26th (USA)
Anything Could Happen by Will Walton — (G)
Goodreads Summary: “When you’re in love with the wrong person for the right reasons, anything could happen.
Anything Could Happen (Push, 2015)
Tretch lives in a very small town where everybody’s in everybody else’s business. Which makes it hard for him to be in love with his straight best friend. For his part, Matt is completely oblivious to the way Tretch feels – and Tretch can’t tell whether that makes it better or worse.
The problem with living a lie is that the lie can slowly become your life. For Tretch, the problem isn’t just with Matt. His family has no idea who he really is and what he’s really thinking. The girl at the local bookstore has no clue how off-base her crush on him is. And the guy at school who’s a thorn in Tretch’s side doesn’t realize how close to the truth he’s hitting.
Tretch has spent a lot of time dancing alone in his room, but now he’s got to step outside his comfort zone and into the wider world. Because like love, a true self can rarely be contained.
ANYTHING COULD HAPPEN is a poignant, hard-hitting exploration of love and friendship, a provocative debut that shows that sometimes we have to let things fall apart before we can make them whole again. ”
May 26th (USA)
The Porcupine of Truth (Arthur A. Levine, 2015)
The Porcupine of Truth by Bill Konigsberg — (G)
Goodreads Summary: “The author of OPENLY STRAIGHT returns with an epic road trip involving family history, gay history, the girlfriend our hero can’t have, the grandfather he never knew, and the Porcupine of Truth.
Carson Smith is resigned to spending his summer in Billings, Montana, helping his mom take care of his father, a dying alcoholic he doesn’t really know. Then he meets Aisha Stinson, a beautiful girl who has run away from her difficult family, and Pastor John Logan, who’s long held a secret regarding Carson’s grandfather, who disappeared without warning or explanation thirty years before. Together, Carson and Aisha embark on an epic road trip to find the answers that might save Carson’s dad, restore his fragmented family, and discover the “Porcupine of Truth” in all of their lives.”
May 28th (USA)
Caught in the Middle (Caught in the Act #2) by Robbie Michaels — (G)
Caught in the Middle (Harmony Ink, 2015)
Goodreds Summary: “After a rocky start to the school year, Ben and Adam are getting their feet on solid ground, despite a lot of obstacles. Amelia, Ben’s former girlfriend, isn’t willing to let Ben go so easily. At Christmas, Amelia delivers a bombshell that keeps Adam and Ben apart over the holiday. When Adam returns from seeing his family, Ben, who avoids conflict at all cost, will not talk to him.
Adam figures out Amelia’s scheme, and when he confronts her, she retaliates by arranging an ambush in the school parking lot one night.
Ben is horrified when he sees Adam lying battered in the hospital. Adam is more than physically broken. His spirit is wounded, and he sees only the negative, the struggle ahead, and Ben’s betrayal. Healing, both in body and mind, is a long arduous road.
It’s up to Ben to convince Adam that there is still good in life and that he’ll be there to help Adam every step of the way. If Adam will let him.”
Review: Hold Still by Nina LaCour
reviewed by Marie Hagen of MarietheLibrarian
Hold Still by Nina Lacour
Hold Still | Nina LaCour | 231 pages | Paperback | With illustrations
Genres: Young Adult, Contemporary, Realistic fiction
Themes: Death, friendship, loss, suicide
Goodreads rating: 3.99
Synopsis: Hold Still tells the story of Caitlin who recently lost her best friend Ingrid, to suicide. Ingrid and Caitlin shared everything together, and Caitlin is facing an unknown life without her best friend to laugh, cry and share her secrets with. One day Caitlin finds Ingrids journal under her bed, and through her journal, Caitlin gets to see another different, darker side of Ingrid. The journal becomes sort a guide to Caitlin as she deals with returning to school, forging new friendships and falling in love for the very first time, without her best friend to share it with.
My thoughts:
You may wonder why I chose to review this book for the GAY YA, and that’s because the author is not only gay, but Hold Still features a queer girl character. But I’ll talk a bit more about this later.
The reason I read this book was because I had heard so much raving about Nina LaCour’s newest book, Everything Leads to You. I was buying books for my library and the only book they had available for purchase was Hold Still. I bought it, received it, read it and here I am, an emotional mess because of this beautiful book.
First off, I want to talk about LaCour’s beautiful writing style. IT IS SO BEAUTIFUL AND MY HEART JUST MELTED! She writes so poetically and full of emotions and it just hits me right in the heart. Her tone is funny, sarcastic and very realistic. Her metaphors are easy to understand and relate to, and it makes me feel as though I am the one grieving the loss of my best friend to a suicide. It takes talent to write that well.
Second, the characters. Oh my god, the characters. The characters are so well-written and well-rounded. All of them come to life in my head and I really feel like I am a part of this book. Caitlin’s grief, her struggle to find new friends, her relationship with her parents, teachers and her old classmates. Caitlin’s new friends are written beautifully and they all have depth and emotion to them. Every character in this book has a purpose and they all bring something new to the story about Caitlin and Ingrid. My favorite character is, of course, the queer girl and Caitlin’s friend, Dylan. She has gone through some of the same stuff that Caitlin has been through and their friendship turns out to be one of the realest ones I have read.
Thirdly, I absolute loved, adored, and devoured this book. It left me speechless and I cried many times. I love how this book is about grief, but it is not one of those immensely sad books that you get depressed after reading. No, this book has humor, love and carrying on as important subjects. It also shows how art or doing what YOU love can help you get through even the hardest of times. Like I said earlier, the main reason I wanted to review this book for the GAY YA is because it features a very realistic f/f relationship and it also shows how completely normal a friendship between a straight and queer girl can be. I love Dylan and Caitlin’s honesty with each other, and I love how Caitlin can ask Dylan about relationship advice without it being cheesy. I also loved that Caitlin has male friends that she’s not attracted to and that she still manages to be their friend. This book just displays some simply amazing and wonderful relationships of all kinds.
Final thoughts: Read this book if you want to laugh and cry. Read this book if you want to read a book with good and strong friendships. Read this book if you want a queer girl character. Read this book if you want to read a beautifully written novel. Just read this book. IT IS SO BEAUTIFUL.
Favorite quote:
“Instead, every muscle in her whole body seems to lose all tension, her step forward resembles a skip, and she lets out a hey that might as well say; I love you, you are so beautiful, no one in the world is as amazing as you are.”
This is how Caitlin describes Dylan when she sees her girlfriend, and I just died from the beauty of it.
My rating: 5 stars
Thank you for reading and thank you to Vee at @thegayya for allowing me to write this weird review. It is not a review per ce, but my thoughts and feelings and rambles about this stunning book.
LGBTQ YA by the Numbers: Gender and Genre
After seeing an ask about speculative fiction with LGBTQ+ protagonists on the Gay YA tumblr a few weeks ago, I got curious, so I did what I often do in circumstances like these: I went through the masterlist to figure out just how much LGBTQ+ speculative fiction was on it. Thinking about speculative fiction numbers got me thinking about other numbers, so I thought it might be interesting to do a gender breakdown as well. This turned into a slightly more involved project (“more involved” meaning “I had to count more books”, basically). These numbers are based on the list as it stood on 21 April, 2015; they would look (slightly) different if recalculated today.
Totals
I’m going to go down the list from most books to least books.
Gay: 315 books
- male author: 174.5 (55.4%)
- female author: 130.5 (41.4%)
- non-binary author: 0 (0%)
- multi-author anthology: 7 (2.2%)
- anonymous: 1 (0.3%)
- I couldn’t find out: 3 (1.0%) (two books by M.C. Lee and one by R.J. Seeley)
While a majority of books about gay male characters are written by men, a significant portion of them are written by women (a far, far greater percentage than the numbers for books about lesbians written by men, as we’ll see in a moment).
That said, my initial perception that the majority of the books in the Gay section of the masterlist were written by women was, obviously, very wrong — it’s clear I fell victim to the 17%/33% fallacy (if you’re reading this, are a man, and haven’t heard about this, I’d highly recommend reading the article; it really opened my eyes to the limitations of my perception and is the reason that in contexts like this my approach is to actually count so I have accurate numbers instead).
I’d be very interested to hear from authors about why they chose to write the stories they wrote (as opposed to writing stories about non-straight female characters).
Lesbian: 203 books
- male author: 13 (6.4%)
- female author: 172 (84.7%)
- non-binary author: 1 (0.5%) (S.J. Adams)
- multi-author anthology: 15 (7.4%)
- I couldn’t find out: 2 (1.0%) (two books by Ari Bach)
These percentages become even starker if you exclude the anthologies: over 90% of the non-anthologies were written by women.
Bisexual: 81 books
- male author: 21.5 (26.5%)
- female author: 58.5 (72.2%)
- non-binary author: 0 (0%)
- multi-author anthology: 1 (1.2%)
A further breakdown of the bi books by the gender of the bi character (and character gender vs. author gender) would be very interesting, but that will have to wait for another time.
Transgender: 38 books
- male author: 6.5 (17.1%)
- female author: 26.5 (70.0%)
- non-binary author: 2 (5.3%) (one book by Sassafras Lowry and one by Rae Spoon)
- multi-author anthology: 3 (7.9%)
The same note as for the bi books applies here, as well.
Asexual/Aromantic: 19 books
- male author: 2 (11%)
- female author: 17 (89%)
- non-binary author: 0 (0%)
- multi-author anthology: 0 (0%)
Caveat: the ace/aro section of the masterlist includes non-YA books, in deference to the rarity of ace/aro representation in YA, so take these numbers with a grain of salt.
Intersex: 6 books
- male author: 0 (0%)
- female author: 6 (100%)
- non-binary author: 0 (0%)
- multi-author anthology: 0 (0%)
There are so few books with intersex characters. Hopefully that will change in future.
Genre
I’ve included a gender breakdown here, as well. For the purposes of this list, I counted all forms of speculative fiction: high fantasy, urban fantasy, paranormal stuff, science fiction, postapocalyptic and/or dystopian books, magical realism, etc. Not included are things like thrillers, historical fiction, sports books, and the like. Again, I’m going to go through by number of books.
Gay: 76 of the 315 gay books were speculative fiction (24.1%)
- male author: 39 (51.3% of genre)
- female author: 33 (43.4% of genre)
- multi-author anthology: 2 (2.6% of genre)
- I couldn’t find out: 2 (2.6% of genre) (two books by M.C. Lee)
Lesbian: 58 of the 203 lesbian books were speculative fiction (28.6%)
- male author: 3 (5.2% of genre)
- female author: 48 (82.8% of genre)
- multi-author anthology: 5 (8.6% of genre)
- I couldn’t find out: 2 (3.4% of genre) (two books by Ari Bach)
Bisexual: 40 of the 81 bisexual books were speculative fiction (49.4%)
- male author: 5 (12.5% of genre)
- female author: 35 (87.5% of genre)
Asexual/Aromantic: 17 of the 19 ace/aro books were speculative fiction (89%)
- male author: 1 (6% of genre)
- female author: 16 (94% of genre)
As above, these statistics are perhaps a bit dubious considering that the masterlist includes non-YA books with ace/aro characters.
Transgender: 9 of the 38 transgender books were speculative fiction (23.7%)
- male author: 2 (22% of genre)
- female author: 7 (78% of genre)
Intersex: 2 of the 6 intersex books were speculative fiction (33%)
- female author: 2 (100% of genre)
There are so few of these that these statistics mean nothing, basically.
Comments
Excluding asexual/aromantic and intersex on the grounds that there are too few of them to make any real judgments, the percentage of genre fiction is pretty consistently around 25% for gay, lesbian, and trans books.
So what’s up with the bi books? I mean, that’s awesome if you’re looking for speculative fiction about bi characters (and really, is anyone not?), but still: almost 50% of the books on the masterlist about bi characters are speculative.
This raises two questions that are two sides of the same coin: first, why is it that we can more easily imagine bi characters in speculative contexts than in the real world? And, relatedly: why is it that gay, lesbian, and trans characters are limited (relatively speaking) to realistic (or at least grounded in the real world) fiction?
I think the answers to those questions are related in much the same way the questions are:
- the dominant narrative about LGBTQ+ youth is the coming out story, prototypically about gay men, lesbians to a lesser extent, and more recently trans people (cf. Casey Plett’s excellent commentary on the “Rise of the Gender Novel“). Bi young people don’t fit as neatly into this narrative, so fewer versions of it are written.
- by the same token, the dominant narrative about LGBTQ+ youth is the coming out story about gay men, lesbians, and trans people. Speculative fiction plots don’t tend to leave as much room for this as realistic fiction does, so less speculative fiction about these groups is written because it’s harder to fit that dominant narrative into speculative stories.
The (relative) overrepresentation of bisexuality in speculative fiction worries me: it’s already easy enough for realistic media to refuse to say the word “bisexual”. Moving to a fantasy world where contemporary labels for sexuality aren’t used or don’t apply can be liberating, but it can also be an uncomfortably convenient way to not engage with real-world questions about identity. (See: Editor’s Note)
The (relative) underrepresentation of gay, lesbian, and trans characters in speculative fiction has been extensively discussed elsewhere, and I don’t have much to add that hasn’t been said elsewhere, better, before. Speculative fiction allows members of marginalized groups to imagine possibilities for themselves beyond what the dominant group(s) acknowledge, and that’s incredibly important (N.K. Jemisin has an amazing essay on representation that you should read immediately).
This is not at all to say that realistic fiction isn’t important, because it is. If we take one thing away from this post, let it be that there just isn’t enough LGBTQ+ YA being published. The Gay YA Masterlist is not a complete list, by any means, but it’s fairly comprehensive, and it’s also short enough that it’s not unreasonable for me to sit down and count every book on it. Malinda Lo estimated in 2013 that only “1.9% to 2.4% of YA books published in 2013 include LGBT main characters or are about LGBT issues”.
Realistically, there just aren’t enough LGBTQ+ YA books being published for any of these numbers to be more than vaguely suggestive of questions or trends. How meaningful is it to say more books about bi characters in speculative contexts are being published when only a handful of books about bi characters are released every year? Or that there are “too many” coming out stories when major publishers released only 24 LGBTQ+ YA books total in 2014?
We desperately need more stories. In N.K. Jemisin’s words (seriously, read the essay I linked to above):
We all have futures. We all have pasts. We all have stories. And we all, every single one of us, no matter who we are and no matter what’s been taken from us or what poison we’ve internalized or how hard we’ve had to work to expel it —
— we all get to dream.
EDITOR’S NOTE: There’s been some confusion regarding the commentary on bisexual representation this post, so to clarify: This post is not an attempt to suggest that there is too much bisexual representation in speculative fiction. Rather, it intends to ask why there is comparatively less bisexual representation within realistic fiction, and explores some possible answers. The commentary within this post is regarding genre, not representation.
We believe bisexuality is comparatively underrepresented in queer YA, and want to see more bisexual characters in every genre. (Notice that, percentages aside, there are significantly fewer books featuring bisexual characters than books featuring gay or lesbian characters.) The post is not intended to discourage writers of speculative fiction that includes a bisexual character. As was said in this post: “If we take one thing away from this post, let it be that there just isn’t enough LGBTQ+ YA being published.” We need more queer stories of every kind, in every genre.
We apologize for any confusion or misunderstandings created, and invite anybody who still feels uncomfortable about the content in this post to get in touch with us at vee@gayya.org
Friendships Are Hard.
by John Hansen
By most standards, I’ve won the queer lottery. I live in one of the first U.S. states to have legalized gay marriage; I have parents who went through only a minimal learning curve when I came out to them; I attend a high school that not only has a gay-straight alliance, but whose gay-straight alliance is active enough that the school newspaper often reports on its activities. I’m lucky. I know that.
And yet, here I am: seventeen years old, proudly queer, out to everyone I know online—but I’m still beyond terrified to tell anyone in school of my sexuality. Skipping over the inevitable self-torture (“If you can’t even come out here, how are you ever going to live out of the closet at all?”), I think it’s safe to blame my fears on friendship.
Here’s the thing: most of my friends are straight guys. And in high school—and possibly everywhere—being gay, bisexual, pansexual, or otherwise Not Straight while remaining close friends with straight people of the same gender is often really, really hard. And it’s not for any one reason, except maybe some combination of a) excessive hormones and b) people’s lack of exposure to actual same-gender relationships. But it’s always there—this unspoken agreement that being gay, while not explicitly bad, is weird, something meant for only one kind of person in a place that isn’t here.
Though within my social circle I only occasionally hear homophobic jokes made, the otherness of who I am slips into seemingly every conversation—like how discussing a recent Game of Thrones episode sends me into an internal panic when one person mentions how unnecessary and gross “those gay scenes” are, or how another has to preface his reluctance to talk to a girl he likes with “I’m not gay, but…,” or how people use the phrase “this is an accepting school” as a punch line rather than as a motto.
And, look, if I were to come out tomorrow—just leap up onto the dining hall table and shout “I DECLARE MY HOMOSEXUALITY!!!!!”*—I doubt I’d lose more than a single friend. I doubt many people would stop talking to me, because this is an accepting school, because I don’t have to fear for my safety, because I’m lucky. But it would be… different. Even at my school, most people really don’t understand m/m attraction. Mostly, I think this is for the obvious reason—when you tell a group of straight high school boys that you’re interested in guys, their minds automatically go to the whole sex part. Equally unhelpful is how some people instantly connect a same-gender friend being gay or bisexual with the fact that the friend could now be attracted to them, and then totally change how they act around him because of it.
That is what scares me: friends suddenly becoming hyperaware of everything I do and say for fear that I’m attracted to them.
I don’t think my feelings are irrational, either. I mean, there’s a reason why every single guy who has come out at my school is friends with almost all girls.
And it’d be so easy for me to say that my fears exist because my friends are bad, or because they’re shallow, or whatever it is, but that’s just not true. These kids, they are funny and cool and intelligent and self-aware and—yeah—they also really don’t have a problem with someone’s sexuality. I can name maybe one person within my social circle who I think would actually be upset. But there is still this general acknowledgement that straight is the strict default, and that queer people only exist “somewhere over there.”
To me, this has always been the hardest thing about being gay in high school—trying to grapple with the fact that even people as awesome as my friends might look at me differently after knowing this one part of who I am.
***
I tell you this because I want to illustrate the way in which being queer influences my everyday life. In large part because of my sexuality, I’m constantly questioning the value of my friendships, constantly feeling isolated by my own “otherness.”
After coming out, in itself such a huge and terrifying moment and one that we always need more YA books to cover, for me and for many other queer teens I’ve talked to, a hell of a lot of our struggles seem to revolve around friendships. But in queer YA, just like in straight YA, a lot of times complex looks at friendship get passed up in favor of more screen time for romantic relationships.
And including romance is great—one can never have too much kissing, especially of the queer variety, and I really hope the recent increase in queer romance books continues. But although romance is a big deal to a lot of us, it’s also not usually the most pressing issue. As much as I sometimes wish it were, my sexuality is not a nice little box that I can slap a ribbon on and push aside when I’m bored. Rather, it seeps into everything I do, and it makes something as basic as maintaining positive friendships with straight people of the same gender a constant struggle.
The YA category is famously riddled with the “Gay Best Friend” trope, where the straight hero has a queer friend/sidekick. In this trope, the hero usually affirms once or twice how totally cool with their friend’s sexuality or gender identity they are and then drops the subject in favor of, like, fighting bad guys and toppling regimes and stuff. And I think that’s good—that the main character is accepting, yeah, and also that the book has some form of queer representation.
But it’s also so rare for us to get the story from the point of view of that gay best friend—to hear about all of the times the straight hero said something homophobic to him without realizing, how many times the friend opened his mouth to point it out and then psyched himself out of it, and how often moments like these have made him feel different, and other, and alone.
And I look at that, that gay best friend trope, and I think: this is my life. The struggles that kid must go through every day—that’s what I deal with, too.
What I’d like to see—and what I hope to write—is more YA books along these lines, books that take hard looks at sexuality in the context of high school friendships and at the myriad of little internal conflicts that result from them.
Struggling with friendships is also in no way limited to a) males and b) sexuality. (I focused on these aspects only because they’re my personal experience.) It extends to all genders and to people all across the queer spectrum. From what I’ve heard, many, many LGBTQIA+ people have a hard time navigating their friendships, and I think it’s hugely important that we have books to guide us.
I mean, reading YA has already helped me immensely in understanding who I am. As far as I’m concerned, there is nothing queer YA can’t do.
***
*By the way, “I Declare My Homosexuality” is going to be the title of my tell-all memoir. Look out, publishing world.
—
Writing Across Barriers
by Bill Konigsberg
With my new novel The Porcupine of Truth, I tried to be brave.
I decided to do the one thing that writers talk about as being among the most challenging things an author can do. To give a realistic interior to an “other.” To write across a boundary such as sexual orientation.
I wrote from the point of view of a straight male character.
I know, I know. I should probably get a medal. But I did it because I fully believe that straight guys deserve the same rights and privileges I’ve been afforded.
They were born that way, after all. I truly believe that.
The Porcupine of Truth by Bill Konigsberg (Arthur A. Levine, 2015)
I joke, I joke. But there’s a kernel of truth (a Porcupine, if you will) in there. My first two novels, OUT OF THE POCKET and OPENLY STRAIGHT, were both from the point of view of a gay male character. With this book, my two main characters are a straight white male and a gay black female. I am neither.
And yet. Carson Smith and Aisha Stinson, who meet in Billings, Montana, and wind up on a life-changing cross-country road trip together, are the two most emotionally “like me” characters I’ve ever written. Carson, like me, uses humor to mask his emotions and will never be quite as normal as he wishes he were. Like me, Aisha has a firm, somewhat rigid understanding of right and wrong and doesn’t believe there’s anything more important than being exactly who she is at all costs.
Perhaps it sounds like a stupid question, but as I wrote the book, I wondered: is it harder for a straight person to write an LGBT character than for an LGBT person to write a straight character?
Think about that for a moment. If we think it’s easier, does that mean that straight is like a base condition from which we LGBT people stray? That I have a frame of reference that a straight author, for instance, might not have in writing a gay character? Or if we think it’s exactly the same, does that discount the first 13 years of my life, when I believed I was straight because that’s what society told me I (and everyone around me) was?
It’s actually a little bit complicated. Did I understand Carson’s interior as a straight white male because I thought I was one? Or did I understand it because we are all the same inside?
Or is it possible that I understood Carson’s interior because of heterosexism? After all, I’ve been considered straight at all times when I don’t say otherwise. In my life, when straight men haven’t known I was gay, I’ve been invited into their culture. That probably doesn’t happen so often in the reverse, though I assume there are probably some straight people who have been invited to be part of LGBT culture, through assumption, or perhaps through family.
Openly Straight by Bill Konigsberg (Arthur A. Levine, 2013)
Regardless, I admit I didn’t focus on Carson’s straightness that much. I knew he was in love with Aisha, who is not available. I was able to hone in on what it feels like to be in love with someone who doesn’t love me back without too much trouble, sadly.
What I focused in on instead was Carson’s joy and pain. What does Carson love? To feel connected to others, as it turns out. What brings Carson pain? Feeling unloved and uncared for.
Perhaps there’s a lesson in there. For all the talk about how careful we need to be writing across these boundaries—sexual orientation, race, class—perhaps all we really need to be focused on is creating a realistic interior. Is it possible that it’s that simple?
I am fully in favor of writers attempting these sorts of endeavors. I think on a personal level, striving to give a believable interior to a “not me” character is the surest way I can grow and evolve. In the process, I learn the ways that humanity puts its stamp on all of us. And also, I learn the ways in which human experience differentiates us from each other.
And also avoiding the pitfalls helps me grow, too.
For me, a pitfall a straight person might fall into in writing an LGBT character is oversexualizing that character. In the same way M-4-M romance is somewhat fetishized these days by straight female readers, I think it’s potentially problematic to think that a gay character, for instance, is somehow more sexual simply because they happen to be attracted to people of the same sex.
I suppose time will tell whether there were pitfalls in writing a straight male character that I fell into! We’ll just have to wait and see.
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The Porcupine of Truth hits store shelves 5/25– Buy your copy today!