No Dumbledores Need Apply
Hey! We mixed up our links today, 5/20/15. If you’re looking for the post on what teens on tumblr are saying or about the call for diversity and having limited spaces to call home, check out Tumblr Teens: BookMad For Diversity. If you want an editor’s perspective on why he’s going to stop using the phrase “just happens to be gay” and what he’s looking for in queer YA, read on!
by T.S. Ferguson
You may be aware of a conversation that happened in April focusing on the phrase “just happens to be gay.” The conversation was started by an author I am lucky enough to work with, Robin Talley, author of LIES WE TELL OURSELVES and the upcoming WHAT WE LEFT BEHIND. What the conversation essentially boiled down to is this: saying you want to read a book where the character “just happens to be gay” can be harmful to members of the queer community, as it comes across sounding very much like “I don’t mind if a character is
As a queer editor who has said he is looking for books where the character “just happens to be gay” I had to really do some self-analysis when this conversation began. I’m also guilty of saying “there are too many coming out stories in the market,” another statement that was discussed as frustrating and harmful. Obviously as an open and proud gay man, and an editor who is actively seeking more GLBTQIA+ fiction for my list, I don’t want a character’s sexuality erased from the story. So I thought a lot about what I meant to say when I said these things and how I could say them better.
As a reader I was never the kid who yearned to see himself in books. I didn’t read a book full of straight characters and feel like I wouldn’t fit in. I always found a way to insert myself into the story using my imagination, but when I got older and started hearing about my friends’ desires to see themselves in the stories they read, it immediately made sense to me. There’s no doubt how important it is to so many people to see themselves in the stories they experience. And it’s also no doubt how large a role sexuality can play in a teenager’s life. So what did I mean when I said I wanted to see books about characters who “just happen to be gay”? When I asked myself that question, I immediately thought of one of my favorite lines from Orphan Black, spoken by queer clone Cosima: “My sexuality is not the most interesting part about me.”
Cosima from Orphan Black
As a reader and an editor, I adore LGBTQIA+ characters, but I am drawn most to stories where they get to be more than their sexuality. I love Cosima, for example, not just because she’s gay and in an on-screen relationship with another woman (two facts that make me love this show to pieces even more than I already did), but because she is an incredibly smart, ever-curious scientist, a dreadlocked weed smoker, and the most chill and friendly clone on the show. These are the characters I’m drawn to—characters who are queer but who are allowed to be defined by (and whose stories are defined by) more than just the fact that they’re queer. The fact that they’re queer is very important, don’t get me wrong, but equally important is the fact that they can be so much more. Their queerness is part of what defines them, not the whole. And to be clear, that queerness, whether it’s central to the plot or not, should be on the page and not just implied or mentioned in a throwaway line that never comes up again. No Dumbledores need apply.
That’s a personal preference. I spent the 5 years between when I came out in high school and when I moved to New York City to pursue my publishing career being defined by my queerness, at least according to everyone around me. I wasn’t T.S. back then; I was Tom, a name and identity I never felt attached to and changed as soon as I was able. But when I came out in high school, because I was tall and South Park was in its heyday, I was Big Gay Tom. I was “the gay guy” or “my gay friend Tom.” Because I was out in settings where there were no other out gay people around, I was defined by my gayness by the people around me, and I didn’t realize how much it weighed on me until I moved to New York City, surrounded by artists and hipsters and queers of all shapes and sizes that I was able to identify the feeling. I was no longer defined by just my sexuality. I finally felt normal. So as a reader, I gravitate toward those stories that allow a character to be more than their sexuality, because to me, just being queer isn’t enough to grab my attention for an entire story. If the entire storyline is centered around the fact that the character is queer, that’s not going to be enough for me. And again, that’s just me. Other editors, other readers, will feel differently.
Of course, with me, there are always exceptions. I’m not going to be saying I want to see characters who “just happen to be gay” anymore, but I still want to be grabbed by a story. So if you’re writing a story centered around a character’s queerness, here’s how to capture the attention of an editor like me:
- Come at the story from a unique perspective. Write about queer kids of color, queer kids with disabilities, queer kids from different economic classes. It doesn’t always have to be about middle-class white kids (although in my opinion, this is true across any genre). Add to the conversation, rather than re-hashing what is already out there. Robin Talley, for example, has a book coming out in November (WHAT WE LEFT BEHIND) featuring a genderqueer protagonist and when she told me she wanted to write it, it was an immediate YES from me because I hadn’t heard about any other YA books being published yet that feature a character who identifies as genderqueer.
- Make it feel relevant to teens today. There are a lot of coming out stories out there, which is why many editors say we don’t need them anymore. But the experience of coming out, and the details around that experience, change with the times. If you’re writing a coming out story, make sure it feels different from what is already out there. Make it feel authentic to teens today, rather than what it was like for teens 5, 10, 15 years ago.
- Remember that, even if you’re writing a story that is centered around the character being LGBTQIA+ and how that affects them and the people around them, they can be defined by more than just that one aspect of themselves. Queer-centric stories are interesting and important, but don’t forget that just because the character is going through something directly related to their queerness, doesn’t mean they’ve lost the rest of themselves in the process. There needs to be more to the story and to the character to give them depth. There are many incredible authors out there doing just that—find them, read them, and learn from them.
So here’s where I’m at on my introspective journey: I’ll no longer be saying I want books with characters who “just happen to be gay.” If that phrase hurts just one person, then it’s not worth saving, especially if it discourages someone from writing the queer story they have inside. I’m still going to look for queer stories that give me more, whether that be a different perspective on the queer experience, or a story that features prominent, on-the-page queer characters who gets to be more than “the queer one.” I’ll just have to find a better way to ask for them.
Making Choices in LGBTQ YA
by Dahlia Adler
I’ve spoken a lot about how Under the Lights wasn’t originally a f/f romance. I had always planned to write one, but my very first was going to be the YA I’m actually drafting now, which is a contemporary inspired by the historical War of the Roses. (It’s still f/f – not to worry!) But when I was drafting UtL, I really, really struggled with the romance I was writing for Vanessa with this boy, and why there was zero story and zero chemistry. I was talking to one of my critique partners about it, and I said in frustration, “I feel like I just want to make her a lesbian,” and it was like being struck with a lightning bolt. Further confirmation? I went back through the words I’d written to see just how much of her POV I’d have to strip out in order to do this, and saw that the only person with whom she had any chemistry was a waitress with whom she’d inexplicably flirted to no end. So that waitress became Brianna in disguise, and voila.
Technically, you could say this was the very first “choice” I made with regard to Under the Lights as LGBTQ YA, but the truth is, it didn’t feel like one; I don’t think I could’ve finished the book if I’d ignored her voice telling me, “There is a reason I am impressed by this waitress and so very not impressed by this dude you’re trying to make me like.” But other things…those are choices. And when you write LGBTQ YA, there are some very specific ones you have to make. For me, some of them were easy, some of them were influenced by outside information, and some of them changed along the way, but none of them were made casually.
1. How your character is going to self-ID, if at all – this was one of the harder ones for me. On the one hand, I didn’t want to push Van into a box too quickly. There’s a scene where she contemplates (out loud to Bri) whether maybe she’s bisexual, but by the time I finished the book, I just knew that she wasn’t, that for her, it was kind of a desperate grasp (especially in context) to have an area in which she could maybe “pass” in a way she obviously can’t with her race. However, originally, I wasn’t sure I was going to have her state it at all; in a sense, I wanted to buy her more time to grow comfortable. But, while I was still in the decision-making process of this, Ellen Page came out, and it inspired my (author of the superb f/f Black Iris) friend Leah Raeder to write this incredible blog post, and I saw what a difference it made to have a celebrity stand up and actually say the words. So, even though obviously Van’s not anyone’s celeb role model in real life, I wanted her to be someone who could potentially have that kind of influence on someone in her world.
Under the Lights by Dahlia Adler (Spencer Hill Contemporary, 2015)
2. How your love interest is going to self-ID, if at all – this one was actually much easier. In the aforementioned scene where Van flirts with a waitress, the waitress refers to her “ex-boyfriend.” When that waitress turned into Brianna, I knew that line was meant to be kept intact; she was bisexual from the second of her inception. The fact that it’s stated plainly was also always my intent, but after hearing my friend Tess Sharpe (author of the fabulous Far From You) say she’d heard many times how important it was to readers that she used the word “bisexual” in her book, I really went through and probably hit readers over the head with it. OH WELL.
3. If you have a bisexual character, are you going to acknowledge relevant topics like biphobia or bi erasure? – When Bri and Van have their real Big Talk, Bri shares something with her that’s implicitly about having her bisexuality erased, although it’s not the focus of what she’s talking about, and originally I didn’t place emphasis on that at all. Then I saw a lot of bi erasure in action, and it inspired me to make that bit way more explicit. So it’s only a few lines (albeit important ones!), and it was one of my very last edits, but it’s there. (For a book that is waaaay heavier on talk against biphobia/bi erasure, I could not more highly recommend Hannah Moskowitz’s Not Otherwise Specified.)
4. To HEA or not to HEA – No. Freaking. Brainer. There is a frustratingly tremendous amount of Tragic LGBTQ YA, especially on the f/f front. The girl isn’t gay after all! One of them is killed! Bullying tears them apart forever! Even if you do get a girl at the end, you’ll be destroyed by a different one first! I mean, don’t get me wrong, these books are still good and realistic and important, but I tried to imagine growing up as a queer teen and my f/f selection being what it is right now and it broke my heart. (Dating Sarah Cooper by Siera Maley does an excellent riff on this throughout. It also has a delightful HEA, FYI.) What kind of message does it send to queer teen girls that brutal heartbreak is literally inevitable? Which isn’t to gloss over the challenges ofbeing a queer teen girl – like I said, of course there’s realism there – but like, I would’ve thought it was hopeless. So, UtL was always going to be a super fluffy HEA, exactly as the cover would suggest.
5. S-E-X – This is the decision every YA romance author has to make, and it’s one I make for every single one of my books. (Spoiler: I always choose Yes.) With Under the Lights in particular, though, I was extremely determined to really, really show it. There’s something damagingly heteronormative in the portrayal of sex in YA right now, this idea that nothing “counts” but a penis in a vagina, and WTF does that say to people who are not interested in having sex with those parts? Especially between girls, for whom sex is often something considered foreplay by hetero couples, it seems to invalidate the idea that a queer girl can have a real first time. I am still floored by how little on-page sex there is between two girls in YA; the aforementioned Far From You and Sarah McCarry’s upcoming About a Girl have by far the most I’ve read outside of UtL, and both are wonderfully written but pretty brief. And of course that can be author choice or editor choice or publisher choice – I have no idea – but my choice was to go all out with a girl-girl sex scene and brace myself for a fight with my editor. That fight never came. Instead I was told, “We didn’t change any of it, and feel free to add more kissing throughout. Consider anything you want to add on that front pre-approved.” So, that was pretty damn cool, and I went ahead and added as much as I could. Whether or not I succeeded, I definitely aimed for an experience that was a true “first time,” right down to a certain parallel with the first book, which I won’t spoil.
Queer girls deserve a book to keep under the mattress as much as straight girls do, and that is first and foremost what I wanted this book to be. So if you hate 99% of the book but you want to reread that first kiss or sex scene over and over? I consider it a success.
Labels are for Soup Cans (and also for me)
by Nita Tyndall
I was twelve the first time I realized I was queer. Back then, I identified as bisexual. Although I didn’t think I was a lesbian (even though I’d never felt attracted to boys), I wanted to keep my options open. And when I was twelve, those were the only two words I knew—lesbian and bisexual, though neither of them felt right. Gay didn’t, either, because I’d always associated that word with gay men, and I wasn’t one of those. So from twelve to thirteen, I was bisexual.
When I was in high school and started really being interested in and attracted to girls, I went with lesbian. It was the only word I knew, and by then I knew I didn’t like boys at all. But it still didn’t feel quite comfortable, like an itchy sweater that’s a size too small, but you wear it because it’s the only thing that’ll keep you warm.
And at the time, I thought, maybe I was a lesbian. I’d tried to get my hands on the few YA books I knew of with lesbian protagonists, because whenever I had a problem I needed to solve, I turned to a book. Books never failed me, they offered insight and the hope that everything would turn out right in three hundred pages or so. The lesbians in those books seemed as confused as I did, but more often than not they knew what their label was, what their identity was, and even if they had angst about coming out, everything turned out all right. But the way they felt about girls and the way I felt about girls seemed similar in theory, though not quite as much as I wanted.
Later on in high school, though, I joined Tumblr. And through Tumblr, I not only became more of a feminist, but I learned that there were more identities than gay or bisexual or lesbian, identities like trans or genderqueer or asexual.
Asexual. Huh.
I went to AVEN and read about asexuality, and a small spark went off in my brain, a spark that had slightly started in middle school when I identified as bisexual, when I realized I could be attracted to girls at all. The spark grew into a flame when I read more definitions and found the word demisexual:
Someone who can only experience sexual attraction after an emotional bond has been formed. This bond does not have to be romantic in nature.
Oh! That’s me.
I wanted to burst into tears because at last, here was a word that fit, here was a label that felt right, that encompassed what I felt. No longer did the sweater feel itchy or too small, no longer did I cringe when I identified what I was, because here was a word that could encompass all of my complicated feelings towards girls, here was a label I could cling to.
Because as pervasive as the idea is that labels are for soup cans, not people, there’s something so relieving in finding a word that wholly encompasses, or at least starts to encompass, the experiences you’ve been having. Finding the right label or word for your sexuality can be validating—at last, here is a word to sum up and explain what I’ve been feeling, a word that fits!
And I wonder how much less time I would’ve spent wondering where I fit if I’d read a book with a character who identified as asexual or demisexual, how much less stress it would’ve caused if I could have seen that honestly and accurately reflected in the media I consumed, not as a punchline or stereotype. How much better, easier it would have been to have a character to point to who identified like me, to say, if this person identifies this way, why can’t I? To have that character whose problems are resolved in three hundred pages, who finds love and fights dragons and goes on adventures, and who also is genderqueer or panromantic or, yes, asexual.
I think it would have helped a lot. At the very least, it would have helped me feel less alone.
Nowadays, I identify as queer, because I like the ambiguity of it and because homoromantic demisexual is too long to fit in a Twitter bio. I like queer because of the possibility it can encompass, the ease of saying it. But I am still demisexual, and that label, the knowledge of that word, carries a lot more hope and acceptance in it than I ever thought to find. I know some people may not need labels and some people may choose not to use them, and that’s absolutely fine, but you cannot underestimate the importance, the relief of finding the right one.
Someday, I hope there are more books with demisexual characters, or asexual characters, characters who struggle with finding the right label, because right now there’s a teen out there who has no clue what they identify as, a teen who won’t know what they are until they read a book and something clicks and that tiny spark goes off in their brain and they’re able to say—
Oh! That’s me.
For more information on asexuality, please visit http://www.asexuality.org/home/?q=general.html#def
Nita is a tiny Southern queer YA writer with deep love of sweet tea and very strong opinions about the best kind of barbecue (hint: it’s vinegar-based). She’s currently in college obtaining an English degree and is a contributor for TheGayYA. You can find her on tumblr at nitatyndall where she writes about YA and queer things and reblogs pictures of elephants, or on Twitter at @NitaTyndall. She is represented by Emily S. Keyes of Fuse Literary.
Graphic Novel Review: Lumberjanes.
Lumberjanes (Boom! Studios, 2014)
One of the biggest challenges I face when reading, reviewing and now, publishing, is to find balance in the types of queers stories I read/review/publish. It often feels to me that the vast majority of what is out there – and what is made more visible when it comes to reviewing and award-winning – are the stories that deal with violence, homophobia, or the ones where being queer is the story.
Don’t get me wrong, because those? Are super important and should be told, read and talked about.
But equally important in my opinion are the fun and light stories, the stories with folks already out, the stories where no one dies, the happy and sappy stories, especially those with queer characters just being an important part of a story that doesn’t necessarily focus on their identity. I thirst for those.
Enter Lumberjanes, the comic book series published by Boom! Studios and created by the incredibly talented triad Noelle Stevenson, Grace Ellis and Brooke Allen.
Friendship to the Max!
An ongoing series with thirteen issues currently out and a volume that collects the first four issues recently published in April, Lumberjanes features five young teen girls – Jo, April, Mal, Molly and Ripley – who are best friends spending the summer at girl scout camp. They get entangled with paranormal shenanigans one night and the first four issues deal primarily with the girls slowly discovering that there is something REALLY wrong at camp.
The series is adorable and an indescribable delight for many reasons: starting with the focus on the girls’ friendship and unwavering loyalty to each other, the racial diversity of the girls and the fact that they are smart, cute and fierce. Then there is also how the story presents – and often subverts – different types of “girlhood”. So for example, you have the typically girly-girl April who turns out to be the most badass, physically strong character because newsflash it is possible to be both. Or Ripley, who is the smallest of them but so ferocious as to save them all at their time of need.
In addition, as though those weren’t enough, we also get kittens and dinosaurs, hilarious dialogue and puns, feminism and amazing artwork.
And two of the girls are falling for each other. The lesbian romance in these first few issues is understated, sweet and super-ultra cute. Mal and Molly are close friends who become hyper aware of each other, adorably holding hands and continuously blushing when doing things for each other. Mal and Molly simply are and this is both refreshing and delightful, especially considering their youth and the fact that the main audience for this series is young girls. This is an important message to put across and the only real problem with Lumberjanes is that once you finish the first volume or the first issue even, you will want to read more.
Just you know, beware the kitten holy.
—
(Ana Grilo is a Brazilian who moved to the UK because of the weather. No, seriously. Along with her partner in crime Thea James, she co-edits The Book Smugglers and Book Smugglers Publishing. When she’s not at The Book Smugglers, or hogging their Twitter feed, she can be found blogging over at Kirkus with Thea or podcasting with Renay at Fangirl Happy Hour.)
We’re All Bending Reality
By Alex London
As a closeted teenager, thinking about any kind of future for myself was an act of speculative fiction. I attended a conservative all-boys prep school, a place where, at the time, athletes were kings and heroes and there was only one way to be a man. Any deviation from that way was seen as a personal failing.
And I was failing. I had deviant desires and strange daydreams.
I was different.
I also had no gay role models and no books with gay characters to look to. Without any external guidance to look to, my imagination had to provide. When I daydreamed about a life out of the closet, a life of openness, I was writing fantasy. I had to create a world so very different from my own. When I read a character in a book as gay, in spite of any authorial intent, I was writing fan fiction. I created the world I needed in an alternative universe, one where I was out, my friends and family were accepting, and the heroes of my favorite books were just like me (Ironically, I considered Ender’s Game the queerest of all my books, and loved it largely for that reason…just goes to show, readers bring what they need to a book and the author best get out of the way…).
Amazingly, in the years since I finished high school, the world of my fantasies became my reality. I came out; I traveled; I fell in and out of love, then in again. I was lucky to have friends and family who embraced me, and later embraced my husband. Thanks to generations of LGBTQIA+ activists, I was able to bend reality to match my teenaged daydreams.
And yet, in the books I loved, the speculative fiction that had trained me to dream other possible worlds, the characters were still mostly straight.
So I set out to write the YA novel that I wished had existed when I was a teenager.
Proxy is a cyberpunk thriller (okay, it’s often called dystopian but I’m fighting the good fight for cyberpunk), with a queer protagonist. I wrote it because I loved cool technology and surprising plot twists and explosive action. I wrote it because I wanted a gay character to have the chance to be the hero in the kind of story where robots blow up. I wrote it for myself and I had no idea who would read it once it came out. Did readers even want a gay action hero?
When the reader emails started coming in, I was thrilled. Actual teenagers cared about the characters and the story I’d created! It was kind of a shock. They found me on Twitter and Tumblr and Facebook; they came up to me at conferences and festivals. I started to hear from teens who were struggling like I had struggled, struggling to see themselves as the heroes of their own stories. More than one email brought me to tears. Some kids wrote to say they couldn’t come out in their communities, worried that a happy future was basically science fiction. They described their current lives as dystopian (never as cyberpunk, alas). But they also said they found hope in Proxy. They found a way to see that their story wasn’t limited by any one aspect of themselves; that reality was as bendable as fiction, and anything at all was possible. Not easy, but possible. The first step to being a hero is to imagine yourself as one.
But it wasn’t just the queer kids who wrote to me. As Proxy started to find its way onto state reading lists (because librarians are superheroes), straight guys starting writing to me. Reluctant reader guys. They started finding me at festivals and conferences and school visits. Some of them made my heart stop as they approached, looking so much like the guys in high school who concocted an infinite variety of disgusting ways to describe guys like me, with no idea that I was standing beside them, dying inside.
But I wasn’t living in that world anymore. These guys started to tell me how they loved the action, loved the technology and the plot twists but how they’d never identified with a gay character before. They were always careful to say “I mean, I’m not like that myself, but…” and then they’d talk about the main character’s ‘coolness’ as an action hero, their hope he could forgive the wrongs that’d had been done him, and their hopes they could be a little more like him one day… “but not like that” they usually added again.
They talked about how he was tough and kind and clever and brave. They talked about his humanity, not his sexuality. And through him, they talked about their own humanity. They confessed the thing I hadn’t realized about those guys in my high school: every one of us felt different in the infinite variety of ways that every teen feels like a lonely astronaut among aliens. The main character’s homosexuality became a window for them to see that gay guys weren’t so different, but it also served as a mirror for them to see that any teen has doubts and struggles, just like they do. We don’t all have killer robots after us, but we all have our own quotidian battles to get through in those middle and highs school years.
I’ll never forget one 7th grader who came up to me at a junior high in Texas to get a copy of Proxy signed. He’d already gotten one signed, so I was confused.
“It’s for my friend, R_____,” he said. “R_____’s gay, and I think he’d like this book too. I want to give it to him as a gift so he knows we can, like, talk about it.”
Another boy, overhearing this, said with the uncertain sarcasm unique to 7th graders, “Yo, I’m not gay but I like books too! You should buy me a copy!”
“You can’t even read!” The first kid punched him in the arm.
“Your mom’ll read it to me in bed!”
They traded semi-sanitized-for-adult-ears insults at each other and I gave the third kid an extra copy of the book that I had with me. “Start a book club,” I told them.
“Cool,” he said with a quickly suppressed grin, then ran off to play basketball at recess.
Every act of growing up is an act of writing fiction. We write and rewrite our futures all the time, trying to find the path between the reality we’re living and the one we dream about. Books can be a bridge between the two. It’s our job, as those who share books with young people, to give them as many ways to cross those bridges as possible, as many ways of helping others cross too. I thought I’d written Proxy for the closeted teen I had been. But readers always know more than the author. They aren’t reading it for the past; they’re reading for who they might become, and the possibilities for them are infinite.