When Books Save Lives… And When They Don’t
(warning for discussion of suicide)
by Alex Sanchez
Rainbow Boys by Alex Sanchez (Simon & Schuster, 2001)
When my first novel, Rainbow Boys, was about to be published my editor asked me, “Do you realize this book isgoing to save lives?”
I wondered if he’d confused my book with someone else’s. But then the novel came out, and I began to receive emails from readers. Some said the protagonists had become their role models. Others said they’d read the book over and over when they felt lonely and afraid. And then came responses like this one:
I’m proud to say that reading your books and others like them, as well as getting help and talking to people, I have gone from being mad at myself for who I was, cutting and hurting myself and being suicidal, to a happy, expressive, fun kid that I feel great to be.
My editor had been right. With each new book, I’ve been privileged to receive many more emails with messages like: I thought about suicide multiple times but could not go through with it. Your books gave me the inspiration to go on living and to never give up.
Or this one: I was going through a very rough part in my life… suffering from depression, on the verge of suicide, and then I read your books and was moved. … I don’t want to sound corny and say that you saved my life, but I can say you played a role in it. I am so happy with my life today, which is something I never thought I’d be able to say. Thank you, again
It can be a little overwhelming to read such heartfelt messages. I never imagined that my stories could have such impact. No wonder some people have banned my books from schools and libraries while others fight to put them—and keep them—on their shelves.
And yet in spite of more and more books about LGBT teens, the pressure to self-destruct remains too overpowering for some young people. Their stories can be heartbreaking. Stories like Randy’s.
Rainbow Road by Alex Sanchez (Simon & Schuster, 2005)
In 2003, I drove back and forth across America, writing my road novel about three gay and bisexual teenage boys, Rainbow Road. While traveling I typed up a first draft on my laptop and got excruciating carpal tunnel syndrome.
After I finished my trip I settled in Miami. Although I couldn’t type anymore, my publisher was waiting for a second draft. So, I prayed, “God, I need your help. If you want this book published, please help me find a way.”
Miraculously, the next day I opened my inbox and found an email from a 15 year-old boy named Randy:
Hey, I want to tell u that your books are awesome…… can u believe I read Rainbow Boys in one morning? I can’t wait to read the third Rainbow Book!!!…. Now, I want to ask you 2 favors. First, I really want u to come to Miami to sign my books… second, I want u to come visit my school where there are a lot of homophobics. In my first year, I was called lots of names and constantly humiliated. And now that my second year is coming, I don’t want to experience the same things I will really really really appreciate that u answer me. Like soon
I remembered my prayer from the previous day and thought: Hmm… So I wrote back:
Hi Randy, Thanks for your email. I’m actually in Miami, writing the third RAINBOW book, and I need someone to type it. Do you have a computer? Can you type well? Would you like a summer job? Also, I need to know if you’re out to your parents because I’d need to have their permission. Thanks!
To which Randy wrote back: Dude, what’s up? Yes, I can type well, and fast, and me and my mom can really really really use some extra money, but I’m not out to her yet. It’s hard to tell her, not because of how she is going to react, but because of my father. He is way too “machista.” So why is it an issue if I’m out to my mom or not? I will love to do the work, but I’m just going to type a book (actually not just a book, but the third part of the bestest books I ever read!).
To which I replied: My concern about your being out to your parents is this: Your mom might start asking you questions about the book you’re typing. I don’t want you to do something that will cause you problems with your family. Please think carefully about it.
Later that day I got this response: Dude, guess what? I just came out to my mom!.. It was so hard, but she handled it sooo well. God I still can’t believe it!!!!. SO? When am I going to start typing? Well, actually, I’m sort of busy right now (so many people are asking me too many questions about me coming out to my mom!!!), so later!
Randy and I began to meet at the public library. I would give him my handwritten pages that he would type up and email to me. In the process I got to know him better. He told me about his crushes on other teen boys. He showed me his favorite music videos and photos of his little brother who he loved. He revealed he was bulimic, often secretly making himself throw up so he could stay thin. He also said his dad hadn’t taken his coming out well. He’d told Randy he no longer wanted him as his son. I listened to Randy and tried to be encouraging.
After he finished typing my manuscript, we kept in touch. Over the next few years, he sometimes emailed me and I sent him copies of each new book. And then I received an email:
Hi Alex, I don’t know if you remember Randy. He’s the boy who typed a book for you. I don’t remember which one. I was his boyfriend when he typed your book. Sadly, I found out a few days ago that he committed suicide.
I was devastated. Now, years later my heart still clenches at the memory. He was 19 when he committed suicide. I share his story with you to honor him and his life.
We never know for certain why someone commits suicide. But research shows that for many young people it can be due in part to judgment and rejection.
A few years ago the highly esteemed professional journal, Pediatrics, published a controlled, objective study that compared two sets of parents. In one group, parents had accepted or were neutral to their child being gay. In a second group, parents had rejected their child.
The study found that teens like Randy who experienced rejection from a parent were eight times more likely to attempt suicide compared with teens whose families may have felt uncomfortable with their gay child, but were neutral or only mildly disapproving.
Well-meaning parents had thought that by trying to change their child, they were helping. When they learned that they were actually putting their child at huge risk, they were shocked.
Over the years I’ve come to understand the importance for young people to see role models in LGBT teen characters and how LGBT novels can serve as lifelines. Despite the rapid changes in our society’s acceptance of gay people, many youngsters continue to struggle with rejection and bullying in their daily lives because of sexual orientation.
Books can help, and you can help get those books into the hands of young people. Ask your local public library to order some of the LGBT-themed books listed here at GayYA. Donate LGBT YA books to your high school. Or make a contribution to the Make it Safe Project, which donates books to schools and youth homeless shelters, so far reaching over a 100,000 teens. Through your efforts, you too can save lives.
__________________________
To learn more about Alex and his books, visit www.AlexSanchez.com or sign up here for his occasional email updates.
On Building a Better Tomorrow
by Ellen Hopkins
I write contemporary young adult fiction. To date, I’ve published eleven bestselling YA novels-in-verse, and each storyline is unique. I’ve written about addiction, abuse, suicide, prostitution and the drive for perfection, both internal and external—issues that touch teen lives every day. The books are diverse, but they all have in common queer characters somewhere in their pages.
Burned by Ellen Hopkins (Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2006)
Sometimes they’re main characters. Other times, they’re peripheral or barely seen. For instance, in Burned, Pattyn has a gay uncle who’s been shunned by his ultra religious family. We hear the reasons she’s never met him, and they are integral to the overall story arc, but he doesn’t actually walk on-stage until the sequel, Smoke, where he becomes an important player. I didn’t plan the sequel originally, so his being in Burned was intuitive, and I was happy to bring him to “flesh-and-blood” life later.
He’s not the only queer character to walk out of my brain and into the story uninvited. They find their place, settle in, and let me know just why they belong there. Usually, though, my LGBTQ characters are quite consciously created. I think it’s important to include them as part of the teen landscape because LGBTQ people are part of our world. They are members of our communities, our schools, our churches, our families. To not include them would feel absolutely wrong, like something vital was missing.
The result was coming to sincerely care about my LGBTQ characters. From Cara (Perfect), who defies her parents to embrace who she is, to Tony (Impulse), who defines “questioning,” to Shane (Tilt), who falls hard for a boy with HIV, they’ve become some of my favorite people I’ve written. And the biggest gift they’ve given me, within the writing and beyond, is true appreciation and sympathy for the very real issues affecting LGBTQ people here in America, and around the world.
Perfect by Ellen Hopkins (Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2011)
In fact, I’ve become an outspoken gay rights advocate. Yeah, I’ve taken heat for it, too. Recently, I posted angrily (very!) about a special election in Springfield Missouri where voters were encouraged from some pulpits to overturn LGBTQ protections already in place. A Springfield TV station took a screenshot and created an entire “news” story about my post in relationship to a long-planned visit. In the aftermath, I was uninvited from speaking to one of their high schools (“We can’t be sure of what she’ll tell our children”) and vilified on social media. It got ugly. Some guy told me, “Go back to your Bible, bitch.” One person called me a skank, another a whore, and a few demanded I keep my “ugly old ass” out of Missouri.
On the upside, I also found strong supporters and new readers (after the newscast, a man emailed to say he’d never heard of me before, but he was going to buy my books because I sounded like “a kick in the pants”), and it was standing room only at the library appearance I made, thanks in no small part to the Springfield LGBTQ community. Barnes & Noble sold out of my books and had to order more, and after my presentation at the other high school, the library couldn’t keep them on their shelves.
And that is what’s most important, because when readers devour my books, they are meeting queer characters, learning about the problems they face, and developing empathy. Many will that carry out into the real world. Society’s view of the LGBTQ population is changing in positive ways, and books can play a very big part in that, especially those consumed by young adult readers, who will lead the future charge toward equality for all.
So I’ll keep writing YA, and my books will have queer characters in large or small roles. I’ll keep facing book challenges and taking heat for my vocal support for the LGBTQ community. Because if my words can help build a tomorrow defined by acceptance and compassion for every human being, regardless of how they look or who they love, I’ll have spent my time on this planet well.
—
Ellen Hopkins is a poet and the award-winning author of eleven bestselling young adult novels and two novels for adult readers. Her third adult novel, Love Lies Beneath, will publish July 2015, and her next YA, Traffick, follows in November. She lives near Carson City, NV, where she founded Ventana Sierra, a nonprofit helping at-risk youth into safe housing and college. Find her here.
Tanuja Desai Hidier’s “Dimple Lala/ GayYA Bday Party Playlist”
4 original songs from Tanuja’s ‘booktrack’ albums When We Were Twins (songs based on her first novel, Born Confused) & Bombay Spleen (songs based on her new novel, sequel Bombay Blues) to celebrate GayYA’s 4th birthday!
And for now, and always, I knew: Love had to be allowed in wherever, whenever, and in whatever form it took. We didn’t have to shrink to fit it, box it to casket. And even then, when we found it dying, could opt for ashing down rather than burial, scatter it to all five corners of the earth and ether.
Whatever could be celebrated must be celebrated.
I was an oracle today but still had a long way to go. I was an oracle today but still would arrive always here:
Love could be. Must be.
—Bombay Blues (Chapter 47: “Perspective”)
Hello and a most joyful birthday to you, dear GayYA peeps! In honor of it, I’ve compiled a little playlist from When We Were Twins and Bombay Spleen (my ‘booktrack’ albums of original songs based on my novels Born Confused and Bombay Blues, respectively) from my protagonist, Indian-American NYC-NJ young adult photographer Dimple Lala to you: four songs for your fourth anniversary.
A little background:
My books and songs deal a lot with love (don’t we all!). In its many forms, shapes, curves, wiggles, whirlwinds, wanders, wonders. Because the heart isn’t a two-dimensional cut-out valentine, after all — but a bloody, bountiful, beating majestic muscle…and one with more room, greater chambers than we know (or, sometimes, admit). Part and parcel of this, I love exploring hyphenated identities. On all sorts of levels, in all kinds of ways. For we are all of multiply hyphenated identities: culturally, yes, if you go far back enough (or even not so far)…but not only in cultural terms. We are also all of hyphenated identities in the sense of being made of many parts, layers of ourselves that we try, with varying degrees of success, to bring together.
Born Confused by Tanuja Desia Hidier (Push; Reprint edition, 2014)
And, on the most basic biological level: because we are one made from two.
Holes and yet whole.
A hyphenated identity doesn’t mean that you’re 50-50, half of each, not quite either. You can be 100-100. 200-200!
Infinite.
The city we live as humans is multiplicity. A hyphen doesn’t have to be a border: It can also be a bridge. People have sometimes asked if I feel more American or Indian. If I’m an author or musician. I’m sure some of you have had similar questions cast your way at some time or another, pertaining to all kinds of matters of the heady heart and hearty head. And that’s okay. But see, I don’t feel there always needs to be an ‘or’. This ‘or’ inhibits us in a lot of ways, our perceptions of ourselves and others—and blinds us to the vital fact that identities, cultures, places, people, are always evolving. We are always evolving. And our relationships, too: with others—but also with ourselves.
So how do you reconcile two, or really, multiple worlds, loves, cultures, languages, sexualities, without losing yourself, in a way that allows you to remain fierce and undiluted? No easy answer, but part of the solution could be to stop seeing things in terms of conventional dualities and dichotomies, as so tidily bifurcated, and to start to come to some sort of more encompassing view of the world and of identity. And to create a language that allows for expansion rather than one that constricts, boxes a person into easy, often inaccurate, and usually suffocating labels and names.
With Born Confused, I wanted to redefine the C in the moniker American Born Confused Desi (a term South Asians from South Asia have to describe these second and third generationers who are supposedly confused about where they come from) to one for Creative—as this felt to me to more accurately reflect the desis that people my world: both at home and in the creative arts scene I discovered during my years in NYC (and since). People who were in fact shaping and creating the culture as they went along. As we went along.
Bombay Blues by Tanuja Desai Hidier (Push, 2014)
And with Bombay Blues I wanted to move beyond this cultural framework into a more ambiguous space: follow Dimple’s trajectory into the unmapped, the ‘out of frame’ in her art…and heart. Move from ‘brown’ to ‘blue’: the hue, the mood, the music. The wild blue yonder. Travel beyond ‘either-or’, even ‘and-and’: Walk this hyphen, live that bridge — not either side of it.
For it’s on the bridge, in the blur — in the in-between — that life occurs.
In the gradations: For we are all Confused. And Creative.
ABCD: All Born Creative Dreamers.
We don’t have to pick a side — the world is no longer flat. We are multidimensional — even more than that.
There are many ways to be ‘South Asian’. Male. Female. FeMale.
Human.
Infinite ways to love.
To BE.
Let’s please keep working towards this kind of expansion: this blueshift. I believe there are so many of us doing this—living this. Thank you for that.
And many happy returns: to yourself. To our birthing selves. It’s not always easy getting there…but even just heading in that general direction’s a pretty celebratory route to take.
So here’s to sharing that path.
When We Were Twins: Songs based on the novel BORN CONFUSED by Tanuja Desai Hidier
Track 1: COWGIRLS & INDIE BOYS (When We Were Twins)
A love song from one female character in Born Confused to another. I wanted to write it in part because this character’s point of view isn’t the main one delved into in Born Confused; it was my way of seeing the situation through her eyes. I also thought it would be interesting to put a twist on the ‘classic’ cowboys & Indians /Wild West theme: Retell it through a modern-day queer love story — in a context where an Eastern culture has sojourned West. (In Bombay Blues, the cowgirls and indie boys find their new avatars in the characters of Cowboy and Indie Girl, exploring a frontierless Wild East of a fictitious space called Unbombay.)
Written by Tanuja Desai Hidier, Atom Fellows, Anne-Marie Tueje. Performed by T&A (Tanuja Desai Hidier & Atom Fellows). Produced by Atom Fellows & Tom Choi.
Track 2: SARI (When We Were Twins)
“Sari” began as a punk-pop song called “Sorry” with the band I was in when I lived in NYC—io (begun by Atom Fellows, my cowriter on both When We Were Twins and Bombay Spleen). We changed the spelling to ‘Sari’…and the song of course immediately revealed (fittingly!) another layer. In fact, it became about layers, on one level: the ones we use to hide, disguise; the ones others use—and we sometimes do, too — to cover our complexities up in something more ‘comfortable’. But it’s about the layers that make up a heart, a human, a life, too. “Sari”, like Born Confused, also explores the Oz-sparked idea that ‘there’s no place like home’. (Bombay Blues takes this theme into another zone: That home is not a place. It’s a sense of sanctuary, which you may find in a person, a setting, a song, a story…a moment. We, as humans, are swimming cities; home is a direction.)
Written by Tanuja Desai Hidier, Atom Fellows, John Fig. Performed by T&A (Tanuja Desai Hidier & Atom Fellows). Produced by Atom Fellows & Tom Choi.
Bombay Spleen: Songs Based On Tanuja Desai Hidier’s Novel Bombay Blues
Track 3: DEEP BLUES SHE (Bombay Spleen)
Over the course of February 2011 to March 2012 I spent time in Bombay for Bombay Blues and my album Bombay Spleen. Though not specified as such, much of the temporal setting of the novel as a result refers to this period, up through the end of 2012, when I was in the heart of the writing process. One notable exception is the inclusion of the discussion of Section 377 in the book. Though this recriminalization of homosexuality occurred later, it felt like too critical a topic to omit completely from a story that for me was and is an opportunity to explore the import and necessity of freedom of expression as well as the many wondrous and wonderful and bigger-than-boxable-or- beatable forms love takes.
“Deep Blue She” is Bombay Spleen’s most direct anti-377 track; there are also references in it (and Bombay Blues) to sections 375, 376 of India’s penal code, which does not recognize marital rape as a crime.
The song started off when I began (mentally) riffing off that children’s tune “A Sailor Went to Sea Sea Sea” on the tube in London. I had this image in mind of a woman standing on Worli Fort (National Heritage site in Bombay, yet nonexistent on an Existing Land Use Plan at the time I was writing Bombay Blues), keeping a telescoped eye out on the bay for approaching marauders…when all the while, the Fort’s crumbling under her very feet, and the pillagers (and literal pokers) are all around her on dry land (even those in ‘law-abiding’ guises; the nightlife crackdowns in Bombay happened soon after my last research trip there and are referenced in Bombay Blues as well).
Everyone trying to blow out her, our, hurricane lamp. But ain’t gonna happen!
In our music session (just after this tube ride), to get into it, my collaborator Marie Tueje and I sang over and over through the opening lines of “A Sailor Went to Sea Sea Sea”—but a much slower, slightly lamenting version. The song spun into its own zone from there.
I wanted “Deep Blue She” to be a kind of call to rise up: to love our daughters more; our sons, too. Love who we want to love. Be who we want to be. Make room for each other.
Because there’s plenty, and we will not be contained.
Written by Tanuja Desai Hidier & Marie Tueje. Performed by Tanuja Desai Hidier. Produced by Dave Sharma.
Track 4: SEEK ME IN THE STRANGE (Bombay Spleen)
Written by Tanuja Desai Hidier & Atom Fellows. Performed by Tanuja Desai Hidier. Produced by Atom Fellows & Tom Choi, with additional production by Dave Sharma.
—But what if you still all the voices and stares, she said. —All the things you think you’re supposed to think or you think everyone else is thinking, and go to somewhere in yourself like when you are underwater, for example, or in an asana, that truly conscious silence — and you look at you?
—Hmm, I said, thoughtfully. —I guess I’ve been so busy feeling I don’t fit so well into either place that I never really thought of it that way.
—But Dimple. Maybe that is because you are too big for one place; you have too much heart and home and information to be contained in one tidy little box.
—You mean I’m all over the place.
—You are . . . interdisciplinary, if you will. But you have to realize, there is no such thing as this tidy little box you think you have to fold up and fit into; it simply does not exist. That’s what I’m learning, learning as we speak.
She was right. After all…: Who could claim the sole right or way to an identity?
—And you have to realize that you don’t need that box, she added slowly, speaking as much to herself as to me. With every word the veil of tears burned off her face like sunned dew. —That there is something that connects it all, even in wide and open and uncontained space. The way a constellation makes a shape.
I tried to picture it, and found to my surprise that I could. It was beginning to make sense.
—The way a silent room has a sound, I said.
She nodded, smiling.
—You, she said.
—Born Confused (Chapter 33: “Homely Girl Seeking”)
—
Tanuja Desai Hidier is an author/singer-songwriter born and raised in the USA and now based in London. She is a recipient of the James Jones First Novel Fellowship and The London Writers/Waterstones Award and her short stories have been included in numerous anthologies. Tanuja’s pioneering first novel, Born Confused, was named an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults and became a landmark work, recently hailed by both Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly as one of the best YA novels of all time. The sequel, crossover/adult novel Bombay Blues (deemed “a prose-poem meditation on love, family, and homecoming…a journey worth making” in a starred Kirkus review, “an immersive blend of introspection, external drama, and lyricism” by Publishers Weekly), and her accompanying ‘booktrack’ album of original songs, Bombay Spleen, are out now. Tanuja’s first album, When We Were Twins (songs based on Born Confused), was featured in Wired Magazine for being the first ever ‘booktrack’. For more info please visit www.ThisIsTanuja.com. Watch “Heptanesia”, the first music video from Tanuja’s album Bombay Spleen (songs based on her novel Bombay Blues) here.
Author Guest Blog: Kimberly Derting
By Kimberly Derting
I have three kids, and I’ve raised them all to be conscientious and loving—to see people as people rather for their sexual orientations or skin colors or religious beliefs. But it’s my youngest daughter—my 14-year-old—who is fierce about these principles, to the point of being rabid.
This was what she asked for as her 14th birthday.
“Why ban gay marriage when you can ban kidz bop?”
She wears it everywhere, until eventually I have to sneak it into the wash. I think, secretly, she wants to overhear a whispered slur just so she can jump onto her soapbox and call the offender out for their narrow-mindedness.
She was thrilled to find out the high school she’ll be attending has a Gay-Straight Alliance. She’ll be the loudest activist. The most vocal. Possibly the most annoying.
I want to be her when I grow up.
In the past few months, my daughter and I have been secretly plotting a YA book with gay and lesbian protagonists who are still living in secret, but want to come out in a wildly big way. When I mentioned the idea to my daughter, she sunk her teeth into it and started telling me these characters backstories and creating plots and subplots for them. I think at this point, she loves them more than I do!
If I write the book, it will not only be because I think there’s a story to be told, but it will also be for my daughter and kids like her who believe everyone, regardless of who they are in this world, deserve to be championed.
Booktube Needs You!
by Danika Leigh Ellis
If you’re a bookish person, and especially if you’re a fan of YA, you should be exploring the wonderful world of Booktube by now. Booktube is the bookish community of Youtube. Hundreds of people make videos about books, from reviews to bookish tags to provocative discussion topics. It’s similar to the book blogosphere, but feels more interconnected. Being able to see people’s faces as they discuss book they’re passionate about makes it a much more personal interaction, and you quickly begin to feel like you really know the people you follow.
Booktube is also an incredibly welcoming atmosphere. Youtube is notorious for hateful commenters, but booktube offers a welcome oasis. People will often seek out new booktubers and leave nice comments on their videos. Make any kind of effort to reach out, and you’ll find a network of people to interact with. And the scope of booktube is broad: you can find all sorts of genres discussed. By far the most popular genre, however, is Young Adult, so if that’s your preference, you’ll quickly find your TBR ballooning after discovering booktube.
So yes, this is a call for you to check out booktube and fall in love with the community as I have… but there’s a catch. When I found booktube two years ago, I was having a lot of fun discovering new people to follow and books to read, but something kept nagging at me: I couldn’t seem to find the queer book community there. It’s not entirely surprising. As much as there are a lot of different tastes on booktube if you know where to look, the majority of the community is often talking about the same set of books. Lately there has been community discussion about diversifying our reading lives, and I do see queer books mentioned in wrap ups, but there are very, very few channels that make queer books a priority.
Which is where you come in! Booktube needs more queer voices. This is a subset of the bookish internet that is just starting to get noticed, and it’s growing. It needs a greater variety of voices, and one aspect of that is definitely queer readers. This a platform where you can make connections with other readers, and you can get the word out about your favourite books! Making a video and putting it out there seems scary, but the community is so supportive. I’ve been making videos for almost two years now and haven’t gotten any negative attention, but I’ve made lots of friends and traded recommendations for fantastic books. So give it a shot! You don’t need an expensive camera or studio lighting. Your iphone and natural light works just fine. And everyone starts off not knowing what they’re doing, but you’ll improve in time. So join the booktube party, and give queer books a louder voice!
Queer books on booktube are underrepresented, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there. Here are a few booktube channels that focus on queer books, to give you an idea of what booktube is like.
Jessie is one of my favourite booktubers, and I look forward to her Halloween-themed (complete with costume) book videos all year. (Check out her review of Carmilla!) She is thoughtful and creative in her videos, and makes it feel like you’re just hanging out with her, chatting about your latest reads. Her channel is on a hiatus right now, but there’s lots to dig through until she updates again.
Kyra talks about fandom, feminism, and books on her channel. As her channel name (Fangirl Flails) would suggest, she’s enthusiastic and passionate about the books she talks about. She discusses YA pretty often, so it should be a good fit for GayYA readers!
Joseph is new to booktube, but he’s reading all queer books in 2015, and is discussing them on youtube and his tumblr. He focuses a lot on Young Adult books, and his personality shines through in his video and blog.
Tara is another new booktuber, and she seems to discuss queer YA sometimes?
And the inevitable awkward moment where I promote my own booktube channel. I read a mix of genres with a focus on queer women books. I do read YA, but it’s not the main focus of my reading. I upload about once a week.
And those are not only my top booktubers who discuss queer lit: they’re all the ones I know of! Queer books are discussed offhandedly by many booktubers, but those are the only ones I know that discuss them fairly consistently (and one I’m not sure of and one is on hiatus). If you know of more booktubers who prioritize queer books, let me know! But more importantly, add your own name to the list! Personally, I would be so happy to see more queer book videos on youtube, so you can pretty much guarantee this subscriber. And I’d be happy to help with anything I can, though I’m far from an expert.
So go forth, and spread the word about queer books!
—
Danika spends most of her time talking about queer women books on tumblr and at the Lesbrary, as well as chatting about all sorts of bookish things on booktube and Book Riot. When she’s not immersed in the bookternet, she’s running the kids’ section in the largest used bookstore in Canada.