The New Year for GayYA!
The new year for GayYA is looking pretty amazing! Thank you to everyone who answered our end of the year survey, who helped with questions about representation, libraries, and everyone who was a part of GayYA’s community in 2014. We’re taking all of your feedback into account, and hope to make GayYA a better place for you and for everyone.
Some things that will be changing in the new year on the site:
- Search Function – right now if you’re logged into a wordpress account, you can search pretty easily, but we did not realize that other people did not have this option! We will try to add this as soon as possible.
- Tagging System – we have four years of content on this site that is extremely hard to access because we have no thorough tag system. We’ll be working on developing it and implementing it. (In addition, our List of Posts continues to grow! You can get to most of our posts through there, though it is still missing links to a lot of content.)
- Graphic design, logos, cohesive branding – our cake will probably be leaving us 🙁
- Sprucing up old posts with pictures
Some more communal things:
- Book clubs! Book clubs every month! Yay! I’ll be working with Katherine Locke on this. It will consist of a tumblr discussion and a twit chat. For the first half of the year, we’ll be focusing on new releases (many of them debut) from mainstream publishers. We may continue this or not, and we’ll welcome your feedback!
Our picks:
January- Just Girls by Rachel Gold
February- The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley by Shaun Hutchinson
March- Not Otherwise Specified by Hannah Moskowitz
April- Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
May- None of the Above by I.W. Gregorio
June- ???
July- More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera
- Our masterlist—we will be re-revamping our ultimate reading list, and bringing it back to the site so it’s easier to access, and we can make it easier to find exactly what you’re looking for, and to use it for other purposes.
- We’re going to be working on a stronger outreach to libraries, GSAs and other queer youth programs or book communities. (If you are part of something like this, feel free to reach out and introduce yourself, and send us any ideas if you have them! Email vee@gayya.org)
- Merchandise! We’ll hopefully be making original GayYA swag, as well as shirts that are specific to certain identities such as “transreader” and… well, we have nothing else so far but transreader was just so perfect that we had to keep it. If anyone has any ideas for orientation-specific literary related shirts, send me an email at vee@gayya.org
And lastly some changes to our processes:
- Every month we’ll be conducting what are basically “report cards,” which’ll be sort of mini versions of the survey. They’ll go in depth on one thing, like feedback for the book clubs, how we’re doing on bi rep… etc. Although my email is always open to whatever feedback you have at whatever time, these will provide a helpful pattern.
- Instead of doing so many random guest posts which are exhausting and difficult to organize, we’ll be sending Calls out at the beginning of each month for the types of posts we’d like to have for the next month. That way will hopefully open the door for more people to come to us. Also a note for these: I have talked with SO many people who originally think that they’re not a good enough writer to write something. Then I end up getting them to and it ends up being one of the most brilliant things I’ve ever read. So don’t cut yourself off before you even start. And I’m always willing to work with you to develop a post.
- Reviews! As you may or may not know, we’ve had a “one review per book” informal policy. This, we’ve realized is not actually helpful. We’re starting to seek more focus on the representation rather than if the book was good or bad, and this policy really closes a door. People from different backgrounds will see books differently, and all of their opinions are valid and important. So! While you are more than welcome to drop a dissenting opinion in the comments of a review, if you have more to say, please email me at vee@gayya.org. And the same note from above fits here as well.
- We will hopefully be doing more interviews with authors!
There’s also a lot of specific feedback you gave us that we’ll be incorporating, like more bi rep, more intersectionality, more coverage of graphic novels and new releases and like a lot more. We’ll be bringing all of this into reality as quickly as possible. 🙂
Probably more than all of this, however, we’re going to try and keep the ability for motion in this structure alive. Change and evolution should be expected—both because of the changing lives of the admin and volunteers, and due to whatever input we get from you.
GayYA is by the community and for the community, and we hope to continue making it a place where everyone can feel safe, respected, and heard.
January Book Club: Just Girls by Rachel Gold
Happy New Year, all! We’re just getting geared up for our newest book club. We’ll be reading Just Girls by Rachel Gold!
Just Girls by Rachel Gold (Bella Books, 2014)
Jess Tucker sticks her neck out for a stranger—the buzz is someone in the dorm is a trans girl. So Tucker says it’s her, even though it’s not, to stop the finger pointing. She was an out lesbian in high school, and she figures she can stare down whatever gets thrown her way in college. It can’t be that bad.
Ella Ramsey is making new friends at Freytag College, playing with on-campus gamers and enjoying her first year, but she’s rocked by the sight of a slur painted on someone else’s door. A slur clearly meant for her, if they’d only known.
New rules, old prejudices, personal courage, private fear. In this stunning follow-up to the groundbreaking Being Emily, Rachel Gold explores the brave, changing landscape where young women try to be Just Girls.
Here are the buy links!
We’ll be discussing both on Twitter and on Tumblr.
On tumblr, track and post in the GayYA Book Club tag. You can feel free to post reactions/thoughts as you read, reviews, pictures, introductions of who you are, fan art… anything you want, that’s related to Just Girls. 🙂 GayYA’s tumblr account, thegayya, will reblog things so more people will see them!
Then there’ll be an hour long Twitchat on January 21st at 8pm EST (lead by the wonderful Katherine Locke).
Looking forward to reading and discussing with ya’ll! Email vee@gayyya.org if you have any questions.
Sneaky Stand-Up Stands Up to Homophobia
I don’t care if you dislike memoirs. I don’t care if you aren’t a fan of hip hop, stand up comedy, deaf people, or Jews (Actually, I do care about those last two, a lot actually). But you should be reading Kasher In The Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16.
Yeah, interested now, right?
Kasher In The Rye is one of my favorite books. Ever. It’s not even just my favorite memoir, it is in my top ten favorite books. Ever. I highly recommend this book as a fan of reading, and writing. Here is why: I love stand up comedy, it is my most favorite thing in the world and I would never have had the skillset necessary to write coherent, readable novels without stand up comedy being such a massive part of my life and who I am. If you are a writer, I highly recommend watching stand up from people like Mike Birbiglia, Todd Glass, John Mulaney, Pete Holmes, Marc Maron, and of course Moshe Kasher. The storytelling in their acts is completely unreal. I watched Mike Birbiglia’s “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend” everyday for a month, but I completed a full manuscript in that time because it completely fueled me. If you are a writer, looking for inspiration, you should be watching stand up online, on TV, or better yet, in person. Hell, if you’ve got the time (and the guts), and you’ve written a passage or short, short story that you could see a crowd really, really, laughing at, read it at an open mic, I’m serious, it is worth at least trying. And if you are a LGBTQIA+ writer then I emphasize this even more: Watch. Stand. Up. Comedy.
Just a few nights ago, I came home from The Meltdown (A weekly comedy show in a comic book store on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles—Best room in LA) and I was thinking about how I needed to write this blog post, and to my surprise as fate would have it, Andrew Michaan had a joke exactly about what I had been planning to write about.
If you are a writer, namely an LGBTQIA+ writer, you are in luck to be writing today when there are so many great comedians with great voices detailing the complete normalcy of being not a straight person today. Andrew Michaan’s bit on this subject went along the premise of his mother detailing to him how imperative it was that he be honest and open with her about anything, no matter what—she would love him always. So he worked up the courage to come out to her, as straight. And she supported him saying, “You’ll figure it out eventually.” And to my surprise, I found out talking to him after the show, he was new to LA (It was his first night at The Meltdown show) and this particular bit killed the audience, being so relevant to the area, as Andrew… I’ll say it… looked like he could have been gay. All I mean by that is he had clean white jeans and a haircut that didn’t part in the middle. But he looked very “LA”, and the locals of course were rolling at his jokes, him denying being gay when he could have so easily tricked us into believing he really was—But he was not offended by the audience’s opinion of him and his sexuality at all. That was the point.
In Kasher In The Rye, author Moshe Kasher details his mother who raised him on her own in Oakland, California as a very liberal, hippy, feminist, activist. She often begged and pleaded with him and his brother to please, please, let her know if either was gay.
“Being gay isn’t funny. It’s not a joke. It’s just like me being deaf. Would you like it if people laughed at me for being deaf?” He quotes her saying in part one “Genesis”. And each time she asked this they would let her know that they understood, but they still weren’t gay, however they “wish they were.”
This was when Kasher was nine years old. Now, more than twenty years later, this is still a part of his act (which can be watched on Netflix). Kasher calls the moment halfway through his show when he reveals to the crowd that he is a heterosexual as “The Big Reveal” because up until that point, Kasher drops unconfirmed hints and references to the possibility of him being gay, be it verbal or with his subtle mannerisms, and of course, his taste in clothing and usage of jazz hands. After the big reveal, Kasher still says, “I wish I were gay. It sounds great.”
In a world where people seem so guarded around their sexuality, so quick to refute and deny any mention of being non-straight, this is why current stand up is so refreshing. You can’t be narrow minded to hit wide audiences these days and this is how we get diverse acts like Moshe Kasher, Bo Burnham, and Pete Holmes. They are by far the best stand ups I have seen that turn sexuality on its head and make the joke on the straight people, not the LGBTQIA+ community, like so many other comics are quick to do. It’s the kind of comedy that makes you go, “Oh, you got me!” only better because the “me” who said that was possible a homophobe and by “got” they mean “made me rethink what I thought the definition of gay was.”
John Mulaney, a comedy hero of mine, has a line in his special “New In Town” where he says, “I have a girlfriend, which is weird because I’m probably gay based on the way I’ve acted and behaved for the last twenty eight years.”
Myq Kaplan, who is a genius and hilarious, says in his special “Small, Dork, and Handsome” about the same subject, “I’m not gay, people don’t believe me. Can you? I’m not gay. I’m vegan. That’s the confusion… For all you know I’m a lesbian trapped in a man’s body.”
Pete Holmes is one of my comedy idols and in his special “Nice Try, The Devil” he has a joke wherein he recalls being yelled at as a small boy for standing in a way that made him look gay (One hand on his tilted hip, with his leg extended outward. Like a teapot, or a very pregnant lady). And he never understood how that made him look gay, claiming, “I like sex with women. And standing like this. …About the same.”
These lines may sound like your typical gay stereotypes, but they aren’t if you listen closely. It’s mocking what people are so quick to ignorantly label gay, and showing people that what most narrow minds think is gay is really just people being themselves, being comfortable, it’s normal.
Bo Burnham and Pete Holmes talk about this exact subject on an episode of Pete’s podcast “You Made It Weird” and Bo recalls a time when he was a young kid in school and rumors of him being gay went around when he was in the play Honk, where he played a turkey. Moments before going on stage for his song in the play, Bo was asked by a fellow cast member if he was gay. He reacted through fed up anger and pent up tears, turning to the accuser and saying, “No. I’m not a fucking faggot,” then going right on stage to sing a song about being a turkey. Now, you can watch Bo’s full special “what.” on YouTube and Netflix and see where he is at now: Completely comfortable with people assuming whatever they want about his sexuality. He’s even said that he likes when people think he is gay, he thinks “It’s a lovely thing”. He has multiple jokes about showering with other men, God approving of homosexuality, even him enjoying anal sex, and he says all of them comfortably, confidently, and to the point where you don’t even truly know if he is joking. At the end of the special, he even brilliantly remixes a message of someone who once knew him calling him a fag, and makes it his own, his art.
Even if you don’t agree with a comedian’s views in their stand up or in their memoirs, there is something magical about hearing/reading a point of view being articulated in a thoughtful way, it opens a discussion to the listener. And a great reaction could be writing your own version or your own response. It is the greatest writing prompt. It can help you to learn about other people’s minds, and teach you how to craftily sneak your unique perspective into other’s thoughts.
Comedy is so much more than just jokes. It’s brilliant storytelling. It’s taking your thoughts, life experiences, opinions, and artfully twisting them in such away that people can’t help but laugh at them. And once you are laughing and enjoying something, you’re taking the time to think about and to ultimately accept it for what it is. This is why books like Kasher In The Rye are so crucial to literature, they can actually change how people look at things by making them find humor in it. A little nine year old Jewish boy in Oakland, telling his deaf liberal mother that he wishes he were gay is funny. And it’s true. It’s funny because it’s true, that’s the point of stand up, and good writing in general! This is why I can’t emphasize this enough, read memoirs by comedians, read Kasher In The Rye, go see stand up comedy on a Wednesday night and listen to the new guys who know what it is like to be a young person growing up in a new era for LGBTQIA+ members. Your writing and your world views will thank you.
Karina Rose and her ya/gay/nerdpunk novels are currently trying their luck in the publishing world. In the meantime, she hopes she is funny on twitter as @karinarosewhite, creepy on Tumblr as TheNightValePost, and as cool as she thinks in real life (Where, let’s be honest, she’s really not and probably just writing some more). She’s from a small beach town in Orange County, California which is why she’s so liberal and so broke.
Women In Love
Make sure to check out the Twinja Book Reviews Diversity Month, where they feature interviews and guest posts from all sorts of great bloggers and authors– it’s happening now!
I’m catching up on Orange Is the New Black as we speak. As a long-time Netflix basher, I finally caved in and became a subscriber. Even though I’d bought the first season on DVD, I couldn’t wait to finally watch season two, to see all these interesting stories about women unfold.
Orange is the New Black (Netflix series created by Jenji Kohan)
I saw relationships end and start. Platonic relationships, romantic relationships, even (my new penned word) Frene-lationships (those frenemies you love to hate). Most of all, I witnessed relationships. With women. Women connecting with other women. And to be honest, it’s one of the most beautiful things cable television doesn’t show.
I don’t identify as queer, even though I could be borderline Quiltbag. I would never turn down the opportunity to connect with another person based on sexual orientation or identity. Since I write for a diversity book blog, I also want to read about these types of relationships.
It started out as a small idea in passing, to never give up on the books I liked, even if they weren’t diverse; but in exchange, I would include books on my shelf that contained main characters of all backgrounds, religions, races, socio-economic statuses, sizes, and yes, sexual identities and orientations. The more I moved forward with this idea, the more I read diversely and craved it, needed it, and un-regrettably gave up on books that failed to see the world for how it really is: diverse.
As a woman, naturally my kryptonite is diversifying my shelf with main characters who are women, both similar to and different from me. I want to read about a girl who becomes a superhero, or a girl who struggles in a “boy’s” club, and yes, a girl who falls in love with another girl.
The Necessary Hunger (St. Martin’s Griffin, 1997)
Yet as I reach for The Necessary Hunger (by Nina Revoyr), a story that explores an Asian-American teenager and her attraction to her black queer “stepsister”, I am disturbed. There are a ton of queer titles out there, but F/F romance doesn’t always garner the same interest in women that slash fiction depicting men does.
I needed to know why it required more detailed searches to find these desired titles, when M/M romance is on the up. Upon further research I got my answer.
Women in love are “catty,” “bitchy,” or “petty,” all words spoken about F/F romance from OTHER women. Those were actually just the nice words. What is interesting is that many of these women are straight—and love M/M romance books.
This isn’t to suggest that stories between two gay men cannot be genuine if written by straight women. In fact, I find that when done successfully, the stories far outweigh some of the overdone tropes you see in books featuring two heteros. But it’s a sad truth that many M/M romance titles that gain mainstream success are not penned by the audience they are intended for. In fact, many of the readers are straight women. Everyone is welcome to love the books they love, but that should tell you all you need to know about some of the most popular slash fiction available for consumption.
This isn’t just a problem in books with queer main characters. As a reviewer of books, I love reading other peoples’ reviews. Many of the purchases I make are based on what a person liked or disliked about the book. Usually if I can live with what a fellow reviewer disliked, I consider an immediate purchase.
But our media has taught women to hate women in love. I can’t count how many reviews I’ve read that stated something along the lines of, “The girl was a goody two-shoes/lovesick idiot/no-common-sense wench, and I hated her.” But you flip the review around and you read comments like, “Insert-guy’s-name-here was a complete asshole/stalker/abusive archetype BUT I JUST LOVED HIM.”
Where did I miss the memo that a man is allowed to mistreat you as long as he loves, but a woman who loves is a complete idiot?
I can’t swallow that. Media spends too much time convincing viewers, readers, basically anyone that has eyeballs, that a woman’s
story is not a universal one, and that she can still be secondary to her own story. She isn’t allowed to be multifaceted; otherwise, she’s seen as clingy, weak, or a demanding bitch. A woman in love can get so much shit for just existing, whilst men in love are romantic and know what they want and how to get it. Do they forget that these men are pursuing women and other men?
I’m more of a liberal feminist. I don’t police anyone’s right to express their feminism in the way they choose. Feminism, or the advocacy of women’s rights on social, economic, and political levels, is not a one-size-fits-all fanny pack. But even though there can be a lot of things feminism is, hating women is definitely what it’s not.
I want to live in a world that accepts that women, trans or cis, can be in love—without shaming them as weak for showing emotion. I want to see more stories where women meet, fall in love, have relationship problems, and are allowed to have relationship problems without being flooded with comments about how catty they are.
Diversity of all types has become too important to me over the years to turn my back on. We totally get it, love is awesome no matter who it’s coming from. And I love my men—straight or queer, I got nothing but love for you. But I love my girls too!
Yeah, I know The Flash has totally got a thing for me…
But I kinda think Poussey does too!
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Guinevere Zoyana Thomas is one half of the ever so silent and deadly “Twinjas” @Twinja Book Reviews. When she isn’t perfecting back handsprings, or working on her red belt in Tang Soo Do, she’s going H.A.M. editing her diverse time-travel YA novel under the pseudonym “GL Tomas.” Check out her blog tour company “Diverse Book Tours“, a virtual tour company that brings diverse books.
Orphan Blade by M. Nicholas Almand & Jake Myler: Review
“Orphan Blade is pretty gruesome,” the email warned. “You don’t have to review it if you’re not a fan of blood, gore, guts and monsters.”
Nonsense! I thought blithely, cheerful and ready to accept whatever queer YA literature might grace my inbox for review. It’s a graphic novel. How gross can it be?
As it turns out, gross enough to make me wince, flip through pages, and shiver with the kind of deep, primal disgust that comes with Jake Myler’s illustrations. Myler explore all the textural unpleasantries of skin – boils, scales, slime, and of course, what skin flaps in jagged shards when sliced by a sword.
Orphan Blade (Oni Press, 2014)
Carnage aside, M. Nicholas Almand has the makings of a decent coming-of-age story here: young Hadashi, your average, slightly clumsy warrior-in-training, is exiled from his dojo home when his daily misadventures result in a deeply disfigured hand (cue stomach-churning illustrations and startlingly realistic depictions of pain.) Cast into the world, Hadashi finds what seems to be an abandoned sword – one even he can wield.
As readers, we recognize this to be the Orphan Blade, thanks to the first chapter which contains the bulk of the mythical backstory that drives the rest of the plot. By now, we’re aware that the Orphan Blade is one of a series of magically enhanced weapons that can destroy nearly anything. One group of mercenaries possesses all the other magical weapons and is on the hunt for the Orphan Blade. While I recognize the need for introductory backstory, I’m not a fan of the device; I prefer to learn relevant information when it’s relevant for the characters.
Hadashi continues on his way, gathering a merry band of outcasts with whom to fight various (pimply, boil-filled, rumply, somewhat witty) monsters on their way to the final showdown with the group of mercenaries who are now in hot pursuit of the Blade and its new owner.
As I fought my way through this multi-chapter monstrosity (pun intended), I never lost sight of the fact that I was supposed to be reviewing this as a queer piece, from a queer lens. I was relieved then, to find the barest hint of queer subtext at the very end of the novel; Hadashi and his best friend share a Meaningful Moment while lying next to one another on the grass.
No, seriously. That’s it.
Some manga – generally ones that feature adolescent girls as protagonists – really explore this notion of a romantic friendship, and all the wrought, angsty, rich and beautiful complexity of the idea. Orphan Blade has the potential here to flesh it out (and not even literally! They don’t have to have a sexual relationship in order for it to be delightfully queer) but keeps the story more focused on Hadashi’s coming of age and the resolution of his mythical-sword-acquisition.
Those looking for monsters, blood, gore, guts and the occasional vein-in-the-teeth with a side of epic narrative? Check out Orphan Blade.
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Dane Kuttler is a poet, activist and teacher.
Her poetry is often lyrical and narrative, exploring themes of Jewish and queer identities, with a lot of love poems to her grandparents. The most common format for her work is the exploration of a relationship between two people that connects to broader political and social themes.
Dane has featured in coffee shops, living rooms, libraries, back porches and the occasional auditorium, but her favorite venue has always been her first – a dilapidated tree house with sixteen stuffed animals for an audience.
Check our her website for more info.