Interview with author Shannon LC Cate
Today we have author Shannon LC Cate talking about race and gender histories, the importance of small-press or self publishing, and of course, her book Jack. Find out more about Jack here!
Question: Why did you choose the particular time and setting? (Post Civil War, New York and Arizona?) What about that time and those places interested you, or served the story?
SHANNON LC CATE: I studied this period during my graduate work in American literature. When I write historical fiction, I tend to naturally choose the last quarter of the 19th century because of my familiarity with that time and its various social settings. As for the places–I knew I would need a western setting, which is where the story began in my mind. I chose the Arizona Territory, because though I’ve never lived there, my dearest friend lives in Tucson and I have fallen in…not love exactly, but fascination with the place and its history on my visits to see her.
I needed to go backwards from the western scene that initiated the story in my mind (the first scene I conceived was near the climax of the novel) and the more I filled out the main character of Jack, the more it seemed he had come from Five Points, which was a rough immigrant area of Manhattan in this period. It just fit his character perfectly for that to have been his background.
Q: What’s your favorite feedback, so far, from readers?
SC: I love to hear that teens are reading and connecting with my book! Lots of my own age-peers have read and enjoyed it, and that’s wonderful, of course. But when I get feedback from an actual “young adult” that’s when I know I’ve hit the target for writing “young adult” literature. Most especially gratifying are the comments from queer teens who can identify with Lucy and Jack for that reason, too.
Q: Why did you choose to make the character of Jack biracial?
SC: Jack’s race makes sense for the time period and the setting. There was (and is) much more mixing of races in U.S. history than is commonly discussed in the mainstream culture–especially in urban communities of recent immigrants. Many families today contain both Black and white members even when they are unaware of it. One thing I like to do in my fiction is bring out hidden histories–queer histories, of course, but race histories, too.
The more I thought about who Jack was–from his looks, to his childhood story of running away from an orphanage, the more it made sense that he was biracial, and to a certain extent, he had been abandoned because of it. You can read Jack’s back story in a free short story I wrote as a prequel to the novel, called “Jump.” I knew this was Jack’s story all along, but I didn’t decide to write it down until an enthusiastic fan asked for more.
Q: Is Jack transgender? Or an orphan girl who has found living as a boy safer and/or more freeing than conforming to the accepted feminine behavior of the period?
SC: Yes. And yes.
Actually though, Jack is not transgender because that category wasn’t available in the 1870s. To call him transgender would be inappropriately anachronistic. Jack is an example of a historical phenomenon of girls or women changing their identities to boys and men. Sometimes this was temporary–many women served in the Army in the Civil War dressed as men, for example. Some went “back” to being women after the war. Some remained men. We can’t quite know what exactly it meant to them, because our society is so different than theirs was–not as constrained by rigid notions of binary gender. Jack was an orphan girl who made a practical decision to change genders. But grown up Jack is a man. He is a man with a difference, to be sure, but a man.
Q: There’s some major horse riding in the book. Can you talk about that?
SC: Well… much of the action does take place in the West–which is a good excuse to put horses in the story. I have always loved horses and as a kid, loved reading about horses. I couldn’t resist a few good horse scenes!
Q: Did the story take you anywhere you didn’t expect it to? Any surprises while writing?
SC: There is a pretty big surprise that came to me entirely out of the blue, when I had to solve a problem in the plot. It became Jack and Lucy’s problem and don’t you know, they solved it for me! It’s good to have clever main characters who can help a writer at sticky moments. I can’t tell you the surprise though, because I don’t want to spoil it for readers.
Q: How would you like to see Gay YA evolve in the next few years?
SC: What I’d love to see is a place where readers can find the books that don’t necessarily make it into the big NYC publishing houses because they are supposedly too risky, or too niche-interest to sell in big chain bookstores.
While it’s good to see the offerings among mainstream big presses begin to include more queer characters, there is still a fairly narrow script–and a narrow type of “queer” character that is allowed to squeeze through those gates.
But we know that readers’ interests are broader than that. If NYC isn’t willing to gamble on many, say, trans characters of color, who are simply who they are and it is not The Big Issue in the book, then small presses, e-first presses, and self-publishing writers can–and do–take that plunge.
GayYA can be–will be, I hope!–the place to find those books.
Shannon LC Cate has been writing about family, parenting, politics and religion since 2000. Her work has appeared on Babble.com, BlogHer.com, Literary Mama.com, VillageQ.com, in Adoptive Families Magazine, Gay Chicago Magazine and elsewhere. Her debut novel, Jack, is an Editor’s Top Pick from Musa Publishing.
Shannon, her partner, and their two young daughters divide their time between Chicago and Urbana, Illinois. You can find her online at ShannonLCCate.com or on Twitter @LilySea.
Announcing GayYA’s August 2014 Book of the Month, and Other Updates!
Announcing our August 2014 BotM: Love in the Time of Global Warming by Francesca Lia Block!
Our August 2014 Book of the Month!
Her life by the sea in ruins, Pen has lost everything in the Earth Shaker that all but destroyed the city of Los Angeles. She sets out into the wasteland to search for her family, her journey guided by a tattered copy of Homer’s Odyssey. Soon she begins to realize her own abilities and strength as she faces false promises of safety, the cloned giants who feast on humans, and a madman who wishes her dead. On her voyage, Pen learns to tell stories that reflect her strange visions, while she and her fellow survivors navigate the dangers that lie in wait. In her signature style, Francesca Lia Block has created a world that is beautiful in its destruction and as frightening as it is lovely. At the helm is Pen, a strong heroine who holds hope and love in her hands and refuses to be defeated.
©2013 Francesca Lia Block (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
We like to pick not only our favorite books for the Book of the Month, but also ones that contribute something very unique to Gay YA. In most Gay YA (especially speculative fiction), there’s only one or two queer characters, and they’re surrounded by a cast of straight, cisgender characters. And while we’re happy to get representation in that way, it’s also great when you find a book in which the majority of the characters are queer– especially in speculative fiction, because for some reason most authors think that being queer is still taboo in future and fantasy worlds, and more often than not, we end up with a book made up entirely of straight, cisgender characters. Love in the Time of Global Warming is such a wonderful subversion of that. I don’t want to spoil anything, but let us just say there is queerness abound in this book, and it’s done respectfully and wonderfully. I especially love it, because I love all the re-tellings of Greek and Norse mythology, and I’ve always wanted a re-telling with queer characters. This book, being based on The Odyssey, fills that.
And, okay, I must unleash the inner fangirl: This book is so good you guys. SO GOOD. Literally, I carry my copy around with my everywhere and snuggle it while I sleep (although I do alternate with some of my other favorites like Brooklyn, Burning, Split, and TPoBaW).
I’m super excited about this next month, and not just because our BotM is one of my very favorite books of all time.
We have TEN BOOKS for a giveaway– 5 copies of Love in the Time of Global Warming aaaaannnnnd 5 ARCs of The Island of Excess Love, the next book in the series! I screamed when I opened the package…they’re so beautiful guys. SO BEAUTIFUL.
We are doing a Skype interview with Francesca Lia Block, the wonderful, amazing author, and are going to try record that audio for you all. I say ‘try’ because we’ve never worked with the technology before, and also since we are both such huge Francesca Lia Block fans, well, you might just be listening to a lot of giggling and pterodactyl-like screeches.
And on top of that, we are starting the process for a total site redesign– not only are we waayyy behind the book blogging times with the layout we have now, but it also restricts access to a bunch of our really great posts from the past, many of which are still 100% relevant today. So we’re getting ready to switch over to a new layout, which will make it much more pleasant to read new posts, and will make it easier to find posts on whatever subject you might be interested in.
We’ve got some great guest bloggers lined up for August as well. We’re going to be talking about minor queer characters in media, and f/f pairings and general female sexuality– if you’ve got some thoughts on either of those topics– or something related to them– and would like to do a guest blog, send me an email at victoria@gayya.org with your topic idea.
I’m so excited for August you guys I can barely contain it. In the meantime, if any of you have read or are reading Love in the Time of Global Warming, hop on over to our forums to discuss it with us! (This will earn you 5 entries in the giveaway! 😉 )
Oh, and until the end of the month, we’ll be accepting applicants for our book review team! Just send us (victoria@gayya.org) a little blurb about yourself and a sample review that you have written, and we’ll let you know within a few days if you’re a fit or not! People of all ages, sexualities, romantic orientations, and genders are welcome to apply.
That’s all for now!
Your Webmistress, Victoria
Wait! This novel has GAY people in it!
Molly Beth Griffin
I didn’t start writing my first novel assuming that it would actually be read by anyone but me and my graduate school advisor, and maybe the memory of my teenage self. It was an experiment in longer-form fiction taken on by a self-defined picture book writer. But the project took flight, and after years of hard work, *Silhouette of a Sparrow *hit shelves in hardcover in 2012 and then again in paperback in 2013.
Which was terrifying.
Aside from the usual trepidation of a debut novelist, I had some added fears. Why? Because although the book, to me, is a 
beautiful and wholesome love story about a girl transforming into the woman she wants to be, I knew that to some it could be considered baser reading material for teens than pornography. It has gay people in it. Gay people! And, you know, a little bit of sex.
And what I think is a unique and wonderful asset of the book—the fact that it is a love story and not an “issue book”—I knew might cause even more problems in the big world. People might actually pick it up not knowing that it has gay people in it! They might think it’s historical fiction, a coming-of-age novel, nature writing, and so forth, and then be shocked and appalled by its “hidden agenda.” Or something. They might even have the gall to ban it. Kissing is dangerous! Can’t let teens read about that!
But as nervous as I was about all that, I was also thrilled by it. It has always irked me that novels about queer people are almost always coming-out stories, where the actual romance takes a back seat. Thankfully there are some new ones that break this mold (my very favorites being *Brooklyn, Burning *by Steve Brezenoff, and *Every Day *by David Levithan), but *Silhouette of a Sparrow* is still in the minority. It seems obvious to me: gay teens sometimes just want to read books about other gay teens that *aren’t about being gay*. And straight teens need to see gay teens for what they are—people, with all kinds of complex issues related to and unrelated to being gay. These characters’ stories are worth reading about in their own right, by all kinds of people.
I haven’t been aware of any outright censorship of my book, so far. I’m sure that some gate-keepers have restricted access to it in quiet ways, by choosing not to include it on summer reading lists or face it out on the library shelf. But its “content” has probably inspired some adults to actively put it into the hands of a teenager—the right teenager—and then have a conversation with them about it. Some gate-keepers are swinging the gate wide open, and to them I am grateful. I never exactly intended to write for this audience, but now I’m eager to connect with them. Taking my cue from today’s queer teens and allies, I’m setting my fears aside and joining the conversation.
Molly Beth Griffin is a graduate of Hamline University’s MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults and a writing teacher at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. Her first picture book, *Loon Baby, *came out with Houghton Mifflin in 2011, and her first YA novel, *Silhouette of a Sparrow*, was published by Milkweed Editions in 2012. *Silhouette of a Sparrow *won the Milkweed Prize for Children’s Literature and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, the Minnesota Book Award, and ForeWord’s Book of the Year. It was featured on ALA’s Rainbow List and the Amelia Bloomer list of feminist literature. Her next book is a picture book called *Rhoda’s Rock Hunt*, which comes out with the Minnesota Historical Society Press in October. Although her writing reaches across all age groups and genres, it all demonstrates her passion for exploring young people’s changing relationship to the natural world. www.mollybethgriffin.com
REVIEW: Silhouette of a Sparrow by Molly Beth Griffin
SILHOUETTE OF A SPARROW is GayYA’s July Book of the Month. We are giving away a signed copy in our monthly raffle, which you can enter HERE!
Upon opening Silhouette of a Sparrow, I took its first-person narrative as a tragic misstep, which is the case in many YA novels I have read (or, attempted to read). I was pleasantly mistaken, and by chapter 2, I was hooked.
Silhouette of a Sparrow is narrated by 16-year-old Garnet Richardson, a bird-lover with a curious mind and an honest voice, who is sent to stay with relatives, the Harringtons, over the summer while her mother cares for her war-torn father.
Garnet, who has been brought up by her mother to be the future lady of a middle-class 1920s household, is happy for the opportunity for independence and adventure. With the help of her aunt, Mrs. Harrington, Garnet acquires a job at a local hat shop, where she chances a meeting with a dazzling flapper named Isabella.
The two hit it off immediately, and in pursuing Isabella, Garnet steps outside of the life she knows and glimpses lower-class ‘20s society in Minnesota, befriending the colored doorman of the hotel where she stays and carefully deceiving the haughty Harringtons, who would disapprove of her growing relationship with the girl they view as a “common, low-class slut”.
As the summer burns on, Garnet learns about blue-grey herons, woodpeckers, and the life of Isabella, who “looks at her the way she looks at birds.” At the same time, her cousin Hannah grows suspicious with each misstep, and letters from home–her father’s condition, her expectant boyfriend’s “important” question for her–plague her mind with doubts about her future and the choices to come.
As a teenaged lesbian, I had not seen myself portrayed on the page until age sixteen; this is only the third book that I have read in which a character of my orientation appears. I found Garnet to be well-written and relatable, portrayed as a human being and not simply for her sexuality. Each character in the story is a shade of grey with their own flaws and strengths, and each makes a visible journey throughout the book. (I especially liked the character development of Garnet’s cousin, Hannah Harrington, who caught my eye the second her scowl graced the page.) I saw myself and those around me in the characters, despite living 90+ years after the story is set.
Molly Beth Griffin paints an easily-readable, well-researched picture of summer in Minnesota, the roaring ‘20s, and love without labels. Garnet and Isabella and their story are portrayed with gentle honesty and a brave humanity. Silhouette of a Sparrow is a flighty summer romance, and above all a “wonderful novel about independence and first love.” (–Marsha Qualey). 10/10 would recommend.
Book review written by Kathleen, co-webmistress of GayYA.org.
—
Learn more about Silhouette of a Sparrow.
Enter our Book of the Month Giveaway for a chance to win a signed copy!
Interview With Kirstin Cronn-Mills, Author of BEAUTIFUL MUSIC FOR UGLY CHILDREN
Hey everyone! Today we have Kirstin Cronn-Mills, author of BEAUTIFUL MUSIC FOR UGLY CHILDREN (our June 2014 Book of the Month) talking about music, research, her book, and of course ice cream. Tune in!
Victoria: Beautiful Music for Ugly Children is about a guy named Gabe, who is navigating his way through life, romance, family and friendship, the same as any other teen. The only difference is that he was born in a girl’s body, as Elizabeth. BMUC tells the story of him coming into himself and leaving Elizabeth behind. How did this story come to you?
Kirstin: This story was a bit of a surprise. I wanted to write about a guy who loved music and radio, and who wanted to be a radio DJ because he could hide behind his show and be a cool, funky, interesting version of himself. At the same time I was beginning the book, I was picking books for a diversity literature class at my college, and I came across a book called The Phallus Palace, by Dean Kotula, about trans* men and their transitions. It included short autobiographical stories from these men, and I was struck by how clearly they stood up for themselves, against some serious odds. They didn’t abandon themselves, and I admired that. Then BAM. Gabe became a trans* man—because I could see a trans* kid using a radio show to try out her or his authentic self. Then I had to figure out if I could really write a book about a trans* guy.
V: Is there anything specific you wanted to achieve or avoid while writing Beautiful Music for Ugly Children?
K: I don’t think I had anything specific I wanted to achieve, really, except telling an engaging, funny, interesting story. I wanted to get to the emotional truth of what it means to have an ally, and what it means to step into who you really are. I wanted to convey some of the joy of being a music and radio nerd, too. : ) I didn’t set out to write an issue book, or to do anything specific for trans* rights and equality, though I think the book does some of that. But if you try to write a book with an agenda, you end up sounding preachy, and that’s rarely positive. I set out to tell a good story about a music nerd who happens to be trans*.
Kirstin Cronn-Mills book BEAUTIFUL MUSIC FOR UGLY CHILDREN, GayYA.org’s June 2014 Book of the Month
It took me a long time to realize what I was getting myself into, in terms of privilege and information and exploitation and everything like that, and by the time I understood how much of a mistake I might be making, I was too in love with Gabe, and couldn’t give him up. So I did an enormous amount of research to get the trans * part of his life into the realm of possibility. The emotional journey of the story—finding ourselves, finding friends, feeling like you’re not alone—is the stuff that people can identify with no matter what gender they are, so I figured I was OK there. But making sure the trans* part was respectful and correct (within the realm of correct) was the part I sweated the most.
There are DEFINITELY things I wanted to avoid while I was writing: first, stereotypes/ negativity about individuals who are trans*, and second, cisgender privilege. I hope I’ve done that. I’ve been questioned about why I included violence in the book, when it seems sort of stereotypical, but I’d counter with the fact that the threat of violence is an undercurrent of many trans* individuals’ lives, so it’s realistic to include it. And, if you want to write about positive things like friends who love you unconditionally, showing the negative allows us to value the goodness even more.
V: How did you conduct your research for this book?
K: Oh wow—I did all sorts of things. I read my ass off (both with books and on the Internet), I did a lot of lurking and listening, and the thing I liked best was spending time with youth in a gender exploration group in the Cities. The group moved several
different places over the course of writing the book (they’re currently housed at RECLAIM, in Minneapolis, a phenomenal organization) and they were instrumental in helping me understand how Gabe’s mind might work. They were very generous to me, letting me listen to their stories and ask them questions. I owe them so much.
V: In the book, you use the term ‘bio guy.’ Why did you decide to use that instead of cis?
K: You have to remember how much the conversation around trans* life has changed in the last two years since the book was published. Using the word “cis” to describe someone who’s not trans* is a relatively new thing! Nine years ago, when I started the book, nobody was using the word “cis.” I think I picked the term “bio guy” because I’m a poet at my core—that’s how I started my creative writing life—and I liked how the words sounded together. Plus it was short and sweet and it got the point across.
V: In BMUC, Gabe listens to a lot of music– do you share his music taste?
K: Some of it. We get joy from some of the same songs, but I’m not a huge fan of current pop music, nor of the “bitches and hos” variety of hip hop and rap. When it comes to music, I tend to be pretty flexible, and I’ll give anything a listen (if it’s not misogynistic and rude). In that way, Gabe and I are alike.
V: What was the hardest part of the book to write?
K: The hardest part was making sure I wasn’t screwing up the trans* stuff, and watching out for stereotypes and privilege and all of that. Emotionally, the hardest part was writing the violence, because I am extremely protective of Gabe, John, and Paige, especially Gabe. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt. In general, I don’t feel like it’s wise to get attached to my characters, but I can’t seem to break that habit with Gabe.
V: Is there anything you can tells us about what’s next on your writing horizon?
K: I have an illustrated YA novel coming out in the spring of 2016, called Original Fake. It’s about sibling rivalry and street art (think Banksy), and there’s a lot of gender flexibility in it. I’m also working on a new novel that’s about bodies versus brains, and also porn (!). We’ll see if I can pull that off.
V: And most importantly, do you have a favorite ice cream flavor?
K: Oh wow—I like lots of ice cream flavors, but since I don’t eat chocolate, most people will not be impressed. My favorite flavor is peanut butter, closely followed by lemon gelato. But I’m pretty flexible!