Posts on glbtq

At Chasing Ray, Colleen has a fascinating post (and subsequent discussion in the comments) about writing diversity. She invited a number of YA/children's authors of varying cultural groups to share their views on writing the Other. Should it be done? Under what circumstances? It's a long but worthwhile read for the diverse stances and insights—diverse enough that I will not attempt to summarize them here. Check it out for yourself.

This particular comment from Doret of The Happy Nappy Bookseller particularly grabbed me:

It's not enough for an author to put African American or Black in front of the characters name. I need more. And I am sorry I can't tell you what it is, because there is no write by numbers create a Black characters guide because we are not all the same. But still I expect a White writers to make me believe in the Black characters they've created. If I don't I consider those characters Barbie Black. Under all the color of Black Barbie, she still has the facial characteristics of White Barbie.

It's an interesting and fuzzy question, this issue of getting the Other "right." In our society, we are so very fond of boxes in which to put people. On some dimensions, I'm in the privileged box (Anglo-Saxon Protestant heritage), in others the oppressed (female, queer). As a WASP reader, I readily admit that I don't know when authors (of whatever ethnic group) get a non-WASP experience "wrong." As a WASP writer, how could I expect not to get it "wrong" myself?

Because I know what Doret means. As a female reader, I have read books by men with female protagonists that just don't feel "right." Sometimes I can articulate the reasons, sometimes I can't. For example, I recently read Magic and Misery, by Peter Mareno, whose narrator is a teen girl. She quickly enters into a sexual relationship with her boyfriend, but there's virtually no discussion of emotional impact. It's just something she does. How can she not be thinking about this? I kept asking myself—really asking, How could any girl not be thinking about this? Meanwhile, I never could articulate what felt "wrong" about the female protagonist of Edward Bloor's Taken, except that she struck me as sounding too much like the male protagonists of Tangerine and London Calling.

Likewise, as a queer reader, I've read queer teen fiction by apparently straight authors that doesn't feel "right." There's one book in particular whose reliance on stereotypes, even jokingly, made me cringe upon reading it: The Bermudez Triangle, by Maureen Johnson. I hesitate to mention it because it was written by a bestselling author, and I think that kind of exposure is so important in normalizing queerness for teen readers. And it wasn't a bad book; it just struck me as inauthentic. It left me wondering, Why are we getting this when we could have more books by authors who have actually lived a queer experience?

(I would like to throw in here that Ellen Wittlinger is one apparently straight author who, for my money, consistently gets it "right." I don't know how she does it, but she's proof that it can be done!)

This is where it gets dicey, however. Unlike ethnicity or cultural heritage, ability differences, or even biological sex (intersex, genderqueer, and transgender persons being potential exceptions), sexual orientation is fluid and frequently invisible. That's why I used the word "apparently" above. I know Maureen Johnson isn't Chinese-American. I know she's not deaf. I'm pretty sure she's not Muslim. But how am I to know that she isn't actually bisexual? Maybe, because she's apparently straight, I'm wrongly projecting my assumption of Otherness onto The Bermudez Triangle and, as a result, sensing inauthenticity.

How do you define authenticity, anyway? It's as nebulous as Doret says in the same comment: "I can't explain was right is, like the always popluar adult industry, I just know it when I see it." Yet we agree that there's no one "white experience" or "black experience" or "female experience." I know darn well my experiences as a queer woman aren't universal, so is it possible that a story and characters I find inauthentic would ring perfectly true to another queer woman? Honestly, I do think it's possible. I am, at the very least, willing to entertain the idea that it is possible.

I have far too many thoughts and questions about this stuff to squash into one humble blog post, but I'd like to conclude with this: both readers and writers need to understand that "writing the Other" is not a balanced, two-way street. We are all immersed in the dominant culture(s) of our time and place. In America right now, that means European-American, Christian, male, straight, able-bodied, affluent... It's far easier for a member of an oppressed group to write a story of privileged characters than vice versa. It's easier for women to write authentic boy characters than men to write authentic girl characters, for non-whites to write white characters than vice versa, for queer authors to write straight characters, and so on, and so forth.

Does that mean I don't think privileged (in whatever way) authors should "write the Other"? No. But I do think that we need to recognize that privilege blinds us. You can't know what you don't know. I believe it's essential that books be vetted by individuals of the oppressed group represented—preferably multiple individuals, whose diverse experiences can help authors identify inauthenticity and stereotyping that privileged readers would not recognize.

ETA, 7/15/09:
On Facebook, someone commented on this post, "I wish you would rethink your use of the 'The Other' to describe people who are not of the dominant culture." Just in case there's any further confusion, I'll clarify: in this post, I'm not using "Other" to describe people of the nondominant culture; I'm using it to describe any Other -- anyone who is of a group one does not belong to. As I try to explain at the end of my post, it's easier to write the Other when the Other *is* the dominant culture, because we're all immersed in it, whereas it's more difficult to write the Other when the Other is an oppressed group whose challenges we have not experienced. But while I'm focusing on the latter (because that's when authors are more likely to get things "wrong"), I'm not saying some people are Other and some aren't. We're all Other to each other on many dimensions.

For the record, I am not one of those librarians who believes children need to be "protected" from the realities so gently and naturally portrayed in such books as And Tango Makes Three and In Our Mothers' House. There are different kinds of families out there. Some of them have two moms or two dads. The end. It's not nearly as hard as some people make it out to be.

So when I say I have a problem with the new picture book Dottie the Sock: How I Found My Match, by Christine Gayle (self-published, 2009), it's not a moral one. No, it's a problem keeping a straight face. I'm sorry, but I cannot read, speak, or even think the words "lesbian sock" without dissolving into laughter.

I'll even ignore, for the moment, that clothing has no innate sex or gender, much less desire. I'm a fantasy reader. I can suspend my disbelief. But consider this: most socks are worn in matched pairs. I guess I've always thought of socks as identical twins rather than romantic couples, but assuming the latter, wouldn't it be the norm for socks to be (to borrow a coworker's expression) homosoxual? Heterosoxuals would be the odds ones out.

Or maybe, just maybe, that's point. I'll have to suspend further judgment until I meet Dottie for myself.

(Via AfterEllen.)

For GLBT Month, Book Chic is running a series of guest blogs by and interviews with authors and advocates of queer teen literature. It's interesting, thought-provoking reading!

• Jeannine Garsee, author of Say the Word (Bloomsbury 2009)
• Saundra Mitchell, author of Shadowed Summer (Delacorte 2009)
• Lee Wind, blogger extraordinaire at I'm Here, I'm Queer, What the Hell Do I Read?
• Josh Aterovis, author of the Killian Kendall mystery series
• Malinda Lo, author of the forthcoming Ash (Little, Brown 2009)
• Brent Hartinger, author of a zillion books, the most well-known being The Geography Club
• Alex Sanchez (Part 2), author of a zillion-and-one books, including the Rainbow High series—Sanchez shares a number of letters he's received from young readers, and they are truly moving and inspiring.

And they lived happily ever after.

The West Bend (Wisconsin) public library board at long last rejected Ginny and Jim Maziarka's book-banning attempt. Challenged books included The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Geography Club, and other teen books, many of them with LGBTQ content.

At the June 2 meeting, nearly 60 citizens discussed the challenge and whether library policy should be changed. The opinions were mixed, but the board voted unanimously to uphold library policy and continue to provide unrestricted access to these materials, placing the onus of determining "age-appropriateness" back on guardians, where it belongs.

Thank you, West Bend library board, for upholding the First Amendment! Thank you, West Bend Parents for Free Speech and other concerned, pro-freedom citizens for not taking this challenge lying down! It's a triumph not just for one town but for the entire nation.

(Via Bookshelves of Doom)

ETA, 6/4/09:
Except, of course, it's not truly over because now the Christian Civil Liberties Union is suing the library/city (not sure which, or if it's one and the same) for the "elderly plaintiffs" "being exposed" to Baby Be-bop, by Francesca Lia Block, via a book display. They are claiming $120,000 in damages. It is nearly enough to make my head explode.

Last night, the Lambda Literary Awards were announced. The winner for the children's/YA category is Out of the Pocket, by Bill Konigsberg (Dutton, 2008).

Out of the Pocket is a pretty straight-ahead (so to speak) coming out story but effectively in tune with the times. At the beginning of the novel, high school football star Bobby knows he's gay but is terrified that coming out would mean the end of his sports career. (How many out American athletes—much less football players—can you name?) Bobby's tired of keeping his secret, though, and begins the process of coming out to a few confidantes. But when his trust is betrayed, Bobby is suddenly a sensation in sports media, but not for the reasons he would have hoped.

What makes Out of the Pocket a coming out story for the latter Aughts is the focus on the process of coming out to other people, as opposed to self. Moreover, while reactions to Bobby's revelation are varied, Bobby ultimately finds more acceptance (some of it realistically grudging, as from his coach) than adversity. Over all, it's an engaging and optimistic story carrying the message that yes, you can come out and not get tarred and feathered, get killed in a car crash, or commit suicide.

I haven't read all the finalists, but any of those I have would have been solid choices. So, congratulations to Bill Konigsberg and, once again, to all the other shortlisted authors!

Speaking of optimistic coming out stories, I was recently commiserating with my blogger pal Rie (Girls. Books. Food. Art. Love) about how much the climate for queer teens has changed in just the past 10 to 15 years. Rie brought up the trend in early queer teen literature for gay and lesbian characters to meet tragic ends. Meanwhile, I was having trouble remembering how many queer teen books I even had access to; I could only think of a handful. Had there really been so few?

Thank goodness I kept a book log in high school—and kept it filed away all these years. (I still have all those excruciating journals from those years, too. What of it?) When I began my coming out process in 1993, I tried to get my hand on just about every queer book I could: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, plays. I did subject searches in the public and high school library catalogs. I combed the shelves of my local bookstore. In other words, I was looking so hard that if I didn't find it, I'm pretty sure it didn't exist.

So, what was there? Well, aside from a bunch of adult literature (gay novels by Edmund White, Christopher Bram, and Armistead Maupin; lesbian novels by Rita Mae Brown and Jeanette Winterson—whose Art and Lies I found so incomprehensible I never recovered from it to read others; nonfiction by Randy Shilts; plays by Larry Kramer, Terrence McNally, and Tony Kushner), not much. Here's what I discovered on my book log, for queer teen books published prior to 1993:

• Sticks and Stones, by Lynn Hall (in which a gay character DIES)
• The Man Without a Face, by Isabelle Holland (in which a gay character DIES)
• Trying Hard to Hear You, by Sandra Scoppettone (in which a gay character DIES... and another gets TARRED AND FEATHERED)
• Happy Endings Are All Alike, by Sandra Scoppettone (in which a gay character is RAPED)
• Annie on My MInd, by Nancy Garden (in which, unlike the above, there actually IS a happy ending, OMG.)

It's worth mentioning that I didn't encounter Annie on My Mind until late 1995, when I started going to a local queer youth group (this was pre-GSA in my hometown). They kept a Styrofoam cooler full of resources: The Rainbow Gayme, Ivan Velez's Tales of the Closet comic book series, some coming out guides, and a handful of novels with actual happy endings. (Happily, by the time I dropped in for a visit during the summer of 1997, they'd outgrown the cooler.)

In 1994 and 1995, another handful of queer teen books became available—though due to limited availability at the public library (and jack at my school library), I didn't get my hands on most of these until two years after I'd begun to question myself—two years after I needed them so badly. Here's the rest of what I got before I went to college:

• The Cat Came Back, by Hillary Mullins
• Not the Only One, edited by Tony Grima
• Dive, by Stacey Donovan
• Deliver Us from Evie, by M. E. Kerr
• Am I Blue?: Coming Out from the Silence, edited by Marion Dane Bauer (which I read piece-meal at the book store, sneaking a few pages here and there when I thought no one was looking)

If there were others, I couldn't find them. I've looked at the Lambda Literary Foundation children's/YA award lists from those years. There were indeed queer books for kids and teens being published. But most of them I've never heard of. They came from small publishers. They may never have gotten reviewed by reputable library journals. They probably weren't making it into libraries and mainstream bookstores. And if they were, maybe the subject headings were so cruddy they were still impossible to find.

I know I had way more literature available to me than teens coming out five, ten, twenty, or more years before me. But it wasn't enough of the right stuff at the right time. I'm so very glad the teens coming out five, ten, fifteen years after me have so much more available to them, much of it available in their local and school libraries, despite ongoing censorship challenges.

And yet, I still think we need more. More books published. More variety of characters and experiences represented. More books making it onto library shelves, especially school library shelves. More and better access through cataloging and bibliographies. It's crucial to providing more information, more support, and more acceptance for queer teens today and in the future.

"The National Day of Silence brings attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools. Each year the event has grown, now with hundreds of thousands of students coming together to encourage schools and classmates to address the problem of anti-LGBT behavior."

If you follow Neil Gaiman on Twitter, you already know this, but for the rest of us: Amazon.com has made the sickening and, apparently, homophobic maneuver of hiding sales ranks for a slew of books with LGBTQ content. These sales ranks are tied in with whether/how books appear on sales lists and come up in searches on Amazon. In other words, we've got an issue of visibility and accessibility as well as (un)equal treatment here.

When Mark Probst, author of a gay YA novel, wrote to Amazon asking why his book's sales rank had vanished, he received a letter clearly implying it was because his book was deemed "adult" material. Since then, dozens (hundreds?) of other books with LGBTQ content with stripped sales ranks have been noted.

Affected books include works of literary fiction and nonfiction. Many (my beloved, squeaky-clean Edwardian romance Maurice, by E.M. Forster, among them; Isabel Miller's Patience and Sarah) are classics. Some have no sexual content or speak in the gentlest of metaphors; others have sex scenes but hardly such that they'd be considered erotica by the average reader. Some are YA books—e.g., Alex Sanchez's Rainbow Boys, the groundbreaking anthology Am I Blue? Coming Out from the Silence. Some are children's books; Leslea Neuman's Heather Has Two Mommies has been stripped of its sales rank. There are even pregnancy guides on the list—lesbian pregnancy guides, but pregnancy guides nonetheless.

In other words, these are not "adult" materials. Yet they're being treated as such by Amazon simply—apparently—because of their LGBTQ content. It's just the latest example of the fallacious equation of "gay" with "pornographic" made by narrow-minded people who can't stop thinking about the "sex" in "homosexual."

Meanwhile, there's plenty of straight romance and erotica (and pregnancy guides) that has not been issued the same treatment. Even Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds hasn't measured up as "adult" content on the Amazon scale.

The Meta Writer community on LJ is keeping readers abreast of the situation. Check out their round-up of what's known and how we can respond to the situation. My personal suggestions: call or write to Amazon, sign Meta Writer's petition, and spread the word.

ETA, 4/12/09: Not surprisingly, Amazon's response at this time is that there was a "glitch." I'll be interested to see how this plays out once the work week begins. What a weekend! And I have to say... whatever the reasons behind this phenomenon (programming error, bias, whatever), I'm incredibly proud of the public's response. Because whatever the reasons, this isn't the kind of thing people should keep mum about. Whatever the reasons, Amazon has heard loud and clear that we don't like it.

At least one thing I've read today suggests that books stripped of their rankings were flagged by Amazon users as "adult." Obviously I don't know if that's true, but it reminds me of an article I read recently (I wish I could remember where!) about the current practice on many Web 2.0 sites of allowing users to flag content as "objectionable." This isn't anything new; I remember several years ago the kerfuffle when LiveJournal restricted user icons that featured female breasts, including nonsexual images of breast feeding, and the wave of disabling erotic fanfic communities.

In any case, even as peer flagging cuts down on spam and pornography, it also results in "just plain folks" getting their blogs, Flickr, Facebook, etc. accounts frozen because someone else thought their content was "objectionable." Then begins the appeal process... the review process... and probably they'll get their stuff back eventually, but it's a hassle, and in the meantime that content is inaccessible.

I realize that Web 2.0 sites need some kind of review process in place to ensure that users adhere to their terms of use, but often it seems that the process consists of muting the "offender" first and asking questions later. Or, rather, waiting for the "offender" to ask the questions. The process puts a whole lot of power in the hands of the people doing the flagging, whether they're doing it out of genuine good will, out of spite, or out of... whatever.

And, of course, the people most likely to flag "objectionable" content are those who find the most content to be "objectionable"—the people who believe everyone adhering to their morals is more important than intellectual freedom.

Oops, that turned into a bit of a rant. But it's my blog. No apologies. And no flagging either—one of the benefits of being a free agent.

ETA, 4/13/09: I haven't heard any definitive follow-up yet, but I wanted to add a link to Carlie at Librarilly Blonde's round-up on the issue.

ETA, 4/15/09: Aaaand another fine round-up from Librarilly Blonde.

The weekend started with a handful of known items whose rankings had been stripped. By Sunday afternoon, there were dozens. By the end of the weekend, it looked like the number of affected items was probably in the hundreds. But the final count?

Over 57,000 (rankings restored... for now).

My friend E. shared an interesting op-ed from the Washington Post about the social constructs behind algorithms. Whatever the "glitch" in Amazon's metadata algorithms (or whatever they're pinning the blame on), humans wrote the algorithms. At every level of human involvement, judgments were being made, prejudices expressed.

I'm still hoping Amazon will step forward with a more satisfying explanation.

Author Deborah Lynn Jacobs posted about a censorship attempt in West Bend, Wisconsin. Two West Bend Community Memorial Library patrons, Ginny and Jim Maziarka, have filed a complaint about the books on the library's online "Out of the Closet" reading list for sixth to twelfth graders.

The original GM Today article isn't freely available in its entirety, but here’s a taste:

“We find the books for youth on homosexuality to be biased, gay-affirming, promotional and romanticized," the Maziarkas said in an e-mail sent to the Daily News. "We believe our library should be offering appropriate, wholesome literature to our youth instead of pursuing the illegitimate goals of transforming the views of other people's children on the contentious issue of homosexuality.”

In another article, Ginny Maziarka is quoted thusly:

“These books, all of them, are pro-homosexual books. There aren’t any books for kids who are maybe looking to steer away from the lifestyle or are questioning how to get out of the lifestyle.”

Yet another article reads, “Ginny Maziarka said she's not upset about the books, but the fact there's not a section of books with opposing viewpoints... Maziarka said she doesn't want all the books banned but is asking for two of them to be removed because she said the language is pornographic.” The two books in question are The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky, and The Geography Club, by Brent Hartinger.

Whether this apparent backing-off is because the Maziarkas have actually modified their complaint or instead a function of the library’s formal challenge process is unclear. In any case, the West Bend Community Library is doing everything right. The Maziarkas made a broad complaint about a list of over 50 books; the library has required them to file formal challenges against specific titles. Next the matter goes before the board.

Apparently the public interest has been so great that the March 3 board meeting was cancelled due to lack of space for the 300-plus interested members of the public. The rescheduled March 25 hearing has also been postponed due to a scheduling conflict.

I’m reminded of Douglas County, Colorado, Libraries Director Jamie LaRue’s talk at ILA about listening to what complainants really want and trying to help them, rather than treating them as the enemy. To Individual Me, the Maziarkas definitely feel like the enemy. But, “pornographic” charges aside (since that’s a cut-and-dry question of censorship—two individuals making a reading decision for the whole community), if the Maziarkas really do want to see “opposing viewpoints” represented, then it seems to Librarian Me that maybe the library should provide content that fits the bill.

But what does that mean in practical terms? Do the Maziarkas want to see books about homosexuality being an illness and/or sin and/or poor “lifestyle choice”? Books with homosexual characters living miserable lives, dying young, and burning in Hell? Books in which prayer and psychotherapy can “cure” homosexuality? Would the library be under any obligation to offer such books in their YA section (as opposed to adult)? Would it be under any obligation to include such books on the “Out of the Closet” list or otherwise publicize them to teens? The possibilities rankle and sicken me, at least as much as the Maziarkas are rankled and sickened by “pro-homosexual books,” I am sure.

Or am I stupid for even considering these questions? I mean, would I be arguing for sexist or xenophobic literature to be represented? But if the Maziarkas were making an argument for sexist or xenophobic literature, I doubt they would have gotten nearly this far with their complaint, whereas homophobia's still socially acceptable.

What do you think?

This year's Lambda Literary Award finalists have been announced! According to the Foundation website, "The Lambda Literary Awards seek to recognize excellence in the field of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender literature."

Previous winners in the children's/YA category have included some of my favorite GLBTQ books such as So Hard to Say, by Alex Sanchez, Boy Meets Boy, by David Levithan, and Good Moon Rising, by Nancy Garden. And I have many more favorites among the annual finalists.

This year's finalists are especially exciting to me because my friend Pat Schmatz's novel Mousetraps, which deals beautifully with homophobic bullying, is among them! This is a huge honor and I'm thrilled for both Pat and Mousetraps. If you'd like to know more about the book, check out our interview last fall.

Also among the finalists is Love and Lies: Marisol's Story, by Ellen Wittlinger. This is another book I loved, and it's also the companion to Hard Love, which won the Lambda in 1999.

Huge congratulations to Pat, Ellen, and the other authors of this year's shortlisted books!

(Via Malinda Lo)

The Rainbow Project has published its 2009 Rainbow List of highly recommended books for children and teens with GLBTQ characters and content. The annotated bibliography includes 34 books, mostly teen fiction plus a few picture books, middle grade novels, and nonfiction books.

The list includes a number of books I've never even heard of, mostly from smaller presses. So it's definitely worth a peek.

The Rainbow Project is "a joint undertaking of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Round Table and the Social Responsibilities Round Table of the American Library Association." You can read more about the 2009 list here.

ETA, 2/10/09: The Rainbow Project is blogging this year's nominations. Plus, periodically they'll welcome nominations from readers.

We also welcome nominations from you, so on this blog we will periodically solicit field nominations. A committee member must then second your nomination in order for the book to go on to the formal consideration phase.

Books published in the last six months of 2008 as well as those published in 2009 are eligible. So if there's a deserving book published from July 2008 onward that didn't make the 2009 list, it may make it onto next year's!

(Via Fuse #8)