POTD 1/20/12 Why I Collect LGBT YA Books

/ Wintersong / 1 Comment

I did not have many role models as a queer young adult. As a voracious reader (ever notice how many people who like to read use that adjective to describe their habits?) I sought out subtext and swapped pronouns in my head to make the relationships in books seem more relevant to my own life and identity. 

There were next to no portrayals of queer youth in literature, and the ones I could find often fell into the tired trope of queer = miserable or dead. Even Mercedes Lackey’s celebrated Herald Vanyel of her Last Herald Mage books lost his love to suicide and spent much of his life lonely, only to have his own life cut short soon after finding love again. Not that he wasn’t an incredibly progressive character for the time, but it still isn’t a message I want young people having drilled home. 

Today there is an entire field of Young Adult (YA) literature for LGBT children and teens. Sure a lot of it is crap, but then again, so is a lot of any genre of writing. The remarkable thing is that some of it is actually quite good. These are stories with a wide variety of messages. Some are about self-acceptance, others about finding one’s place in the world, while in other the characters’ sexuality is a component but not a focus of the plot. 

I’ll confess a familiarity with a surprising number of these books. I have a private library of LGBT YA books that I’ve built as a refuge from the rigors of adult life. These are the books I wanted when I was young, but they didn’t exist yet. Sometimes when I’m worn down, lonely, feeling hopeless, or just need an escape, I take one down (or load one in if it’s on my Nook) and for a little while let the scared teen in me who never got those messages soak them in. 

I don’t want to imply for a moment that my parents were anything less than supportive of my sexual orientation, they were. Rather, they didn’t know how to give me positive queer role models, and being straight, didn’t fully appreciate the weight we young people carried growing up in a world that didn’t seem to have any place for us beyond tragic hero, comic sidekick, or devilish villan. 

A good list to start with if you are curious about LGBT YA fiction is this one from gay YA author Alex Sanchez:

http://www.alexsanchez.com/gay_teen_books.htm

If you want to read my current favorite of the genre check out “Boy Meets Boy” by David Levithan. 

POTD 1/19/12 Sign of the Times

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Regardless of what you think of SOPA, PIPA, Pirate Bay, MegaUpload, or the “hactivist” group that calls themselves “Anonymous,” it is hard to disagree with the idea that we have entered into new and uncharted territory when it comes to privacy, protest, access, and security.

In the wake of the widespread voluntary black out of many of the Internet’s top websites, including Wikipedia, congressional support for the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act had imploded by the morning of January 19th. Perhaps as a salve to the corporate supporters backers of those bills, the U.S. government moved swiftly today to shut down MegaUpload, a file sharing network that the government claims has cost $500 in losses due to piracy.

In retaliation, the hactivist group Anonymous has taken down the websites for the U.S. DOJ, the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, and the U.S. Copyright Office. As Randall Munroe of XKCD pointed out some time ago, the seriousness of this act is grossly overestimated in the public’s mind. But it’s people’s perception that really matters here anyway.

It’s not thrilling that websites are as vulnerable as they still are, after all DDoS attacks continue to be viable ways of shutting someone down. On the other hand, as it becomes increasingly clear in our political and cultural landscape that the vast majority of American’s lack the financial or social power needed to effect any change, there is something heartening in the knowledge that through boycott and electronic vandalism it is still possible to make the folk in power notice that we’re getting a little pissy down here.

I have no idea where this is all headed, although I’m confident that I’m not the only blogger out there who thinks that things are going to get uglier before they get better. For that matter I know for a fact that I’m far from the only spirit worker who feels that way. The wheels ain’t off yet, but this ride sure is getting bumpy.

POTD 1/17/12 A Bright Spot

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It is the evening of the 17th, and most of the web is abuzz over the widespread internet blackouts planned in protest of SOPA and PIPA for the 18th. I am not going to write to or link to that coverage, although if you are unfamiliar with the issues, I would strongly encourage you to research the issues and ramifications involved. 

Tonight’s post is on a much more close to home censorship, and one school district’s response to it. 

The Pagan Newswire Collective’s Minnesota branch has a really interesting piece about a 4th grader whose substitute teacher asked her to put away her pentacle necklace. She complied, and when her mother complained, the school took swift and decisive action (perhaps a bit over decisive) in support of the student.

Especially right now, it is refreshing to see people in positions of authority opposing censorship and discrimination, in this case by supporting one young pagan girl’s right to express her beliefs in the same way as children of other faiths, but I in some ways that’s not so different than the internet blackouts after all. 

Quick Response By Local Schools Over Pagan Necklace