Issues Facing the Development of a LGBTQIA Young Adult Fiction Collection
The
current state of queer young adult fiction
Developing
a good LGBTQIA (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Questioning Intersex
Asexual) young adult collection is hugely important, but also
difficult. Once you have exhausted the handful of well known titles,
you must navigate the spotty quality and lack of genre, identity and
cultural diversity that hampers the field of queer young adult
fiction. To complicate things further, many popular suggestions
feature ambiguous, minor or appropriated characters, and have been
adopted through desperation or lack of awareness.
Numbers
A
quick glance over the numbers of published titles shows that non-gay
and lesbian titles are very poorly represented, and the majority of
books are contemporary coming out/growing up/romance stories [see
Figure 1, Figure 3]. While the number of gay and lesbian titles may
look impressive in comparison, it is important to remember that
lesbian young adult fiction comprised only 0.25% of published young
adult books in the US (Lo, 2011b).
Figure
1: Total LGBTQIA Young Adult fiction published before 2013 by
identity
Based
on data from GLBTQA
Books For Teens
(2012).
Notes:
- Asexual and bisexual books are mainly repeat titles from other categories or secondary characters.
- Genderqueer is a”messy” category, including crossdressing, intersexed and gender switching characters as well as agender or gender queer.
- The selection of books is a matter of personal opinion, and it is not necessarily comprehensive. There is a selection criteria on the original page).
- The data and graphs from Lo (2011b) also make for interesting reading and support these findings.
Other
Identities
Finding
gay and lesbian titles is relatively easy, but making sure that the
rest of the spectrum is covered can be quite difficult. Fortunately,
there has been an increase in titles in recent years. There are not
many books about transgender characters, but the majority of them are
actually very good. They are mainly "issue" novels about
transitioning, but are evenly divided between MtF and FtM. There are
frequently written from the perspective of the straight character
(e.g. Luna
by Julie Anne Peters, Almost
Perfect
by Brian Katcher). More recent books, such as Beautiful
Music for Ugly Children
by Kirstin Cronn-Mills, move away from the narrowly focussed
transgender theme and focus more on the character themselves.
There
are increasing numbers of books with less well known identities,
including intersexed and agender, asexual and bisexual. These
characters are still relatively invisible, but are benefiting from
the groundbreaking done by gay and lesbian books. Liar
by Justine Larbalestier is a good example of a story which is not
solely about the genderqueer identity of character.
Crossdressing
(by boys) is a surprisingly well covered topic among books for
younger teens, staying away from sexuality and focussing on
acceptance and gender in books like The
Boy in the Dress
by David Walliams and The
Death-Defying Pepper Roux
by Geraldine McCaughrean.
Viewpoint
characters
A
significant percentage of teen queer fiction is actually not about
queer teens but their guardians or family [Figure 2]. While it is
important to include these books, it is also important not to
overlook the 'real' queer young adult fiction. It is still very rare
to have books that prominently include multiple identities.
There
is also the risk of inappropriately labelling books based on a minor
or ambiguous LGBTQIA character. While it is equally important to have
positive representations in non-”LGBTQIA” books, this does not
make them LGBTQIA. Several popular titles in young adult fiction fall
into this category, such as Violet
& Claire
by Francesca Lia Block, many of Tamora Pierce's books and the Gemma
Doyle trilogy by Libba Bray, simply because people have read them and
are aware that there is a queer character in them. They may be
perfectly good books, but they do not focus on the LGBTQIA aspects,
or the characters themselves significantly enough to be worth
including.
Figure
2: Proportions of character identities in LGBTQIA young adult fiction
Based
on data from GLBTQA
Books For Teens
(2012).
Key:
- Blue - main character is LGBTQIA
- Orange – Main character is straight, secondary character(s) LGBTQIA (e.g. parents, best friend). Their identity must be a major part of the story.
- Yellow – main characters are multiple LGBTQIA identities
The
Problem of “Issue” Fiction
"I
am over stories that reduce characters to nothing but sexuality.
Those stories are neither windows nor mirrors. They’re black
holes."
(Stern,
2013, para. 5)
An
unfortunate but predictable downside is that many book are still
highly focussed “issue” novels,. While it is true that many YA
books are issue novels (that is, fiction around a specific topic such
as divorce, romance, or drugs), it can be very difficult to find
books about LGBTQAI characters that are about anything more
than
their LGBTQAI status. Classic, well-known titles, such as Annie
on My Mind
by Nancy Garden, are entirely about the coming out and romance of the
characters. This is slowly changing over time, but most books are
still issue-driven fiction.
Anthologies
round out the collection but these are usually heavy-handed “issue”
collections which focus mostly on the gay and lesbian identities. For
example, even a recent anthology that was promoted as being across
the spectrum, OMGQueer:
Short Stories by Queer Youth,
is dominated by lesbian characters. (Good Lesbian Books, 2012).
Genres
and diversity
Most
queer fiction focusses on white, American characters, and there is
little science fiction, horror, fantasy or historical fiction
available [Figure 3]. While contemporary fiction is popular, the
attitudes and the settings in many of these books are becoming
increasingly outdated, as 'coming out' becomes less of an issue in
New Zealand society.
Figure
3: Published LGBTQIA Young Adult Fiction by genre
Based
on data from GLBTQA
Books For Teens
(2012).
Notes:
- Asexual and bisexual books are mainly repeat titles from other categories or secondary characters.
- Horror, Scifi and Fantasy are merged because there are usually not enough books to create a separate category.
- Does not include books where the gay or lesbian character is a secondary character (but does in other categories as there are so few books there). Most of these books are 'contemporary' anyway.
Writing
Quality
Queer
publishing has faced several challenges, making the books that do get
published difficult to find. Small presses that focus on queer
literature have trouble being taken seriously and large companies do
not market their queer publications very well, or assume that the
audience is too small to bother with (Lo, 2011a).
It
used to be the case that most queer YA fiction was written by already
successful authors, such as Paula Boock, or was pushed through based
on pure skill, determination or luck.
While
the ease of online publishing and self publishing has led an increase
in choice, there are also fewer quality controls. Less skilled
writers are published and titles are often handled by inexperienced
editors from small presses.
Conclusions
While
care is still needed when developing a good LGBTQIA collection and
there are still a great many issues, matters are improving rapidly
and there are plenty of very good young adult books available. The
selection criteria on GLBTQA
Books For Teens (2012),
are a useful guide, and the included graphs indicate areas where
there are likely to be gaps in the collection.
References
GLBTQA Books For Teens: An Ultimate Queer Young Adult Resource (2012). Retrieved from http://www.squidoo.com/teen-glbtq-books
Good
Lesbian Books (2012, Aug 17). Anthology
Review: OMGQueer: Short Stories by Queer Youth.
Retrieved from
http://www.goodlesbianbooks.com/2012/08/anthology-review- omgqueer-short-stories.html
Lo,
M. (2011a, April 13).
How hard is it to sell an LGBT YA novel?
[Blog post]. Retrieved from
http://www.malindalo.com/2011/04/how-hard-is-it-to-sell-an-lgbt-ya-novel/
Lo,
M. (2011b, November 15). I
have numbers! Stats on LGBT young adult books published in the U.S.
[Blog post]. Retrieved from
http://www.malindalo.com/2011/09/i-have-numbers- stats-on-lgbt-young-adult-books-published-in-the-u-s/
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