Rainbow Reads

The Rainbow List is out from the GLBT Round Table of the American Library Association. This is the first appearance of this best-of-the-year list, selected by librarians who are members for the GLBTRT, and, in its inaugural year, they have considered the books of the past three years. After 2007, it will be an annual list. An annotated version will be out soon, but in the meantime, I am happy to share the very first Rainbow List with permission of the selection committee. [drum roll please]

Fiction:

2007–

• Berman, Steve. Vintage: A Ghost Story. Haworth, 2007

• Cameron, Peter. Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You. Farrar/Frances Foster, 2007

• Davis, Will. My Side of the Story. Bloomsbury, 2007

• Garden, Nancy. Hear Us Out!: Lesbian and Gay Stories of Struggle, Progress, and Hope, 1950 to the Present. Farrar, 2007

• Lindenbaum, Pija. Mini Mia and Her Darling Uncle. Trans. Elisabeth Kallick Dyssegaard. R&S Books, 2007.

• Moore, Perry. Hero: A Novel. Hyperion, 2007

• Peters, Julie Anne. grl2grl. Little, Brown/Megan Tingley, 2007

• St. James, James. Freak Show. Dutton, 2007

• Vickers, Lu. Breathing Underwater. Alyson, 2007

• Wittlinger, Ellen. Parrotfish. Simon & Schuster, 2007

 

2006–

• Alvarado, T. I. Wanted. Alyson, 2006

• Burch, Christian. The Manny Files. Atheneum, 2006

• Goobie, Beth. Hello, Groin. Orca, 2006

• Hyde, Catherine Ryde. Becoming Chloe. Knopf, 2006

• Jopling, Heather. Ryan’s Mom Is Tall. Il. Allyson Demoe. Nickname Press, 2006

• Jopling, Heather. Monicka’s Papa Is Tall. Il. Allyson Demoe. Nickname Press, 2006

• Levithan, David. Wide Awake. Knopf, 2006

• Peters, Julie Anne. Between Mom and Jo. Little, Brown/Megan Tingley, 2006

• Sanchez, Alex. Getting It. Simon & Schuster, 2006

 

2005–

• Considine, Kaitlyn. Emma and Meesha My Boy: A Two Mom Story. Il. Binny Hobbs. Two Moms Books, 2005

• Gonzalez, Rigoberto. Antonio’s Card/La Tarjeta de Antonio. Il. Cecilia Concepcion Alvarez. Children’s Book Press, 2005

• Hartinger, Brent. The Order of the Poison Oak. HarperTeen, 2005

• Howe, James. Totally Joe. Atheneum/Ginee Seo, 2005

• Humphreys, Helen. Wild Dogs. Norton, 2005

• Larochelle, David. Absolutely, Positively Not. Arthur A. Levine Books, 2005

• Limb, Sue. Girl Nearly 16, Absolute Torture. Delacorte, 2005

• Noyes, Katia. Crashing America. Alyson Books, 2005

• Peters, Julie Anne. Far from Xanadu. Little, Brown, 2005

• Rucka, Greg. Gotham Central: Half a Life. Il. Michael Lark et al. DC Comics, 2005

• Selvadurai, Shyam. Swimming in the Monsoon Sea. Tundra, 2005

• Steinhofel, Andreas. The Center of the World. Trans. Alisa Jaffa. Delacorte, 2005

 

Nonfiction:

2007–

• Baez, John and others. The Gay and Lesbian Guide to College Life. Random/Princeton Review, 2007

• Beam, Chris. Transparent: Love, Family, and Living the T with Transgender Teenagers. Harcourt, 2007

• Keen, Lisa. Out Law: What LGBT Youth Should Know about Their Legal Rights. [Queer Action/Queer Ideas Series] Beacon, 2007

• Marcus, Eric. What If Someone I know Is Gay: Answers to Questions about What It Means To Be Gay and Lesbian. Simon Pulse, 2007

 

2006–

• Bechdel, Alison. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. Houghton Mifflin, 2006

• Carlip, Hillary. Queen of the Oddballs and Other True Stories from a Life Unaccording to Plan. Harper, 2006

• Cart, Michael and Christine A. Jenkins. The Heart Has Its Reasons: Young Adult Literature with Gay/Lesbian/Queer Content, 1969-2004. Scarecrow Press, 2006

• The Full Spectrum: A New Generation of Writing. Ed. David Levithan and Billy Merrill. Knopf, 2006

• Rouse, Wade. America’s Boy: A Memoir. Dutton, 2006

 

2005–

• Hear Me Out: True Stories of Teens Educating and Confronting Homophobia.Planned Parenthood of Toronto.Second Story Press, 2005

• Miller, Calvin Craig. No Easy Answers: Bayard Rustin and the Civil Rights Movement. Morgan Reynolds, 2005

• Richardson Justin and Peter Parnell. And Tango Makes Three. Il. Henry Cole. Simon & Schuster, 2005

• Patterson, Romaine with Patrick Hinds. The Whole World Was Watching: Living in the Light of Matthew Shepard. Advocate, 2005

• When I Knew. Ed. Robert Trachtenberg. Il. Tom Bachtell. Regan Books, 2005

 

Reading White Darkness

I finally finished reading Geraldine McCaughrean’s White Darkness, winner of this year’s Printz Award for the best young adult book of the year. I had started this earlier in the year but was unable to get past a blatantly homophobic line in the first chapter:

It was the conversation about kissing — or snogging as they invariably call it. Like the ant nest in the larder: You think you’ve done everything to be rid of it — that it can’t possibly come back again — but there it is: “How many boys have you snogged?” There is no right answer. You say “none” and you’re sad and frigid or they know someone whose brother would be willing to snog you for cash. You refuse to answer and you are sadder still — or hiding something, or prefer girls or…”

I ached for the unsuspecting young queer reader who would come across this line and take from it that there was something wrong, something sadder than sad, about preferring someone of the same sex.

My partner told me I was being over-sensitive and said that she saw this same line, written in the voice of a teenage girl, as a reflection of a very real fear a teenager, even a queer teenager, might have. She may be right. Chances are, I was reading with a heightened sensitivity because I wasn’t able to separate the book from its author.

My opinion of McCaughrean had already been colored by past experience. In 2001, when Julie Burchill announced she was writing a lesbian teen novel, McCaughrean went on record to say that the subject matter was inappropriate for teens. The London Times quoted her as saying “I’m not sure this should be tackled. Youngsters are aspirational. Yet I know how tenuous a grasp they have on sexual matters at that age.”

And I was an audience member at a children’s literature conference a few years later when I heard her refer to gay slash fan fiction as “sick and deranged,” in a speech in which she spoke quite glowingly of fan fiction in general. Her presentation left me with a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach and the certainty that if I never had to hear her speak again, it would be too soon.

So I’ll admit that I now approach her and her work with a certain degree of apprehension. I pretty much expect her to show her true colors and offend me.

Because White Darkness won the Printz Award last week and because there were several people whose opinions I respect who had highly recommended the book earlier, I tried to forget that line and move on. I tried to forget other things I knew the author had said in the past and plow on through. After all, I can hardly condemn a book for one line or for its author.

And you know what? It’s a really great book, with a riveting plot and brilliant characterizations. The Antarctic setting is so strong that it becomes another character in the book. I really felt I was there on The Ice, and not just because it was -6 here in Wisconsin while I was reading it. The narrative structure is masterfully constructed, melding present day fictional events with a reality from 100 years ago and with scientific information. After so many months of not being able to pick it up, I found I couldn’t put it down. It’s a very unusual book, unlike anything I’ve ever read, and I can understand why the Printz Award committee would choose it. I can even applaud their choice.

I just wish it didn’t have that one line in the first chapter.

Comic Queers

There’s an interesting article about graphic novelist Abby Denson in the most recent online edition of Dallas’s gay and lesbian newspaper, Dallas Voice. In “Queer Strips for Tweens” Denson talks about how she, as a straight woman, came to write comics with gay teen characters in her book Tough Love. I just picked up a copy of this book myself but haven’t yet had time to read and review it. Right now it’s about five books down from the top of my stack.

Thanks to Jenny and Lisa for the heads up.

BBY-GAY

We weren’t the only ones who noticed that it was a great year for LGBTQ novels for teens. YALSA’s Best Books for Young Adults (BBYA) Committee included several on their annual list:

• Brooks, Martha. Mistik Lake. Farrar, Straus & Giroux/Melanie Kroupa, 2007

• Cameron, Peter. Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You. Farrar, Straus & Giroux/Frances Foster, 2007

• Felin, M. Sindy. Touching Snow. Atheneum, 2007

• Lockhart, E. Dramarama. Hyperion, 2007

• Moore, Perry. Hero. Hyperion, 2007

• St. James, James. Freak Show. Penguin Group USA/Dutton, 2007

It’s great to see these books and authors get this sort of recognition.

Orson Scott Card and the Edwards Award

Some eyebrows were raised earlier this week when Orson Scott Card was awarded the Margaret A. Edwards Award, given out by ALA’s Young Adult Library Services Association for lifetime contribution to young adult literature. The author of Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow is a highly regarded science fiction writer. He’s also known for his homophobic diatribes that appear occasionally in his weekly online column about politics which is prominently featured on his official web site. Of course, there’s nothing in the award terms that says the committee members should take a contender’s political views into consideration. They’re merely considering an author’s books for teens, and not other types of writing.

Review: Mistik Lake

Brooks, Martha. Mistik Lake. Melanie Kroupa Books / Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2007.

If you’re not familiar with the amazing Canadian writer, Martha Brooks, this would be a great one to start with. It has all the hallmarks of her earlier writing: brilliant characterizations, a splendid sense of place, and intriguing interconnections between people and generations. And this one also has some interesting lesbian content.

The novel traces the lives of three women in the same family, all of whom have had difficulty with following their hearts. Seventeen-year-old Odella sleeps with a boy she doesn’t love while pining away for a local boy she met the summer before at Mistik Lake. Her mother, Sally, has just run off with an Icelandic filmmaker. And her great Aunt Gloria has carried a torch for Violet Isfeld since she was thirteen years old. She is known to the family as a career woman and “old maid.”

Told from alternating points of view, the story moves back and forth in time to reveal more about this three-generation family than any of the characters know individually. There are many secrets in the family, slowly revealed over time as the characters begin to confide in each other. One of the most surprising revelations to the family is that Aunt Gloria is a lesbian. While readers have known it since chapter two, she doesn’t officially come out to her family until she is 73 years old, when she brings her long-time partner, Kathleen, to the cottage at Mistik Lake.

While the family takes Gloria’s lesbianism in stride, and welcomes her partner into their family, we see her own struggles through time as a girl and woman with a secret life. Her adolescent crush on Violet in 1943 mirrors that of Odella for Jimmy in 2003. We also see the very different perspectives Gloria and Odella have on Sally, Odella’s mother and Gloria’s niece. Sally was a pampered only child who was haunted by an accident that occurred when she was 17: she was the only survivor in a car that drove out onto Mistik Lake and fell through the ice.

Each chapter is like a puzzle piece that comes together as a whole by the end of the book. There are some surprises in store, for both the characters and for the readers, and when that final puzzle piece is snapped into place, we get a complete and satisfying picture of Mistik Lake.

Review: Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You

Cameron, Peter. Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You. Frances Foster Books / Farrar Straus Giroux, 2007.

Cameron’s first novel for teen readers joins the long tradition of young adult literature about alienated youth, and it’s one of the most skilfully written. Perhaps it’s because we are so deep inside the main character’s head that we experience the pain and awkwardness of social interactions as he does. Or perhaps it’s the voice, so true to a disaffected youth. Or it might be the author’s ability to build character based on nuance. With James, it’s most often what he doesn’t say, doesn’t think, and doesn’t do that give us insight into who he really is.

At eighteen, James Sveck seems to have everything going for him. He’s bright and witty, from an affluent family living in Manhattan, and he is soon headed to Brown University for his freshman year. He has a summer job in his mother’s art gallery where he doesn’t have to do much more than surf the internet, read, and chat with John, the handsome and capable young gallery manager. Aside from his grandmother, James tells us, John is the only person he’s ever liked. In fact, he’s decided he doesn’t want to attend college in the fall because he’s never cared much for people his age. Instead, he’d like to use his tuition money to buy a house somewhere in the Midwest, so he continually pores over real estate ads, looking for a good bargain.

James is obsessed with what’s on the surface. He’s the kind of person who will make a fuss over a typo on a menu in order to feel superior to the restaurant staff, and it’s nearly impossible to have a conversation with him as he’s continually picking apart word choices. Even his therapy sessions turn into sparring matches about semantics. It’s a defense mechanism he’s built up over the years to avoid looking deeper into himself and others.

Both his mother and his father ask him point-blank at various points in the story if he is gay. James never gives them, or us, a straight answer.

My father glanced at my plate of pasta, but said nothing. He cut into his nearly raw beef and smiled at the blood it drooled. “So,” he said after he had taken a bite,”you’re not going to tell me?”

“Not going to tell you what?”

“Whether or not you’re gay.”

“No,” I said. “Why should I? Did you tell your parents?”

“I wasn’t gay,” said my father. “I was straight.”

“So, what, if you’re gay you have a moral obligation to inform your parents and if you’re straight you don’t?”

“James, I’m just trying to be helpful. I’m just trying to be a good father. You don’t have to get hostile. I just thought you might be gay, and if you were, I wanted to let you know that’s fine, and help you in whatever way I could.”

“Why might you think I was gay?”

“I don’t know. You just seem — well, let’s put it this way: you don’t seem interested in girls. You’re eighteen and as far as I know you’ve never been on a date.”

I said nothing.

“Am I wrong? Or is it true?”

“Just because I’ve never been on a date, doesn’t mean I’m gay. And, besides, no one goes on dates anymore.”

“Well, whatever — normal kids hang out. They go out. Maybe date isn’t the right word. But you know what I mean.”

“You don’t think I’m normal?”

So goes a typical conversation with James Dunfour Sveck.

His one attempt to connect with another human being ends in complete disaster. At the gallery one day, John leaves the browser open on the office computer, and James presses the BACK key several times to see what sites John visited. Among them, he finds a site called Gent4Gents where John has just entered his profile as “Black Narcissus.” James enters a profile of his own, perfectly geared toward the John’s dream man:

30-year-old hunky blond (6′, 190) who worked at the Contemporary Art Department of Sotheby’s, was half-French and half-American (I had a feeling John was a Francophile), had graduated from Stanford and done post-graduate work at the Sorbonne, had two Maine coon cats (”Peretti” and “Bugatti”), loved the Yankees and New York City Ballet, lived in Chelsea and had an 8″ uncut cock.

It’s not long before John responds to James’s fake ad. The two of them carry on an online correspondence for a while, but John wants them to meet in person. Rather than panicking, as most people in James’s situation would do, James shows up — as himself. He’s so naïve and so socially inept that he is surprised by John’s anger when he finds out he has been tricked. James’s mother is furious with him, as well, and she fires him from his job for sexual harassment.

Humiliated by their reactions, James takes the hour-long train trip to visit his grandmother, who offers him more sage advice than his parents or therapists ever could. She tells him that people often act stupidly when it comes to love, but that the important thing is to act. Although readers will probably understand early on that he is attracted to John, it’s the first time we have any hint that James himself has acknowledged his feelings for him.

This beautifully written novel is certainly one of the most literary novels in the field of LGBTQ literature for teens, and it offers an in depth portrait of a questioning teen struggling with many issues on the brink of manhood.