When Nancy Garden's Annie on My Mind was released back in 1982, the story of two lesbian teenagers who fall in love had an unlikely ending. While Garden's main character, Liza, loses friends and faces a disciplinary hearing at school when her relationship is discovered, she and Annie actually end up together.
This was a far cry from the first YA literature to address gay or lesbian themes. In those books, starting with John Donovan's groundbreaking I'll Get There, It Better Be Worth the Trip from 1969, and continuing long after that, gay characters often faced devastating circumstances, including death or other violence. In Donovan's book, the main character blames his dog's death on his gay experience, and the lesbian protagonist of Sandra Scoppettone's 1978 Happy Endings Are All Alike is raped.
Garden says she had wanted to write a book like Annie since she began thinking she was gay at 16. She credits Donovan and Scoppettone for giving her courage when, years later, she wrote her ground-breaking novel. "I wanted a book in which the main character was gay, and which ended happily," she recalls, "because the tradition had been that homosexuality always had to be punished."
A generation later, no small thanks to Annie, YA titles are pushing the envelope much further than a lesbian love story where the girl gets the girl. Today, teens can read about a seventh-grade boy who finds a boyfriend in James Howe's The Misfits. They can read about a girl who is in love with a boy who may be her brother's boyfriend in Garret Freymann-Weyr's My Heartbeat. And in David Levithan's Boy Meets Boy, the main character, Paul, realized he was gay in kindergarten—and the star quarterback of his open-minded high school is a drag queen named Infinite Darlene.
Altogether, there have been between 130 and 140 novels for young adults that have gay or lesbian content published in English for readers in the United States, according to Christine Jenkins, a library science professor at the University of Illinois who tracks YA novels with gay and lesbian content. For the past few years, she says, 10 to 12 books fall annually into the category.
PW talked with several authors and editors of these books, to hear what changes are taking place in this genre, and what is driving those changes.
Reflecting the Rainbow
Today's authors are definitely breaking free from previously limited tropes. Not only do gay characters find love (and sex) in novels, but they even get to have some fun along the way.
Alex Sanchez, author of Rainbow Boys and its sequel, Rainbow High (Nov. 2003), says when his agent, Miriam Altshuler, was shopping his first novel to publishers, she reported back that at least one editor had been uncomfortable with the book's humor. "I guess because of this tradition that if you're dealing with gay and lesbian issues, then it has to be somber, dark and hopeless," he says.
Getting away from this tradition is definitely something David Levithan accomplishes with Boy Meets Boy. Levithan, executive editor at Scholastic's PUSH imprint, says that while there are good, realistic stories in the genre, he finds the books lacking "flights of fancy and some whimsy." His novel, which started off as a Valentine's Day story for his friends, turned out to be the kind of book he'd been searching for as an editor. "We've worked so hard to reflect reality that I thought it was about time to create some realities," he says.
And while Levithan's book may seem a tad far-fetched (protagonist Paul started a gay-straight alliance in elementary school and was elected the first openly gay third-grade class president), there's some truth to it, too. "There are some gay teens out there who are still obviously going through a lot of problems with coming out," he says, "but I think there are a lot who are coming out and are living really happy lives, and their biggest concerns are really about their boyfriends or other things like that."
Though Levithan's book may be the most extreme example, he's not the only author who is pushing the limits of reality. James Howe has heard criticism from kids who say there is no way two seventh-grade boys would be able to openly become boyfriends as they do in The Misfits. "Of course that criticism is exactly what I hoped some kids would have," Howe says, "because my response to that is, 'Why not? That's what I want you to look at.' " He says he likes to get his readers thinking of what could be possible. "When I have the chance to open up their minds and their hearts, then I should take that opportunity."
Perhaps what's most striking is the width of the spectrum today. In Julie Anne Peters's Keeping You a Secret (Little, Brown, May 2003), Holland is thrown out of the house when her mother finds out about her relationship, whereas when new love interest Noah turns up at Paul's house in Levithan's book, his mom makes them pancakes. These books represent a much more diverse—and overall more hopeful—picture than ever before, not only in terms of their plots, but also in reflecting the complex identities of today's teens. Some characters, like Howe's Joe, are very certain with their sexuality while others, like Lissa from Lauren Myracle's Kissing Kate (April 2003), wonder if their same-sex attraction has more to do with a specific person.
In fact, one of the most noticeable changes is that gay characters are popping up in books that aren't even gay-themed. These characters are part of the protagonists' lives, but their stories aren't driving the novels. When Cyd Charisse, the narrator of Rachel Cohn's Gingerbread, heads to New York City, she ends up working as a barista in her gay half-brother's café. In Ellen Wittlinger's Razzle, protagonist Kenyon befriends a gay plumber fixing up his parent's cottage colony, and even Cecily von Ziegesar's Gossip Girl series has a gay character in Blair's dad. "Kids have gay friends and relatives," says David Gale, editorial director at S&S Children's Books. "It's good that their worlds are reflected in their literature."
But while gay characters—and books—are more prominent than ever in YA literature, the genre continues to face opposition. Authors such as Sanchez and Peters say they have received little or no negative reaction to their books, but the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom reports there were 515 challenges to gay-themed materials, including books for children, teens and adults, between 1990 and 2000, their most recent statistics. And that number may be on the low side. On its Web site, the ALA notes that for every challenge, as many as five go unreported.
Many years after its publication in 1982, Garden's Annie is still creating controversy. In the 1990s, the book became the subject of a First Amendment court case when it was banned by the Olathe School District in Kansas, and it was on the ALA's list of the 100 most frequently challenged books in the 1990s. Beverley Becker, associate director at the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom, points out that similar incidents continue to crop up. In 2000, for example, a federal judge struck down a Wichita Falls, Tex., ordinance that allowed for the removal of any book from the children's section of its library based on a petition signed by 300 local library cardholders (the books were to be relocated to the adult section). The two objected-to titles were the often-banned picture books Heather Has Two Mommies and Daddy's Roommate.
But many of today's gay-themed YA titles have been critically well-received (Virginia Euwer Wolff's True Believer, in which the protagonist sees her crush lock lips with another boy, won a National Book Award in 2001, and My Heartbeat won a Michael L. Printz Honor Award in 2003). This year, Garden, who has gone on to write several more books about gay kids or kids in gay families, was singled out for a Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime contributions to young adult literature.
The threat of controversy certainly doesn't seem to be scaring publishers from acquiring gay-themed books. When PW published an article examining the genre back in 1994, Gale said he thought editors might be shying away from publishing these novels for fear that they might not sell.
But he no longer thinks that's the case. "I don't think that gay- or lesbian-themed books [automatically] indicate fewer sales. I don't think that's the issue at all," Gale now says. "I think that all editors are more bottom-line conscious now because of the state of publishing, but a good book will sell. [In 1994] it was probably risky to do a gay, lesbian-themed book, whereas now I don't think it is."
Gale points out that not only are these kind of books selling better nowadays, but online bookstores and Web sites that promote books have opened up more venues for publishers to reach their intended audience. "Kids have a lot more access to books, even those that they can't find in their local bookstore or library," he says. "That's been helping us a lot in terms of reaching teenagers in general, but especially gay and lesbian teenagers."
Michael Eisenberg, senior v-p and co-publisher of children's books at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, agrees that kids are easier to reach than they were when his company first published Annie. "There are a lot more organizations for [gay teens] today," he says. "There are gay student groups in high schools around the country. I imagine in 1982 there may have been some, but we weren't aware of any."
Of course, the audience for these books isn't limited to gay and lesbian teen readers. Gay adults buy them, too, and Sanchez says that straight teen girls have turned out to be a "tremendous audience" for him. "They're big readers and they either have friends or family members who are gay or lesbian, or they recognize this as an important issue of social justice, or a combination of those," he says.
Reaching Out
Authors insist that their books are for everybody, gay and straight, but they do seem to feel a special responsibility when it comes to their gay readers. Garden says that she has consciously worked relevant resources into her writing, provided it makes sense to the story. "For example, in a story I wrote, 'Parents' Night' in Am I Blue?, I mentioned PFLAG," she says, referring to the group Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. She says it was logical in terms of the story line, adding, "I certainly would hope that kids who didn't know about PFLAG would latch on to that if they had parents who needed that organization."
And at the end of Sanchez's Rainbow Boys and Rainbow High, readers will find a list of organizations and hotlines to contact. While the decision to include this information came from the publisher, Sanchez has made himself a resource outside of his books as well. He set up a Web site—www.alexsanchez.com—which offers resources, a list of gay-themed books and advice to kids who are coming out. He and James Howe also have jointly led several workshops, including creative writing workshops for young gay, lesbian and supportive straight youth.
Then there's the mail. Peters says she has received "hundreds and hundreds of letters" in the months following the publication of Keeping You a Secret. "I'm so mad at myself for not doing this book earlier because if my volume of mail is any indication, there is a hunger for this literature," says Peters, who provides links to gay resources from her Web site as well—www.julieannepeters.com. She hears both from kids who feel lost and need to make a connection, and from kids who are happy in their lives and happy to see themselves reflected in a novel (she also hears from straight kids who tell her she helped them understand what it means to be a lesbian). Peters says that authors who choose to work in this genre often become a support system for their readers, whether they want to or not, and says she writes back to them as quickly as possible, especially if they're hurting.
Next Steps
Authors and editors who work with the genre predict—and hope—that it will continue to grow and diversify, opening up to reflect kids of even more varied identities.
In fact, a few forthcoming novels are doing just that. Due out next spring is Peters's Luna (Little, Brown, May, 2004), the story of a transgendered teen who is about to transition, told from the point of view of a sister. "I was so totally ignorant about that whole area," says Peters, who initially resisted when Luna's voice began popping into her head. She spent six months researching and spending time with transgendered people to understand the issue (while not necessarily a gay identity, it is often incorporated by gay and lesbian organizations), and in writing Luna, she found it challenging to strike a balance between educating her reader and creating a compelling narrative. In the end, though, she believes it was worth it. "It really is an exciting book for me," she says. "I think I have it hard [as a gay person], but, oh man, there's nothing compared to how hard [being transgendered] has to be."
Gale and Howe both say they would like to see more gay-themed books targeted to middle-grade readers, either with central gay characters or some who are secondary in the stories. "I think this is the one area that is still very 'touchy,' " Howe says. "These are formative years in which a lot of name-calling takes place. Whether or not a child is gay, all children live in a world among gay people and they need to overcome their discomfort and the bigotry they've been taught in order to be accepting of themselves and others."
These kinds of books are starting to appear on the horizon, as Sanchez is working on a middle-grade book due out in fall 2004, about eighth-graders dealing with their emerging feelings, whether for the same or the opposite sex.
There will undoubtedly always be YA books published about coming out, because during their teenage years, "kids are developing their sexuality," says Garden. "It's an issue this age group is constantly facing.
These days, readers of all ages are proving that they are ready to move into more complex territory. Levithan says someone asked him recently if the open-minded high school he depicted in his novel was the one he attended. He was stunned. "I'm glad that someone thought that was possible," he says.
