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Book
It
Resources for Teen Collections: Gay and Lesbian Literature
and Issues
By Francisca Goldsmith
(Francisca
Goldsmith is the Collection Management and Promotion Librarian
at the Berkeley Public Library, Calif. She is also a member
of the YALSA Board of Directors)
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are various reasons why any teen reader might be interested
in reading about sexual orientation. Of the 85 to 90 percent
of teens who aren't themselves gay or lesbian, almost every
one of them has a friend, teacher, parent, future coworker,
or other significant associate who is. Increasingly, writers
for young adults are including gay characters as a measure
of broadly representing society as a whole, rather than writing
about sexual orientation as the problem in a problem novel.
Following the annotated bibliography below is a webliography
directing readers to longer topical lists. The final section
here discusses informational resources beyond books.
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Out
and Outstanding Teen Reading
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The
following list intends to illustrate the diversity authors
and publishers offer teens looking for literature and nonfiction
addressing issues of sexual identity.
(This
is a YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association) Book
List)
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| Fiction |
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Am
I Blue? Coming Out from the Silence.
Edited by Marion Dane Bauer. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.
Short stories by notable authors depict both gay teens and
teens living with gay parents, friends, and teachers. Humor,
as well as insightful plotting, helps drive the overarching
messages of tolerance and acceptance. |
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Chbosky,
Steve.The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
New York: Pocket Books, 1999.
A ninth grader who has been a loner discovers a set of friends
who are upper classmen. That diverse group includes a popular
boy who is comfortable with being gay, as well as a beautiful
girl who becomes the younger student's love interest. |
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Ferris,
Jean. Eight Seconds. San
Diego, Calif.: Harcourt, 2000.
Although he's always ascribed his sense of "feeling different"
to a health problem that held him back in first grade, a teenage
cowboy now confronts the fact that it is his sexual orientation
that is at the root of that alienated feeling. |
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| Hines,
Sue. Out of the Shadows.
New York: Avon, 2000 (c1998). QY: What does (c1998) mean?This
Australian novel is told from the alternating viewpoints of
two high school girls on the verge of friendship. One believes
she must hide her sexual orientation, while the other tries
to hide her mother's lesbian identity. A mutual friend of
the two girls is a teen boy believed by some adult and teen
characters to be gay. |
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Howe,
James. The Misfits. Boston:
Atheneum Books, 2001.
Among the four seventh graders whose lifelong friendships
stand between them and ultimate outsider status, one boy is
so comfortable with his gay identity that virtually everyone
else simply accepts it-and him-too. |
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Koertge,
Ron. The Arizona Kid.
Boston: Joy Street Books, 1988.
Among the first young adult novels to introduce a character
who happens to be gay, rather than presenting a gay character
as a problem, this story of a sixteen-year-old boy's summer
visit with an uncle offers readers both humor and pathos as
roads to insight. |
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Peters,
Julie Anne. Luna: A Novel.
New York: Little, Brown, 2004.
A teenage girl deals with the psychological and social implications
for herself and her family as her brother acknowledges his
transgender identity by acting on his need to make physical
changes. |
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Ryan,
Sara. Empress of the World.
New York: Viking, 2001.
When two girls fall hard and fast in love during a summer
program for gifted teens, they experience the added complication
of having to cope with bisexuality as an identity factor. |
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Saenz,
Benjamin Alire. Sammy and Juliana
in Hollywood. El Paso, Tex.: Cinco Puntas Pr.,
2004.
Among Sammy's friends in this historical fiction work set
during the 1960s in a Mexican American barrio are two boys
who meet first with violence and then banishment from the
community when they are caught together in a romantic moment. |
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Watts,
Julia. Finding H.F. Los
Angeles: Alyson Books, 2001.
Two small town teens-one who is just realizing the implications
of her attraction to her best friend and the other an openly
gay young man-hit the road to find more hospitable surroundings. |
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Wittlinger,
Ellen. What's in a Name?
New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000.
A novel narrated as interconnected short stories from more
than a dozen teen characters' viewpoints, the play on words
in the title is revealed when the younger brother of the high
school football star outs himself and is met with more acceptance
than he'd hoped. |
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Woodson,
Jacqueline. From the Notebooks of
Melanin Sun. New York: Scholastic, 1995.
A proud young African American boy feels nearly overwhelmed
with shame when his mother's new partner is revealed to be
both female and white. |
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| Nonfiction |
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Harris,
E. Lynn. What Becomes of the Brokenhearted:
A Memoir. New York: Doubleday, 2003.
An African American romance writer popular with older teens,
Harris here writes about his own youth and the difficulties
presented by the tensions between his personal identity and
his culture's normative proscriptions. |
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Huegel,
Kelly. GLBTQ (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual,
Transgender, Questioning): The Survival Guide for Queer and
Questioning Teens. Minneapolis: Free Spirit Pr., 2003.
Practical advice with a sound basis in research helps to protect
and enhance the health, safety, and emotional lives of teens
who need to know about dating, school law, substance abuse,
religious questions, and other matters from the perspective
of sexual minority youth. |
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Kaufman,
Moisés. The Laramie Project.
New York: Vintage, 2001.
Based on the 1998 hate crime murder of Matthew Shepard, this
drama takes all of its scripting directly from such documents
in the case as police reports, witness interviews, and trial
transcripts. |
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Louganis,
Greg, with Eric Marcus. Breaking the
Surface. New York: Random House, 1994.
The former Olympic champion diver discusses his sexual orientation
in the larger context of his experiences with perfecting his
skill and competing at a highly publicized and spectacular
level. |
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Mastoon,
Adam. The Shared Heart. New York:
HarperCollins, 2001.
Gay and lesbian youth are depicted as individuals with a wide
range of concerns, interests, abilities, and social support
systems. The photographer invited each to pose for the camera
as they would like to be viewed-many are with adult family
members-and collected their page-long essays on how they see
themselves in the larger context of family, society, and a
GLBTQ community. |
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Schrag,
Ariel. Definition. San Jose,
Calif.: Slave Labor Graphics, 1997.
This volume in the cartoonist's autobiography depicts her
sophomore year in high school, a time when she began to identify
as both a lesbian and a writer. The story of her adolescent
coming out continues in Potential (San Jose, Calif.: Slave
Labor Graphics, 2000). |
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Winick,
Judd. Pedro and Me: Friendship, Loss,
and What I Learned. New York: H. Holt, 2000.
The straight cartoonist befriended gay HIV educator Pedro
Zamora when the two became housemates on MTV's The Real World:
San Francisco. Here he writes about his own loosening prejudices,
those of Pedro's family, the admiration for Pedro's work that
inspired Winick to continue it when Pedro no longer could,
and the grief he felt upon his friend's ultimate death. |
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Web-Based
Recommended Teen GLBTQ Booklists
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| Among
the many online sites offering booklists for youth looking
for books about gay characters and issues, those listed here
provide relatively broad or deep coverage of a quickly evolving
literature. |
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| Books
with Gay and Lesbian Characters. Plymouth
(Mich.) District Library Teen Zone |
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| Booklist
for Young Adults. Multnomah County (Ore.) Public Library
Outernet for Young Adults. |
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| Not
the Only One: Books with Gay Characters Recommended for Teens.
Berkeley (Calif.) Public Library. |
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| Young
Adult GLBT Reading List. Christopher Libby. |
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