Gay YA

Welcome to our new series, Teen Voices. We are inviting LGBTQ and straight teens to share their experiences with Gay YA in this weekly series.

Writing my online story Henny, I try my best to explain to the reader my own life trials and triumphs in finding myself. One of the toughest experiences I

had to encounter was Sexual assault. In reading Alex’s Sanchez’s “Bait” his main character lashes out against a gay classmate in
dealing with his own rape by his stepfather when he was younger. Luckily, I wasn’t assaulted by a family member but it was still by someone very close to me…
Or so I thought.

In reading his novel I came to realize my own similarities with his main character Diego. I never really lashed out in a violent way, or self mutilation,
but it mentally handicapped me. When I was assaulted I felt as though it was my own fault, so I fabricated a lie for my close ones. The man who I thought cared for me
slithered his way into my life and tried to give me a sense of self worth. He told me so many things that made me care for the little things in life. He financially supported me and my family. My mother clueless as to what was going on accepted the little hundred dollars I’d bring to the table, with little to no questions asked.
That was good because I never really had a true answer. Finally it came time for me to pay him back.

He took me in, loved me up, and broke me down. Those moments when I told him to stop, words came from my mouth apparently in foreign languages. He told me to just relax… but I couldn’t. It was so difficult. This man staring at me in my face, touching me so inappropriately. When I finally left that room myself was so broken down. Tears swell my eyes that I fought back for so long. I made it to the weekly youth group meeting where my cousin demanded I call my mother. It was one of the hardest things I had to tell her… Because instead of the truth, a lie slipped from my mouth like butter had greased my lips. I couldn’t bring myself to give her the actual truth I couldn’t even face myself. Not because I wanted to save him, but because of the embarrassment. This young boy, going off to love another man in an already so close minded country. I couldn’t see anyone truly holding out there hands to help me, unless it was truly an attack that could be seen in their eyes.

The overwhelming task of holding on to this lie took its toll on me. I lost sight of school. I picked up drinking, smoking and looking for the love I needed to obtain from a father figure in all the wrong people. I found myself with stranger’s kisses, and stranger’s touches. The stories and the theories or what happens after a rape that I never thought I would have to experience started to become so real.

But soon I began to see the light. Like Diego I found a way out of the water…..

About Aju:

Born on the small island country of Trinidad and Tobago, 19 year old Phillipe Tristan Alexander, was raised in The United States with an strong Caribbean upbringing. Being able to grow up with the many different influences of America, I found it hard to figure out what was right for me. I felt something inside me when I was younger, playing with my step-sister and her dolls, rather than playing football with the boys. Growing up pretty wasn’t all that easy either because I took more of my mothers feature than my fathers own.

In school I began to fall weak to these feelings. I tried my best to cover them up by getting a girlfriend but still didn’t feel comfortable. Finally in 2005 after the death of my stepfather I told myself that it was about time I stop lying to myself and to my loved ones. I finally began to accept the fact that I was gay. I soon moved in with my uncle and I began to love myself a little more each day…

Now, I’m back home in sweet T&T, and a proud advocate for Gay and Bisexual teens of the Caribbean. I am also the writer of the online story Henny which can be found on facebook. I began writing with inspiration from Alex Sanchez, writer of the Rainbow Boys series.

If you are interested in contributing to our Teen Voices series, please email maria@gayya.org

I could probably list one hundred reasons why I write, but one of the most important is this: we only have so many opportunities in our lives to transform bad things into good. We only have so many opportunities to take things that are muddled and angry and difficult and shape them into things that matter. We can choose not to lie every day of our lives, but we only have so many opportunities to say things that are very, very true.

So: a story. On the day after Thanksgiving several years ago, I told my mother I had something to say to her, and we took a walk. It was dusk, not quite evening yet, a quiet crisp New England gloaming settling all around us, and I was eighteen and alight with every new thing my life was becoming and I wasn’t sure how to say it but I wasn’t sure how to hide it anymore, either, not even sure I could. We wandered over to a playground surrounded by towering trees, their shadow arms stretching up and out like a congregation lost in prayer and as we swayed back and forth on the swings I clasped my hands in front of me and trembled and opened my mouth and I finally said the words into the frosted air. I watched them wisp up like smoke; I watched them catch in the arms of the trees.

With one sentence, everything changed.

There is power in bringing your voice to bear. Writers know this; so do LGBT people. It’s why writers write. It’s why LGBT people open their mouths and speak themselves into the frost. We know the power of words. We know that one simple declaration can change everything.

And that’s the thing I try to hold on to, as I breathe life into my characters, as I try to give voice to their wants and desires, to bring forth their darkness and tangles and joys and secrets: I am looking for the words that will change everything. After all, that’s what writing is, isn’t it? You discover these people living at the edge of your consciousness and you coax them into being, and then you try your best to take what they give you and somehow shape it into something real and very, very true.

But that isn’t always a simple thing to do. One of my characters recently – and completely unexpectedly – came out to me. I smiled when it happened. I looked up into the trees. It was as though, after all these years, my words were floating back down to me.

And then I freaked out. Because I know that words are powerful – I know it as a writer, I know it as a lesbian. But does that mean I have some sort of obligation to send a message with this character? Do I have to teach a lesson? Do I have to be extra-careful in how I present her, because there’s a risk that she might be read as a stand-in for lesbians everywhere? What added responsibility do I have, if any? What do I owe readers? What do I owe myself? What do I owe my world?

Given the way our society treats LGBT people, and especially its teens, it’s hard not to feel like there’s some extra responsibility that goes along with writing an LGBT character in YA. Of course, writing a queer character isn’t inherently different than writing any other character; after all, like children and significant others, it’s not as though any of them come with instructions for assembly. We’re all muddling through, trying to get out of the way and allow our characters to emerge into the fully-realized people that they are.

But.

But there’s an added weight, with this character of mine. Because I want to do her justice, yes, but I also want to do queer people justice, and if those impulses come into conflict I’m not sure how to reconcile them. I want to write my character as she is – I don’t want her to be a cliché, or too-perfect, or sanitized for public consumption. I want her to be complex and genuine and flawed. But as she walks through the world, this perfectly imperfect creature, I can’t help but fear that somehow she’ll be misused. That instead of being seen as an example of a shared humanity, she’ll only be seen as proof of queer people’s flaws. Too this. Too that. Not enough. Never enough.

Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe this is a non-issue, and people are more enlightened than I give them credit for. Maybe everyone who reads LGBT characters does so with an open mind, a generous heart.

Or maybe I’m right to have doubts, but it doesn’t matter anyway. Because maybe – and this is what I’ve come to realize – maybe what it comes down to is that while my words matter, my intention for them doesn’t.

The thing is, once your characters go out into the world, they’re no longer yours. You can have intended all sorts of things for them, attempted to steer them one way or another, forced them into boxes, tried to keep them safe – but in the end, the world won’t have it. Readers may misunderstand them, may turn your every intention on its head, may use your ideas in ways you never intended. You can’t predict that. You don’t get to control it. You can only do your best to say what you mean, and then release your words like so many balloons and hope they find their way. And that is part of being a writer, too – the letting go.

So for me, I’ve found it’s best to write without those sorts of conscious intentions. I am not here to create perfect characters who project some kind of idealized reality, and I think that using a character as a lesson is a quick and easy way to kill a story. My character is who she is. She is flawed. She is a street-level miracle. She is ordinary; she is astounding. She is true, and she doesn’t owe the world anything more than that.

Here is what I know. To write is to sit beneath the sky on a very cold night and speak words that float into the waiting arms of a congregation of trees. It is to try your hardest to say the words that change everything. Hold on to that: write from that place. Use your words to say the things that are very, very true.

Speak into the frost. That is your only obligation. That is what you can control.

And if you are lucky, that will be enough.

Jessica Albrecht is a reader and writer of YA, a lawyer, a tea-drinker, and a solver of problems that do not involve math.  When she’s not reading, writing, or failing to count correct change, she’s blogging.  (Okay, she also occasionally indulges in really bad TV).  Visit her at http://sortofmentalsquint.blogspot.com/ or catch her on Twitter at @writerlyjes.

Hushed by Kelley York

Young Adult Contemp Thriller

(upper YA, dark)

Entangled Publishing

*Advance reader copy provided by the publisher. This in no way affected my review of the material.

He’s saved her. He’s loved her. He’s killed for her.

Eighteen-year-old Archer couldn’t protect his best friend, Vivian, from what happened when they were kids, so he’s never stopped trying to protect her from everything else. It doesn’t matter that Vivian only uses him when hopping from one toxic relationship to another—Archer is always there, waiting to be noticed.

Then along comes Evan, the only person who’s ever cared about Archer without a single string attached. The harder he falls for Evan, the more Archer sees Vivian for the manipulative hot-mess she really is.

But Viv has her hooks in deep, and when she finds out about the murders Archer’s committed and his relationship with Evan, she threatens to turn him in if she doesn’t get what she wants… And what she wants is Evan’s death, and for Archer to forfeit his last chance at redemption.

(blurb from goodreads)

Review by Lydia Sharp

The first reaction I had to this novel after finishing it was–

MIND = BLOWN

Easily one of the best novels I’ve read this year, but not for those with a weak constitution.

Hushed opens with a highly disturbing scene in which Archer forces Vivian’s brother (one of the people who hurt her all those years ago) to commit suicide by way of a drug overdose. Archer even gets him to leave a note. He’s very good at covering his tracks, which is both scary and brilliant.

So we start out thinking that Archer is doing Vivian a favor, in his own twisted way, and we’re not sure what to think of Archer, but we certainly believe that Vivian is worth it. Possibly. But as the story moves on and we see more of Vivian and Archer’s messed-up leecher/leechee relationship, and then Evan shows up–

Oh Evan.

Where do I even begin with Evan…

He is everything Archer needs in a guy yet never had, because Archer was always too centered on pleasing Vivian, even though she never appreciated it. She is always with another guy– an obviously wrong guy– and takes for granted that Archer would always be there to pick her up when she fell.

But Evan helps Archer see Vivian for what she really is– bad for him. And he repeatedly assures Archer that it’s okay to do what’s best for himself once in a while, instead of always what’s best for Vivian. You can’t help but love Evan, because you can’t help but see how good he is for Archer. You also get (more than) a little worried for Evan because he’s unknowingly involving himself with a serial killer.

Yeah.

It’s takes Archer some time to get used to this idea of (1) having someone in his life who selflessly cares about him, and (2) allowing himself to not be so concerned about Vivian. But as he spends more time with Evan and less time with Vivian, and less time plotting and carrying out murders, Archer begins to realize that he really isn’t the monster everyone pegged him for. Not the least of which was his own mother.

He wants to change. He wants to do better. And with Evan’s help, he believes he can.

That’s when Vivian fully reveals she is not the innocent little girl she used to be, the one that Archer holds dear in his memory. Vivian can’t stand not being in first place anymore, and suddenly Evan has become her personal “public enemy number one.” Drive Evan away and things between her and Archer will go back to normal, right?

What happens in the story from there is altogether heart-breaking, jaw-dropping, gut-wrenching, and just about every other cliche’ you can think of, all wrapped into one.

The romance between Archer and Evan is utterly delicious. It builds slowly through the first half as Archer comes to terms with the fact that, yes, he has feelings for this guy. And although it’s never outright stated in the story, I got the impression that Archer had never been romantically involved with a guy before, and Evan had.

But that’s really not the point. Because once Archer admits that he needs Evan in his life, the romantic thread of the story takes on an incredible new intensity, and it’s just as important to the outworking of the plot as the opening murder. Everything becomes so tangled up together– the romance with Evan, the murders, the screwed up relationship with Vivian– that you don’t know how it can possibly all work out in the end.

Well. You’ll just have to read it and see for yourself. Because the best part of this book? Is the ending.

Hushed by Kelley York releases on December 6, 2011.

We asked Aju to talk to us about the experience of growing up gay in the Caribbean. If you would like to share the LGBTQ teen experience in your country,  please email maria@gayya.org We’d love to hear from you!

Moving back to Trinidad and Tobago I honestly didn’t know what I was getting into. Honestly, I had a false sense of hope that maybe things wouldn’t have changed so drastically… And it was Tobago I was heading for. It was much smaller and slower than the more industrialized Trinidad. The majority of the people grew up with their minds going in a complete opposite direction. But Tobago was home… with its beautiful beaches and vacation sites… No one knew of the darker side of this planet, including myself.

I had spent majority of my life in the USA so I had an open mind to a lot of things. I grew up on what most would think is the greener side of the fence which isn’t so true, due to the difficulties I faced with my family and my own self. Nonetheless, I was the kid from America. My hair was long, my face lean, my eyelashes full. I was what a lot of these girls in my class wanted to be. But I thought it would be almost obvious that I wasn’t like everyone else. I had been living in Tobago about a year already and honestly there wasn’t another gay soul in sight. And being such a “different” individual in the small minded, laid “backwards” Tobago had its difficulties.

Religion is a big thing here. Even in school… morning prayers, evening prayers. Having everyone down your back about finding the lord was enough, I mean I have a personal relation with HIM and I don’t believe I need to conform to a religious routine to prove that, but that’s a different story. The younger boys would have these names for me, like, “batty” and “buller-man” ‘buller’ deriving from bull which is slang for sex. Every now and then they’d use the common words like fag. Honestly I didn’t even know what these words meant but as I came to realize it was like a sin to be consider one. Most didn’t even know me, but because of my look, I was labeled. I was even disrespected by my elders, in public at times. Once I had a rotten apple thrown at me… The black sheep of Tobago.

But through the humiliation and a lot support from those people who accepted me for who I was (and those who were secretly like me) I picked myself up every day
and little by little, I accepted myself and my circumstances. I know that because I’m in truth an illegal citizen, I wouldn’t be back in the U.S. anytime soon (but that’s a whole different story). But being here has taught me some things. Everywhere you go there will be some kind of adversity, especially for gays. There is a brighter side though… The sister island to Tobago, Trinidad with its open mindedness, offers a greater safe haven to those finding themselves. It offers a fun nightlife with gay-friendly bars, parties, and a comfort that no one is really going to mind your business. There is the occasional gay drama (but once again, that’s a whole different story).

After about 5 years of living here, back and for the between Trinidad and Tobago, life for me here in Caribbean isn’t so bad at the end of the day. Yeah, I may not be accepted by some, but it’s the love of so much more that has me going. There are so many projects and opportunities that I’ve dove into like modeling and writing that I don’t have time to study what everyone has to say. The Caribbean for me has evolved my sense of life and the way I live in so many ways (both bad and good) but I am thankful for it. I encourage all teens living in other countries who have problems with their own environment, to try and look past the difficulties and love yourself. Find a way to look past the adversity and allow those who love you to blind you from those who try to obstruct your well being.

About Aju:

Born on the small island country of Trinidad and Tobago, 19 year old Phillipe Tristan Alexander, was raised in The United States with an strong Caribbean upbringing. Being able to grow up with the many different influences of America, I found it hard to figure out what was right for me. I felt something inside mewhen I was younger, playing with my step-sister and her dolls, rather than playing football with the boys. Growing up pretty wasn’t all that easy either because I took more of my mothers feature than my fathers own.

In school I began to fall weak to these feelings. I tried my best to cover them up by getting a girlfriend but still didnt feel comfortable. Finally in 2005 after the death of my stepfather I told myself that it was about time I stop lying to myself and to my loved ones. I finally began to accept the fact that I was gay. I soon moved in with my uncle and I began to love myself a little more each day…

Now, I’m back home in sweet T&T, and a proud advocate for Gay and Bisexual teens of the Caribbean. I am also the writer of the online story Henny which can be found on facebook. I began writing with inspiration from Alex Sanchez, writer of the Rainbow Boys series.