Gay YA

I was having a conversation with an author whose first book comes out next year, and he was worried that his book, written from a female point of view, wouldn’t be well received because he’s a man.  We got onto the topic of writing gay characters and having gay protagonists, and he said something that echoed exactly how I felt before my debut in 2010.  He didn’t want to be labeled a “gay author.”

I didn’t write Oliver Travers, my horny, teenage narrator from The Deathday Letter as heterosexual because I was worried about being a gay author, I wrote him that way because that’s how he popped into my head.  However, as the book neared publication and I started working on other book ideas, I did worry about being pigeonholed.  I wrote a gay character’s totally boring coming out into Deathday as a nod to my own painless coming out, but it was such a minor part of the book that I didn’t think most people would even notice.  It was the next couple of books I wrote that I worried about.

Before settling on FML, I wrote drafts for a few other ideas.  All of them included gay and lesbian characters in some form.  Best friends, secondary characters, parents even.  But none of them were protagonists.  Back then, I told myself that it was because the YA publishing world wasn’t ready for a gay protagonist in a story that wasn’t about coming out.  I think the truth was that I wasn’t ready to be a gay author. In the same way that literature about women or African Americans is often relegated to separate shelves in bookstores, I worried that my books would be thought of as gay first and everything else second.

I did take a step in the right direction.  FML features the hijinks of an awesome gay couple.  Ben and Coop are cute, loving, and accepted by their peers.  Their storyline revolves around their quest to find a place to have sex for the first time.  No one at Simon Pulse questioned my decision. My editor loved the couple, and I loved writing them.  But I still felt like I wasn’t being true to myself.

I don’t write for teens.  I write for me.  I write the stories I would have wanted to read as a teen (and that I would have read as an adult if I hadn’t been the one writing them).  So why hadn’t I written a book with a gay protagonist?  The climate was right.  Publishers and readers were asking for more books with characters who weren’t heterosexual.  Books with gay, lesbian and transgender characters were starting to pop up more often.  Something was holding me back.

It wasn’t that I was ashamed of being gay.  In fact, I began to wish that I’d embraced my own uniqueness sooner. It was the fear that my story would be dismissed.  That some people wouldn’t be able to get over a gay protagonist and appreciate the story.  It was my fear of being a gay author.  Except, I was a gay author, uniquely qualified to write a story featuring a gay protagonist.  It was time to write a story that embraced that.

I sold The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley to Simon Pulse in March and it comes out in 2015.  It tells the story of Drew, a young man who secretly lives in a hospital and falls in love with another boy who has secrets of his own.  It’s my first book featuring a gay protagonist, and the book I’m most proud to have written.  It’s not a story about coming out or about how difficult it is to be gay.  It’s a story about secrets and loss, about grief and guilt, about how difficult it is to be a human being.

I think readers are ready for more books that feature gay protagonists in regular stories.  Action books and magic books and paranormal books.  Leading men and women who don’t fit the mold, kicking ass and being fabulous.  I’m pretty happy that I get to share one of those stories with you.

I’m sure some people will label me a gay author.  I’m sure some readers will refuse to read it because Drew is gay.  I’m totally okay with that.  The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley is a special book for special people.  You don’t have to be gay to read it, you just have to be awesome.

Recently, fellow author and friend, Brigid Kemmerer and I were discussing how we’ve both gotten some reviews on our books that included something along the lines of: “I hadn’t realized there was gay material in this book. I wish I had been warned.”

Warned. Okay. Right-o.

Nevermind everything else in the book that should be a lot more astonishing. There are people who are unhappy because two people of the same gender locked lips.

This was particularly puzzling when it happened to me with HUSHED. When review copies went out, the blurb went along with it. The blurb for HUSHED is pretty straight-forward about what you can expect. A same-sex relationship, murder, abuse, and very dark themes. Overall, not a book you’d give to your ten year old.

A few reviewers wrote back to my editor stating, “I didn’t realize this was a male/male book! I’m not interested in reading it.” This was baffling considering they had the blurb to begin with. No complaints about the hetero sexual content, or the violence and blood and the moral grayness of Archer, the main character. Because his love interest was a guy…that suddenly made the book unreadable.

Don’t get me wrong. While, ideally, everyone in all the world would be a-okay with homosexual relationships presented in our books, television, movies, etc., that isn’t how it is. I understand this as being a (very sad) fact of life. I understand certain people do not have an interest in reading a book with a homosexual character, especially a main protagonist.

What I will loudly protest, however, is slapping a book with a very low rating and bitching about it simply because it had something you, personally, did not like as a topic, likely without even finishing the book. Oh, this has a rape scene? Automatic one star. This has an abusive relationship? One star, I can’t stand that. Gay protagonist? Ugh! One star, I’m not reading this crap.

I mean, really, what?? That’s like going to see a comedy and then complaining that there were too many jokes! It’s one thing to complain about how something was executed, but that isn’t what these people are doing.

I know as a YA and NA author of LGBT fiction, these are just the kinds of hurdles we all face. It’s not a perfect world, and not everyone is as accepting as we’d like them to be, even within the book industry. I will forever appreciate those who step out of their comfort zones to read my books, and I know they exist. I’ve had numerous reviews saying they had never read a gay protagonist in a book before HUSHED, and that they truly enjoyed it and will read more in the future. This statement makes me so ridiculously happy.

The point of this post being: chin up! Writing—or even reviewing, reading, whatever—gay fiction, especially of the YA variety, is not an easy path to travel. But it’s so immensely worth it. A few months back, I received an email from someone who is gay, and lives in a country where that is very much not okay, and they told me they’ve considered suicide at times and that reading SUICIDE WATCH really helped them and touched a chord with how they felt. To think that something I wrote was capable of having that effect on someone was truly amazing.

That, my friends, is a huge perk to doing what I do. And despite the hate and judgment I sometimes get, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Q: Which is worse, being called a ’nigger’ or a ‘faggot’?

1.

Rehearsal was late that night, 10 pm on a Saturday night in Georgetown. I had only one line in the play, but I didn’t care. It was fun to see the play come together, the actors, and the scenery and the special effects. Prospero and Caliban and Ariel came to life on that haunted island now inhabiting the school auditorium. The sodium yellow lights spilled onto the night-time scape of Georgetown at night, its red brick sidewalks, and antique shops.  I went to the bus stop to await the 32 that would take me home. Though I was alone, I felt grown-up for my 14 years. I was buzzing from the feeling that I was a part of a tribe of creative people. For the most part, I was a loner. So, I had finally found my group. Even though I was one of the few African-American students. So, the night was magical.

The spell was quickly broken, though. A car full of older teenagers (maybe college students) zoomed through Wisconsin Avenue, heading toward the heart of the neighborhood. There were three or four of them in the car. As they sped by, they took a look at me. The majority of them yelled out “Nigger!” as they sped by, in a rush of exhaust, fumes and hatred. One two-syllable word and I was the Other.  The word that my parents had been called in Jim Crow south, the word that been hammered in to me as the ultimate evil word, was flung at me in a cavalier way. I watched as the car faded into the distance. I felt as if I’d been thrown out of the human race.

2.

A year later, I went on a school trip to New York City. There were five of us, plus the teacher in a borrowed SUV. The plan was to do all of the touristy things in the Big Apple: visit museums, the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, etc. At that time, the early 80s, Manhattan was still gritty. Graffiti crawled across any available apartment building wall, underpass, and subway seat. Entering the city, we saw street corners and sidewalks teeming with homeless people. The awake ones pushed shopping carts brimming with odds and ends, as if they were Dickensian tinkers. Others slept beneath mounds of foam and soiled comforters.

The trip is kind of a blur now. I remember the freak show of the Village, with its neon-maned punks and street corner artists. The stately high-rises of Central Park West, where millionaires lived, perched above the city. Late night cafes and restaurants, and bustling crowds. Miles upon miles of endless stores, displaying everything from couture clothing, chocolates, exotic animals and books. Honestly, I thought I had died and gone to Heaven. We caught a Broadway show, and ate in Jewish deli which ignited my love of corned beef.

One evening, we went to a movie, where we saw Annie. After the movie, we decided to stop somewhere for ice cream. In a West Village ice cream shop, I started doing my Carol Burnett impressions. (Burnett starred in the movie). There were a few local kids in the line in front of us.  One of them must have heard me, because he started talking loudly to his friends about “that faggot” in line behind them. I cringed; of course they were talking about me. I just hoped that my friends from school hadn’t heard. I immediately stopped doing my Carol Burnett impressions, but it was too late. As I placed my order, the kid who had called me out stepped far, far away from me, muttering “faggot” beneath his breath. The look on his face devastated me. The word “hatred” doesn’t quite encompass that glare. Not at all. He looked at me as I were a diseased thing, something barely human. After that, my joy at being in the City That Never Sleeps ended.

3.

In many ways, my novel Bereft was written for that young boy (and others like him) who must deal with dual marginalities. The book is about Rafael Fannen, a 14-year old African American boy who wins a scholarship to a prestigious Catholic School. At first, he has to deal with the culture shock of being one of the few students of color at the predominantly white institution. Rafe is also gay and closeted. The novel explores Rafe’s journey to reconcile two parts of his emerging identity.

It’s a journey I’ve taken, and it still isn’t finished. I’m invisible in both of my nominal communities. Gay = white, in magazines and pop culture. Faces of color in that community are rare, and we are often fetishcized when we do appear. And much of the African American community is rife with the same fire-and-brimstone religious interpretations that poison many sects of Christianity. When I was Rafe’s age, I was isolated. There was no-one to talk to, no-one who looked like me. I found that people of color could be homophobic, and gay people could be straight-up racist. As I grew up, I eventual found people who had similar experiences. Now, we have out bisexual black men like Frankie Ocean; when I grew up, there were the works of James Baldwin and Samuel Delany, and an active underground literary scene of writing by black gay men, like Essex Hemphill and Joseph Beam.

LGBT issues are now being explored in YA fiction, something of a renaissance. Bereft  attempts to add a unique perspective in the field. I hope that my book can make a difference.

A: Since they are both essential parts of my identity, they hurt equally. I can’t separate/compartmentalize the hurt. And, for the record, I hate that question!

Craig Laurance Gidney writes both contemporary and genre fiction.  Recipient of the 1996 Susan C. Petrey Scholarship to the Clarion West writer’s workshop, Gidney has published works in the  fantasy/science fiction, gay and young adult categories.  Gidney’s first collection, Sea, Swallow Me and Other Stories was nominated for the 2008 Lambda Literary Award in the Science Fiction/Fantasy and Horror category.  Bereft is his first novel. His website is: http://www.craiglaurancegidney.com

I am often asked where I get my ideas for my books. I am not Stephenie Meyer; as lovely as it would be, I do not have dreams that direct my writing, word for word. For me, Fighting Gravity was a response to several social phenomena surrounding my life. It was a knee-jerk reaction to wanting to protect the young people in my bubble of the world and wanting to show others the vast rainbow of diversity in their worlds: high schools, relationships, families. The novel became my personal handbook to compassion. I wanted it to be honest, funny, and pleasurable to read, while also bringing up those important questions that every person has to answer for him or herself as an adult.
I remember watching an old episode of Oprah where three mild-looking men were discussing how they met and “groomed” young children for inappropriate relationships. I recall being both disgusted and amazed at how these men got away with such vast amounts of alone time with children, as certainly my children would never be allowed such freedoms, but they did. Somehow, their parents were unaware that grown adults shouldn’t want such time with children, or they were fooled by their titles: coach, clergy, neighbor. What I then recognized, and later saw on an episode of 20/20, was that meeting a teenager online would be an easier task than prying a younger child from a parent’s side (at least my partner and I’s helicopter sides). I knew this to be true because, as a young person (and also a thirty-five year old woman) who had been obsessed with her own looks/weight/popularity, I would have given just about anything to find my soulmate.
People are often driven by emotion, and I think this is the most honest, enviable way to live—but also the most dangerous. A young girl with self-esteem issues, running away from an uncomfortable home situation, would hardly have to be lured at all if she thought the person she was speaking to was another young person, and one who wanted to love and accept her, protect her. I was pregnant with my second child and had a young niece at the time that I wrote this book; my niece was a curious teenager like any other, and worried about her looks and the way people saw her, just as I had. This understanding of my niece as a maturing person grew into Calliope. Calliope is isolated in many ways by her social status as an “unpopular” girl, or so she believes. She, also, finds herself in a tattered relationship with her mother, is torn in her want to relate to her “new” father or run from him, and is uncomfortable with her grandmother’s illness and that impending loss; she is incredibly vulnerable. She is also beyond brave. She is who, perhaps, each of us would be in the same situations.
Once I had the idea for a book about a high school student looking for love online, much of the rest was simply picking and choosing from social belief systems I held. I believe, whole-heartedly, that all men and women are created equal. This is not just a tired phrase from a yellowing document signed by old, dead white men. I wanted to show that equality on a high school level, so I sifted through “outcast” stereotypes. My first thought was to tackle homophobia, because I am a gay mom. My partner and I never want our children to be judged on our choices; it is one of our greatest fears as parents. So I wanted to create a gay character who not only helped others selflessly, but also really cared about the world despite her own, inner demons. I didn’t feel comfortable making Calliope gay on top of all of her other difficulties, both because I didn’t want to lose my reader in melodrama and because even my three year old would have seen the writing on the page. So I birthed Farrah. I wanted readers to respect Farrah even if they had a discomfort for whom I believe she was born to be. I think physical differences are particularly hard in high school, too, so I wanted to add a differently-abled character. Again, this character had to be “real,” thus Lynn’s submissive reactions to popular boys, and also her heroic side, her saving of the boy on the bus: balance. I sewed in images of different faith systems: Farrah’s Christian parents, who are generally good people who want the best for their daughter, and Gandhi, and the hero at the end of the story, the Jewish woman who feeds and drives Calliope to her home after her captivity, are all loving, yet flawed and scarred, people despite deity. Calliope’s uncles are gay men who want to parent; they defy stereotypes in many ways. Calliope’s father is not the “typical” man, either; he is incredibly sensitive, overtly emotional. He wanted to be a father to his daughter. He was deeply hurt by the initial deception, despite his physical and string-less relationship with Calliope’s mother that perhaps society would see as a gift for a young man who played the sexual field.
The idea of the cyber bullying incident happened slowly. Bullying in high school, of course, is not an unusual topic. Technology is used both for good, and to cause pain, with all age groups. Humans who are unsupervised and feeling insignificant might use technology to harm other humans without the courage of signing a name, or standing in front of their victims. We’ve seen this in the news with high schoolers and college students, alike. We’ve seen grown adults humiliate children in this way. I wanted to make a stand with Heather’s character; she did not deserve to be belittled, no one does, and yet that is even our protagonist’s, Callie’s, first response to her. In order to change, I think we need to see that those seeds live within ourselves; we are, after all, human. Literature is a safe way to explore our own weaknesses and, hopefully, vow to change them.
I wrote this book because I went to high school and the experience was less than an award-winning cinematic one. I once worked as a high school English teacher and fell in philosophical love with kids who were strong, proud, struggling to find themselves. I believe that young people have the ability to change our world for the better, and I want to support them in that awesome endeavor. I wrote this book because I was a gay teenager, and one who took 19 years to be able to say, Yes, I am gay, in the mirror of my college bedroom. I wrote Fighting Gravity because the Internet is a scary tool, and bullying is rampant, and “slut shaming” hurts our entire society. I have written and edited all of my books because I believe in the general goodness of people, and I want to remind all of my readers of their own Buddha natures and their inherent value in this—my—world. My hope is that my readers will find their own power in reading about my characters and their struggles, and use that power to “Be the change [they] wish to see in the world” (Gandhi). My greatest joy is hearing from readers who are on that journey, who are surviving.

Brittany Fonte has an MFA in Creative Writing, Fiction. She has three books out: Buddha in My Belly, Fighting Gravity, and she co-edited the new queer spoken word and poetry anthology Flicker and Spark. She teaches writing at the university level, has two wonderful children and a supportive not-yet-legal wife. She is currently working on a boys’ chapter book about an adopted zombie. You can find Brittany on Facebook (she will absolutely be your friend!), and also on Twitter @PoetBFonte.