Annie on Her Mind

As longtime librarians know, life hasn't always been kind to Annie. Over the years, Garden's most popular novel has been banned, burned, and embroiled in a 1994 federal court case, in which a U.S. District judge in Kansas ordered the book returned to school library shelves. During the furor, Garden's portrait of high school senior Liza Winthrop's growing love for Annie Kenyon became one of the most frequently challenged books, according to ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom. Not surprisingly, Garden has become a strong defender of young people's First Amendment rights.

Before Annie's unprecedented arrival, gay and lesbian literature for young adults was all but nonexistent. The first young adult novel with same-sex relationships, John Donovan's I'll Get There, It Better Be Worth the Trip (Harper, 1969), was published in the same year as New York City's Stonewall Rebellion, a civil disturbance that marked the beginning of the gay rights movement in this country. Throughout the 1970s, there was, on average, a single young adult title per year dealing with gay issues. Although many of these early books were well written—and well reviewed—gay characters were at best a sidekick or foil for the straight protagonist and at worst a victim who would face violence, injury, or death (fatal traffic accidents were commonplace). Young protagonists who worried that they might be gay would invariably conclude that their same-sex attraction was simply a temporary stage in the journey toward heterosexual adulthood. Thanks in part to Annie 's enduring success (it has never been out of print), the total number of gay novels for young adults has grown to more than 140 titles. Not surprisingly, this body of literature now includes more works by Garden: Lark in the Morning (1991), Good Moon Rising (1996), The Year They Burned the Books (1999), and Holly's Secret (2000, all Farrar). I spoke with Garden in early April, as she sat at her writing desk in the Massachusetts home that she shares with her partner, Sandra Scott.

What do you hope to offer teens through your stories?

Reassurance and validation—a sense that there are people like themselves who've faced what they're facing, a feeling that it's OK to be who they are, and a feeling that they are and can be good people and can find another person to love. A feeling, too, that teens can make a difference in the world while they're still teens.

Who reads your books?

Both gay and straight kids read my gay books, but my sense is that more gay and questioning kids than straight ones do. But that may be because those are the ones I hear from most often. Many of them have never read a book about people like themselves before, and so it's especially important to them—at least that's the impression I get from their letters and thank-yous.

What have you heard from your readers?

Initially a lot of the letters I got—we're not talking about a huge volume of mail by any means, but certainly a fairly steady stream—were from women in their 20s and 30s who wrote me saying, "I wish this book had been around when I was a teenager." And many of these letters were very moving. I got some letters from younger women—teens—in the early days, too, but the majority of them back then were from grown-ups. As time has gone on, I've gotten letters from younger and younger people. And with [the Internet] now, it's so much easier for teenagers to write letters; so I get a fair number of e-mails now from teens who've read Annie or who've read Good Moon Rising …. Older kids write me saying "I read Annie when I was 10," or "I read it in sixth grade."

Were you surprised when Annie was removed from junior high and high school libraries in Olathe, KS? Ultimately, of course, a group of local students and parents sued the school district and the removal of Annie was ruled unconstitutional. What's your recollection of that time?

I was at a writers' conference talking about writing YA fiction and someone asked me if I'd had much trouble with Annie. I said, "No, I hadn't." Then a couple of days later I got a phone call from Stephen Friedman saying, "Did you know your book has just been burned in Kansas City?" I said, "No, I didn't know that." And he asked if I would like to see faxes of the newspaper coverage and I said sure. We didn't have a fax; we were in Maine; so we had to drive to the next town to get the faxes. I kept thinking on the way: Burned! I didn't think people burned books any more. Only Nazis burn books….

[Later] when I was in Kansas, people would come up to me even before the case was filed saying that they were embarrassed that this had happened where they lived…. There were a lot of people who didn't believe in the First Amendment, and a lot of people who were pretty homophobic. But there were a lot of very good people also, and that was a very good thing to learn. I also learned that it is extremely important in this kind of situation to try to understand the other side's position and to listen to the other side.

Have you had problems with homophobia in the publishing world?

No, it's really not been a problem. [Farrar, Straus & Giroux] was the second publisher to see Annie …. If I were at another house, I might have had a very different experience, but FSG has been terrific. My editor, Margaret Ferguson, understood instantly what I was trying to do in Annie, and she has understood ever since.

The illustrations of the two young women on the cover of Annie have gone through some interesting changes over the years.

The cover situation has been incredible. I take those three covers and a couple of others sometimes when I talk to kids about Annie because I think that the changes in the cover designs also reflect the changes in attitude toward homosexuality over the years…. The very first cover [illustration], which was never actually used, shows Annie and Liza on the Esplanade in Brooklyn, overlooking the harbor. Annie is wearing a dark cloak—maybe black—her back is, as I remember, to the camera. Liza is standing some distance away from her and it really looks as if Annie is going to swoop down on Liza—almost like a vampire attacking. I took one look at that and said to Margaret Ferguson, my editor, "We can't have that [cover]," and Margaret, thank goodness, agreed.

So then came the one on the ferry—the [1982] painting with all the orange. I think the heads are too big and I never liked the color. I like the picture on the back—the continuation of the picture on the front. I like the woman sitting on the bench—it's a nice painting. But the kids aren't looking at each other. They aren't relating to each other. Then in the next one [in 1984], the cover on the first paperback, showing the kids at the Cloisters, Annie looks so much older than Liza that it looks like a teacher-student relationship. Liza has her chin in her hand, looking up at Annie, and that's another gay stereotype—you know, the teacher-student/older-younger kind of thing. Then finally came the wonderful cover [in 1992] showing the two girls really relating to each other equally.

Clearly before Annie there were very few novels for gay and lesbian kids. Are there still significant needs that aren't being addressed by young adult book publishers?

There are a few books now that have bisexual main characters, but I think that's a hole that needs to be filled more. It's an interesting hole, too, because there are many kids now—many more than there used to be—who are identifying as bisexual. Some of them, I think, will probably end up either gay or straight. But I think that very process is fascinating to explore from a literary standpoint.

Another very big hole is transgendered youth and that urgently needs to be filled. These kids need books in which their lives and feelings are validated and accurately represented just the way gay and lesbian kids, black and Latino kids—all minority kids—do. And majority kids need to see those lives, too.

We still get a lot of books—and they're fine—about people's gay brothers and uncles and friends and teachers. That's OK, but there still need to be more gay and lesbian protagonists.

Of course now that gay and lesbian kids are coming out at younger ages, it's important for there to be more books at that level, too.... Another thing I think is important to explore and show in YA literature is friendship between young gay men and lesbians. Having had one of those relationships when I was a kid, I'd like to explore that some time.

What do you say to those adults who truly think that young people are harmed by reading books like Annie ?

Teens are in the process of becoming adults and learning what the world is like. Of course adults want to protect them from bad things! My partner and I helped bring up a pair of teens and we wanted to protect them from everything hurtful in the world; it's a natural impulse for most adults. But it's also important to prepare teens for the world they'll meet as adults, and to help them understand it and form their own reactions to it. One can't do that by keeping the world from them. Far better for them to encounter difficult subjects when they still have loving adults—like their parents and teachers and librarians—to talk to than to keep them so sheltered that they know nothing of the world until they're thrust into it as independent kids in their 20s.

I think it's very important for there to be a climate of open discussion within every family where ideas and beliefs can be discussed rationally, and in which teens are permitted to express their opinions frankly and freely and to learn their parents' opinions as well. There won't always be agreement, but as long as there's true dialogue, it seems to me there will be growth toward intelligent, independent adulthood—which, after all, is the "job" of every teenager.