Out and About: Gay Teens Live, Love, and Learn in Young Adult Fiction
RSSJoyce Adams Burner, Curriculum Connections -- School Library Journal, 08/04/2009
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Few issues carry more significance for teens than sexual identity. Some gay teens embrace their orientation while others struggle with fear, denial, and shame. Family and friends ease the process with loving acceptance or stumble over their own prejudices. The gay adolescents in these recent young adult novels span this spectrum, wrestling with doubts and facing harassment. Their strong and candid voices spring from full-bodied characters, many of them created by authors who draw on personal experience. Perfect for use in gay/straight student alliances, these novels also beg to be invited into a surprising variety of classroom discussions where they will put a personal face on a charged subject.
Crushed
“I stayed close to [Sean], imagining that it was just the two of us running. I found his breath and meditated on it.” David, 16, has a girlfriend, Kick. He also has a serious crush on Sean, another junior on the cross-country team at his Minneapolis academy in Lee Bantle’s David Inside Out (Holt, 2009). David feels no passion for frustrated Kick, yet denies being gay, and avoids Eddie, his former best friend who is now out and proud. When Sean comes on to David in secret, both experience a toxic mix of elation, fear, and shame. Discussion points include acceptance of one’s sexual identity, friendship between gay and straight guys, and same-gender sexual experimentation.
“It’s like [Dahlia]…emits some kind of electricity, like static that gives you shocks, raises the hair on your skin, shoots sparks. You can’t be near her without picking up on it. And you feel like maybe it’s dangerous….” Maggie, 15, shut herself away after a wreck killed her mother and left her a limping “Frankenstein girl” in Jennifer McMahon’s My Tiki Girl (Dutton, 2008). Now caught up in Dahlia’s bohemian life, Maggie’s crush on the teen is soon reciprocated, and turns to sexual exploration. Rich imagery and free-spirited prose convey Maggie’s emotional struggles over body image and self-acceptance, along with themes of popularity, grief, mental illness, and homophobia.
Cultural Complications
Gay teens face additional obstacles from particular subcultures. Hispanic senior Paul enjoys a chaste relationship with girlfriend Angie in Alex Sanchez’s The God Box (S & S, 2007), their Texas small town lives centered on their fundamentalist church and school Bible club. Openly gay Manuel transfers in from Dallas. A committed Christian, he offers new biblical interpretations about homosexuality, compelling Paul to confront his personal prejudice and the thoughts pointing to his own gay identity. “On the outside, I was a model of all-American heterosexual Christian boyhood…But on the inside, I felt like a fraud.” The God Box bristles with discussion points about conservative religious and political attitudes, and homophobic bullying and violence.
Cruelly outed by a teacher, Laura Amores is kicked out of her home in Mayra Lazara Dole’s Down to the Bone (HarperTeen, 2008). In Miami’s Catholic Cuban-American culture, “tortilleras” are morally depraved. Laura moves in with best friend Soli, and surrounds herself with new friends including Tazer, a transgendered Cuban lesbian. After much vacillation, Laura officially comes out to herself and others, defying her mother’s manipulations and rejection. The Miami Cuban community offers an evocative backdrop to the story and Dole fills Down to the Bone with sassy characters and fresh dialogue. Themes of social class friction, racial diversity, relations within the LGBTQ community, and the use of sexual slurs are topics that sociology and communications classes can explore.
Secretly gay star quarterback Bobby, 17, knows of no openly gay college or pro-football players, in Bill Konigsberg’s Out of the Pocket (Dutton, 2008). He enjoys the camaraderie of his California teammates despite their locker-room homophobia. Bobby finally comes out to his best friend Austin, who tells two other teammates, and soon Bobby is unwillingly outed in the school newspaper. Journalism classes will enjoy discussing ethics of reporting and effective use of sports metaphor by Konigsberg, an Associated Press sportswriter. Talk about the habitual use of the word “fag” and other pejorative terms among teen boys, particularly the football team’s homophobic reaction to the newspaper article.
Teetering on the Brink
Following a New Year’s Eve suicide attempt, Jeff, 15, is spending 45 days in a psychiatric ward in Michael Thomas Ford’s Suicide Notes (HarperTeen, 2008). The teen holds everyone at arm’s length, gradually revealing the reality he fears about his sexual identity. “It’s a lot of pressure, telling someone something like that. It’s like you’re committing to it. ‘Mom, Dad, I’ve thought about it a lot, and I’ve decided I’m gay.’ Like you’ve read all the brochures and comparison shopped.” Reminiscent of Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted and Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in its dark, often hilarious sarcasm, Suicide Notes will enhance conversations in psychology and sociology classes with its examination of mental health, suicide, self-perception, and shame.
A year apart, brothers James and Alex are polar opposites in Martin Wilson’s What They Always Tell Us (Delacorte, 2008). Popular senior James is eager to escape Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and embarrassed by his brother. Junior Alex is shunned by his fellow students after chugging Pine-Sol at a party in despair over being gay. When James’s buddy Nathen befriends Alex, recruiting him for the cross-country team, running with him, and ultimately becoming his lover, James must overcome his anger and consider what it means to be true to his brother. Alternating chapters give each brother’s viewpoint equal development in a well-crafted novel exploring suicide, therapy, friendship, bullying, and the impact of reputation on a teen’s life and choices.
Life is lousy for Dade Hamilton, freshly graduated from his suburban Iowa high school, in Nick Burd’s The Vast Fields of Ordinary (Dial, 2009). His parents are divorcing, his job stinks, and his “boyfriend,” popular football-star Pablo, likes to hook up but denies he’s gay and ignores Dade in public. When he encounters enigmatic Alex, 20, Dade finds acceptance and serious romance, encouraged by Lucy, a lesbian teen. As Dade’s relationship with Alex deepens, Pablo stalks Dade and then commits suicide, unable to face his own homosexuality. A missing child motif woven into the background of the story creates tension against themes of popularity, sports, and leaving home for college.
Friends and Family
When Garth, 15 and happier about being gay than about being 5’2”, comes out to his newly widowed and overprotective mom, she asks him to keep his orientation secret in P. E. Ryan’s In Mike We Trust (HarperTeen, 2009). Then Uncle Mike, his dad’s twin, shows up at their Richmond, Virginia, home, and Garth finds an ally who takes him to a gay bookstore and enables his dating relationship with Adam. Garth, in turn, helps Uncle Mike out with some “business prospects” and realizes, after lying repeatedly to his mother, that his uncle is a scam artist. With overlying themes of honesty and truth, In Mike We Trust features vivid characters dancing around a number of issues.
Marisol is out and proud at 18, taking a year off to write a novel before starting college, and working at a coffee shop in Harvard Square in Ellen Wittlinger’s Love & Lies: Marisol’s Story (S & S, 2008). She meets newly out lesbian Lee, a high school senior, and takes her new friend home to meet Mom, who nearly bowls Lee over with her enthusiasm. When Marisol falls hard for Olivia, the beautiful lesbian who teaches her writing class, she ignores her friends’ warnings about Olivia’s obvious jealousy and manipulation, and realizes too late how much she has hurt Lee in the process. Wittlinger writes lively dialogue exploring sexuality as part of overall identity, and candidly examines the damage wreaked on relationships by deception.
“David…looks me square in the face. I can’t read him at all. He doesn’t look angry. Is he hoping I will lean over and kiss him? Is that what he wants? I turn my head and stare at a spot several feet to my left. ‘I’m just afraid I’ll say the wrong thing.’ My voice comes out quiet, almost believable. I don’t look up for David’s reaction. We stand there. Months, maybe years go by and we don’t say a word. Then we go into class.” Mitchell and David, 17, are best friends, but when David comes out to Mitchell, their relationship gets complicated in Steven Goldman’s hilarious Two Parties, One Tux, and a Very Short Film About The Grapes of Wrath (Bloomsbury, 2008). The pile-up of parties, prom, and dust-ups with the school administration is enlivened by Carrie, Mitchell’s year-younger sister who engineers his social life. Carrie realizes that David is in love with her brother, and kindly confronts him, saving the friendship and getting Mitchell together with her own best friend in the process.
Provocative great reads like these young adult books use authentic voices to portray their gay protagonists as multi-dimensional teens encountering complex problems and seeking genuine love. Creatively including them in class discussions and on reading lists offers high school readers an opportunity to confront their own fears and preconceptions, to see past stereotypes, and to develop mature understandings.
