Category Archives: politics and culture

Why I’m an ally for women’s reproductive freedom

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Protestors in Alabama

Retrieved from Democracy Now website: https://www.democracynow.org/2019/5/20/headlines/protesters_in_alabama_missouri_defend_reproductive_rights_from_recent_abortion_bans

I’ve been thinking about LGBTQ+ issues as the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia passed on May 17th and thinking about women’s reproductive rights while states like Alabama have been enacting bizarre and grotesque laws demeaning and diminishing female personhood. Every now and then, I post some political commentary here. It doesn’t have a lot to do with what I write, but it’s a big part of who I am. If you’re curious, here’s some stuff I wrote about the Charlottesville Unite the Right Rally, #TransgenderRightAreHumanRights, and the Writers Resist movement.

Today, I’m struck by the essential alliance between queer rights advocacy and women’s rights advocacy and wanting to defend women’s reproductive freedom in particular as a gay male ally.

I actually got involved in women’s rights issues before I had the courage to come out and talk about queer rights. My mother’s quiet democratic values inspired me from a young age. She decried racism and anti-Semitism and was a terrific female role model. From back when I was in elementary school, she talked to me about women’s equality by sharing the story of her mother, who died before I was born. My maternal grandmother was the valedictorian of her high school class and was pushed toward nursing school rather than college even though she had the potential to be a doctor. Nursing is of course a challenging and honorable service profession, but the point was sexist social attitudes place limitations on women’s lives. And, not incidentally, this was a lesson to me that’s it’s never too young to talk to kids about sexism, racism, and other systems of oppression. Some of the most impactful stories are from our childhood, and in my case, it helped me become an ally.

My mother wanted to have opportunities her mother could not have. She went to a four-year college and had a brief career as a biologist at a cancer research center before her life took a more traditional turn. She left her job when my older brother was born, and she was a stay-at-home mom up until I was a little further along in elementary school. Then she went back to school for computer science, one of a handful of women in the graduate program while also one of the oldest students in her class. She completed her degree and went on to manage information technology policy, literacy and training at New York State’s largest public university. I grew up a firm believer in women’s equality and appreciating the tremendous courage and determination it takes to succeed in male-dominated professions.

I think instinctively I understood the connection between women’s rights generally and their reproductive rights specifically. The latter was an issue I knew my mom supported, but we didn’t talk about it much. For me, it just felt obvious that a part of a person’s humanity and freedom was their ability to make decisions about their body. Actually, it felt terrifying that someone could take that away from you, and the way religious organizations tried to shame women about their sexuality angered me.

Buffalo, New York where I grew up was one of Operation Rescue’s target cities in the early 90s. Led by Reverend Randall Terry, they travelled around the country to picket abortion clinics with their famous fetus jar displays. I’ve participated in a lot of protests in my life, and to this day, one of my favorites was counter-protesting Randall Terry in Buffalo along with my four housemates at the time (all of whom were straight men). Most of them had never done anything political related to women’s reproductive freedom, but we all felt at our core the protestors were wrong, and there was an urgency to supporting women’s reproductive choice.

There was something at stake for me personally though I probably would not have known how to voice it at the time. The anti-reproductive freedom position is based on so-called traditional or family values with the goal of erasing social progress and re-establishing (or establishing for the first time in some cases) laws and norms based on Christian fundamentalist doctrine. I was reminded just today on a news program that many states still have laws criminalizing adultery. Of course, anti-sodomy laws still exist in many places. These “blue laws” are the legacy of the 19th century Protestant reform movement, which successfully inserted their morals and traditions into legal codes across the country.

As a young man listening to the talking points of the anti-choice side of the abortion debate, I realized I also had a target on my back. Their family values envisioned good Christian men marrying good Christian women, castigating sex outside of marriage, and often most vehemently, declaring homosexuality a perversion that is to blame for everything from single parent households to hurricanes and earthquakes. Even before I accepted I was gay, I recognized that worldview was pretty much diametrically opposed to how I lived my life, or planned to live my life. As a young adult, freedom generally was important to me, but also as someone who was drawn to secular humanism much more than any religion, I saw the rhetoric and positions of the Christian Right as defamatory and unfair.

So bringing this back to May 2019, I’m reminded – almost daily reminded since November 2016 – how fragile achievements in the women’s rights movement and the LGBT rights movement are. In addition to the assault on women’s reproductive rights, folks are working on the presidential level, congressional level, and state and local level to push Religious Freedom laws to weaken LGBT civil liberties and legally enshrine Christian fundamentalists’ right to hate us. Such laws would also limit women’s reproductive freedom. We’ve already seen cases of pharmacists who refuse to dispense birth control pills to women. And the Trump administration successfully established a ban on transgender people serving in the military.

This is wrong. This is a critical time for folks who care about women’s lives and dignity to come together. Because it’s not just about one issue. It’s a systematic attack on the values and norms that allow a pluralistic, democratic society to thrive. We’ve been at this juncture before. Many of us just never thought we’d be back there again. I stand up as an ally to women’s reproductive freedom for my mom, for women everywhere, and to acknowledge this is an issue that men—gay and straight—care about as well.

On retold stories and folklore

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Illustration from The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm

Illustration from The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, retrieved from Wikipedia commons

I’m in between BIG, EXCITING publication news, so I thought I’d blog a little something on the subject of retold stories and folklore, which has sort of become my métier.

Alright, I actually do have some exciting but super early news to share that relates to the subject. Late this year, most likely late fall, NineStar Press will be publishing a collection of my short stories, which are based on world mythology and folklore. The contract is signed, and I am busily getting each one of them ready for editing and production.

Yeah, I’m really happy about that, and if you’re curious, you can get an exclusive preview of some of the stories at my Patreon page. I’ll be talking up that project a lot more as we get closer to the release date. 🙂

For those of you who are new to my world, well first off: Hi! Thanks for stopping by. I’m Andrew J. Peters. I principally describe myself as a fantasy author, and then, a little more specifically as a gay fantasy author. Then, even more specifically, I tend to write heroic fantasy, which means action-adventure, typically taking place in an olden world type of setting, and based on classical legend, which usually follows the structure of The Hero’s Journey.

For example, my first two novels were a two-part series about two boys who led survivors to safety during the destruction of ancient Atlantis (The Seventh Pleiade and Banished Sons of Poseidon). In a similar vein, Poseidon and Cleito explores the trials of Atlantis’s founders. And I wrote The City of Seven Gods (the first book in The Lost Histories series), which has two men struggling for survival in a treacherous world inspired by Classical, Egyptian and Mesopotamian cultures.

They’re all hero stories. Well, the latter is a hero story on a smaller scale, though still taking place in an epic, old world setting.

I’ve also written a contemporary, paranormal series Werecat, and most recently, I published Irresistible, a contemporary gay-rom com of all things. That might be starting to sound eclectic, a nicer way to say all over the map. I make the case there’s a common thread in the stories that inspire me. You can call it loose for sure, but even the modern tales I’ve written came from fantasy ideas.

Werecat of course is a variation on werewolf lore, and more than that founded on a mythology drawn from pre-Columbian Amerindian sources. Irresistible is a retelling of an ancient Greek novel (Callirhoe), whose premise is a young woman is so gods-blessed with beauty, her true love can’t keep hold of her because everyone betrays him to steal her for himself (I queered the story up and made the two leads guys).

I haven’t always written retold stories. I credit one of my very favorite authors Gregory Maguire for turning me on to the fun of taking classic lore from a new point of view. Some of my work is far derived from a specific myth, but myths, fairytales and folkore are mainly where I find my ideas. My upcoming collection has stories drawn from classical mythology, The Arabian Nights, Hungarian folklore, the Brothers Grimm, a classic opera, Amazonian jaguar mysticism, and African and Japanese sources. I really wanted to celebrate stories from around the globe.

People ask me sometimes what’s my favorite fairytale or legend. That’s hard for me to answer because I love so much of it, and I’m discovering new stories all the time! I love the drama and imagination of Greek mythology, epic poems and plays. I love the humor and magic of The Arabian Nights, and I’m a fan of Shakespeare and gothic horror from the 19th century.

More recently, I discovered Japanese folklore, which is fascinating because it comes from such a different perspective both in tone — a lot of irony and absurdity — and in its ideas about magic.

So how to choose just one, or even two or three? I can’t and won’t I’m afraid. 🙂

I think another reason I’ve been drawn to retelling stories from classical lore is to give voice and visibility to gay experiences. Of course, one doesn’t need classic lore to do that, but when you take a familiar story and ‘queer’ the characters, swap genders, I feel it makes the story enjoyably subversive and surprising.

For example, with Irresistible, casting the tragic beauty as a man created opportunites for me to show gay desire in its many variations: triumphant, obsessive, heartbreaking, and comically absurd, while also broadening the scope of eroticism. Everyone falls in love, or lust with the lead Callisthenes: young and old, men and women, declared gays and others who are confronted with buried fantasies. The premise of the classic novel provided the opportunity to explore love and lust in greater depth.

If you’re looking for some queerly retold stories (until my anthology comes out) 🙂 I’ll point you to two of my favorites: Jeremy McAteer’s Fairytales for Gay Guys and Lawrence Schimel’s The Drag Queen of Elfland and Other Stories.       

 

#PrideReads

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I’ve caught the Twitter hastag bug again, and this is a really good one. For June, which of course is Pride Month, the #PrideReads meme is trending to bring attention to queer books and authors. While I’m participating on Twitter, I thought I’d share some of my responses here. There are links to Goodreads in case you want to check out my recommendations.

Describe an LGBTQIA+ novel you’d like to see written?

That pretty much describes my own writing process, but I’ll pick something outside of my wheelhouse. I love historical fiction, so I’d love to read a novel featuring LGBTQIA+ lead characters set in an evocative and underrepresented setting, like say pre-colonial Mesoamerica, or Mogul-era India, or Qing dynasty China.

Tell us about an underrated queer book.

I’ll give you three. First, John Weir’s The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket, which is like The Catcher in the Rye set in New York City during the height of the AIDS epidemic. Second, Ben Neihart’s Hey Joe, which was awesome, modern gay YA before awesome, modern gay YA became a thing. Third, only because I read it most recently, and it’s also underrated, being far ahead of it’s time in terms of modern, matter-of-fact gay portrayals, Philip Ridley’s In the Eyes of Mr. Fury.

Queer #ownvoices authors we should follow.

@ScareBearDan @lawrenceschimel @alexharrowSFF @jscoatsworth @jp_howardpoet @Xtianbaines @johncopenhaver @JoeOJazzMoon @allanbrocka @AnnAptaker @TrustMiguel @Hans_Hirshi @BrianCentron @CAClemmings @KenJONeill & sorry I ran out of characters

Your favorite queer books.

[Head explodes] Well gosh, here I’ll stick to my wheelhouse to put some boundaries on it. For SFF #Ownvoices, Samuel Delaney’s Tales of Neveryon, Ricardo Pinto’s Stone Dance of the Chameleon trilogy, and Douglas Clegg’s Mordred, Bastard Son are probably my favorites.

Does a queer book need to include romance?

Absolutely not, though my reading “sweet spot” is action-adventure with a minor romantic storyline that doesn’t have to be HEA.

Who’s a queer supporting character that should get their own book/series.

I’m going to go off canon because I didn’t read the books (shame, shame, shame), and I understand the character of Olyvar in Game of Thrones was created for the TV series. Anyway, he’s my favorite gay character in the series (and the only one who hasn’t been killed off!), so my vote is for Olyvar to get a platform to do some damage in Westeros.

via GIPHY

Favourite books with lesbian rep?

I really liked Malinda Lo’s Ash. Also, though not an #Ownvoices title, Richard Morgan’s The Steel Remains has a well-developed lesbian character Archeth who I thought shone through as the best POV character.

Favourite books with gay rep?

I mentioned a bunch of them above, but this gives me a chance to share more! For literary/history, I’ll shout out Felice Picano’s Like People in History. For mystery, Michael Nava’s The Burning Plain is probably my favorite title from his Henry Rios series. For family saga/coming of age, Shyam Selvadurai’s Cinnamon Gardens. For YA, anything by David Levithan. For romance (guilty pleasure), Scott Pomfret’s Hot Sauce. Last, for humor, far, far off the radar: Andrew Killeen’s The Khalifah’s Mirror and Jim Anderson’s Chipman’s African Adventure.

Favourite books with bi rep?

Going to do a throwback here, I read Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia as a young adult, and it’s one of those books that stayed with me for years and years.

Favourite books with trans rep?

I haven’t read nearly as many trans books as I should have, and the book I’m going to mention probably fits better as intersex. But Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex is a terrific cultural and historical saga in which the main character was born with ambiguous genitalia and lives as a girl and a young man and later as someone in-between.

Favourite books with non-binary rep?

Here again I’m shamefully poorly-read, and to mention Ursual Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness feels somewhat lame, since so many books about trans and non-binary experiences have been written since that groundbreaking SFF came out. But there I did it. I’ll add Daniel Heath Justice’s The Way of Thorn and Thunder, which takes inspiration from Indigenous lore and traditions, including non-binary ways of living.

Favourite books where everyone is queer?

I love this question because I think it’s an underrated approach to queer fiction, and it’s not uncommon to see reviews of queer books that complain it’s “unrealistic” there are so few straight characters (barf). So here’s to Alex Sanchez’ Rainbow Boys series with three rotating gay male narratives and Allison Moon’s all-lesbian Lunatic Fringe, and Matthew Rettemund’s Boy Culture, and all the fabulous queerly retold fairy tale collections like Lawrence Schimmel’s The Drag Queen of Elfland and Jeremy McAteer’s Queer Tales: Fairytales for Gay Guys.

What queer character do you identify with?

As a closeted queer teen, I devoured Paul T. Roger’s Saul’s Book, and thought I found in the narrator Stephen a deeper understanding of myself. Later, I’d say I saw more of myself in Duncan from David Levithan’s Wide Awake, with his heartfelt conviction in social justice. Nowadays, with a dearth of stories featuring older queer characters, the one who comes to mind is Gabriel Noone from Armistead Maupin’s The Night Listener.

What sparks your interest in a book? Cover? Reviews? Blurb?

This is an interesting question in the context of queer books, because thinking back to my coming of age in the 80s and 90s, living in upstate New York, it was hard as hell to find the kind of books I was interested in! I pretty much had to sneak into the stacks at librarires or bookstores and find the sexuality section, which felt like a huge taboo in itself. Even then, I had to find titles catalogued with the sterile, scientific label: homosexuality and hope they weren’t insidious, pseudo-scientific, neo-Freudian, pathologizing horseshit.

The covers of those older books rarely gave hints about the story, and the books were all fairly tragic, violent and highly sexualized (not a bad thing necessarily, especially for the young, disaffected me who was also quite eager to learn what gay men did together).

With the advent of the Internet, it became a whole lot easier to find queer books I might like. Covers matter to me, though looking through my Goodreads shelf, some of my favorite titles have pretty awful ones and that doesn’t stop me from singing their praises. I read blurbs to see what the story is about, and I’ll check out what people have to say on fan sites and Goodreads.

Favourite queer couple?

I often say my favorite couple is Gorgik and Little Sarg from Samuel Delaney’s Tales of Neveryon. They lead a frickin’ slave rebellion that liberates an entire country, so try beating that. Honorable mentions: Maurice and Scudder in E.M. Forster’s Maurice (I weep at the end of the movie), and though the relationship is muted and ill-fated in Gregory Maguire’s inimitable way, I loved Liir and Commander Cherrystone in Son of a Witch.

Does a queer book have to have a happy ending?

That’s a provocative and important issue to talk about. I expect a lot of readers would say we need more queer lit with happy endings to balance out the long history of tragic queer stories–those classics like Lillian Helman’s The Children’s Hour and Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, which suggested the impossibility of queer people finding love and leading happy, well-adjusted lives.

Some of those books, now called “bury your gays” tropes, were written from a non-queer point-of-view, which is susceptible to marginalizing, tragedizing, and at its worst demonizing queer people, e,g, the tendency to portray villainous characters as sexually ambiguous as a foil to the heteronormative hero/heroine. Yet some queer tragedies of the past were written by queer people themselves, like James Baldwin, Manuel Puig (Kiss of the Spider Woman), the aforementioned Lillian Hellman, Patricia Highsmith, and you could say most of the authors known as The Violet Quill who broke ground with realistic portraits of gay men living in the 1970s and 1980s (Edmund White, Andrew Holleran, and others).

Themes of death and suffering reflected salient aspects of real life for queer people, and I’d say writing about those issues was both realistic and helpful for readers, both queer and straight, to better understand the challenges faced by queer individuals (and for queer readers, to realize they’re not alone with their personal struggles).

All of this is to say I subscribe to the notion embodied in a famous quote by Ernest Hemingway: “A writer’s job is to tell the truth.” And the truth is some queer lives are tragic, some are triumphant, and all of them are filled with many moments of both. So no, a queer book doesn’t have to have a happy ending. But I would hope there’d be at least an equal number of books with happy endings as books that end tragically. And then, of course, stories are more complex than happy vs. sad. I tend to enjoy books that take me on a journey that runs the gamut of emotions.

Does a queer book have to have sex scenes?

Here’s another question that on its face sounds simple.

No. Why in heaven’s name would a queer book have to include explicit sex? There are tons of ways to write about queer people that don’t involve what they like to do to get it on.

So yeah, I enjoy all kinds of queer stories that have no sex or very little sex, and I certainly don’t feel as a writer that I need to add a sex scene in order to develop a queer character or make the story more interesting or marketable.

But as a guy who’s always been much more interested in queer liberation versus assimilation, I also feel it’s important to add that queer sex scenes can be marvelous and subversive and fabulously declarative and rebellious. Writing queer sex is a political act, and I respect writers who do it and think it’s important that it has a place in our literature.

2017 in Books

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I was inspired to write this post by Goodreads’ Your Year in Books feature, which is a really nice way of cataloging your reading, and is this the first year they did that for users? I hadn’t noticed it before. Though I am known to be unobservant at times!

Anyway, here’s my year as tricked out and analyzed by Goodreads. My less tricked out summary: I read thirteen books in 2017, which is strangely the exact same number I had for 2015 and 2016. So I’m pretty solidly a one book per month reader. I don’t know how I’d find time to do more than that without sacrificing my writing time.

This was probably my most purposeful year reading-wise. I wanted to read as many gay fantasy books as I could to expand my cred as somewhat of an authority in that genre. For a rather specific niche, there’s a huge universe of gay fantasy titles, but when you start digging into it, it’s kind of like nine out of ten are really romance, and really formulaic MM romance, where the story is about a relationship between two guys, with lots of titilating scenes, and the fantasy world and whatever quest the guys have to accomplish are much, much, much in the background.

Those kind of stories are not my scene, so the real challenge for me is finding gay fantasy titles that aren’t first and foremost romance and erotica. I get recs from Goodreads and Amazon and awards programs and LGBT sci fi/fantasy blogs, though it does take some additional research to try to gauge whether a title is going to be up my alley.

I didn’t read gay fantasy exclusively in 2017, so I’ll start with the non-fantasy titles.

I picked up Geoffrey Ryman’s Was because I thought it might be a bit like Gregory Maguire’s Wicked series (also based on The Wizard of Oz). Turned out: not so much. The story is reimagined and speculative for sure, but from the point-of-view of a realistic Dorothy Gale in late 19th century Kansas, as well as a young Judy Garland and an invented character who is a washed up actor, obsessed with The Wizard of Oz, and dying of AIDS. If all of that sounds depressing, you are right on the money! It’s a book with three, interwoven tragic stories, but I found it to be definitely worth the read. Ryman is an encyclopedia of knowledge about the history of Kansas, Judy Garland, and the filming of The Wizard of Oz. He’s an excellent writer, and the details about all three of those topics were engrossing. The characters — none of which could be described as likeable on the surface — have important stories to tell, and I love flawed heroes.

I also read Rahul Mehta’s realistic No Other World for personal reasons. It’s a coming of age story, set in upstate New York, in the 1980s, with a gay, Southeast Asian lead! Ding, ding, ding! You may not know this about me, but I’m really fond of Southeast and Near Eastern authors. Hanif Kureishi and Shyam Selvadurai are two of my very favorites. So, Mehta had big shoes to fill so to speak, and I ended up digging the book. Not a fan of the narrative structure (does every work of literary fiction have to play around with fractured storylines?), but overall, I thought it was quite a poignant and illuminating portrait of growing up with intersecting identities.

I had one oddball, esoteric title on my list: a translation of Petronius’ 1st century A.D. novel The Satyricon. From its description and the literary criticism I read about it, it looked like another ding, ding, ding! for me; really compulsory reading for any writer who espouses to have any gay fiction cred, or ancient world historical cred. And it’s described as high satire – the author’s irreverent answer to the treacly romance novels that were popular at the time. (Another disclosure: I have a book coming out that is a gay re-telling of Chariton’s 1st century A.D. Callirhoe, which I sped through while bursting with ideas for bringing the story into the 21st century).

For me, lightning did not strike twice. The Satyricon is a strange story, and it feels even strangely modern with its focus on a group of marginal, vagrant characters who drift from one illicit situation to the next, like drug addicts from the 1960s in a William Burroughs novel, or even a bit thematically like the work of Bret Easton Ellis, Jay McInerny and Joan Didion, a story of apathetic excess. That would seem to be perfect for me, but I just couldn’t get into the story. Similar to Callirhoe, and–from what I’ve read about the style of the era–most ancient Greek and Roman novels, there was very little development of the characters, and they didn’t hold my interest. I’m embarrassed to say I gave up on it less than halfway through.

Now, the gay fantasy titles I read in 2017…

Hands down, my favorite discovery was Daniel Heath Justice’s The Way of Thorn and Thunder. Epic fantasy inspired by Indigenous American folklore! Amazing stuff. I wrote a lot more about it on Goodreads which you can check out here.

Chaz Brenchley’s The Tower of the King’s Daughter was another happy find. I had to track it down through inter-library loan as it’s out of print. A punchy, high stakes adventure in a medieval, Crusades-like world. I liked it so much, I added it to my Intro to Gay Fantasy list.

I continued with Samuel Delaney’s Neveryona saga, whipping through Return to Neveryon and confirming that my literary life was nothing until I discovered Delaney.

And I read Steven Harper’s Iron Axe, two sci fi titles: Carol Holland March’s The Tyro and Hal Duncan’s Vellum, and a trio of books I wanted to read to see what all the hoopla was about: Jesse Hajicek’s The God Eaters, Mercedes Lackey’s Magic’s Pawn, and C.S. Pascat’s Captive Prince.

Plus one non-gay fantasy title. I had been wanting to read Guy Gavriel Kay for a while, and I dug in with Sailing to Sarantium this year.

I have a lot more gay fantasies on my TBR list, so I’m going to be staying with that genre in 2018. I’m always looking for epic fantasy and ancient world historicals with gay themes, so let me know about any books you think I should be reading!

In celebration of Banned Books Week

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Banned Book Week Banner

Banner from East Branch of Dayton Metro Public Library System, labeled as public domain

It’s the American Library Association’s annual Banned Books Week, September 24th through 30th, and I often do a post here in support of the cause.

From ALA’s website:

“Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. Banned Books Week brings together the entire book community — librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers — in shared support of the freedom to seek and express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular.”

The United States has an unfortunate history of book burnings and other efforts to ban and censor books that present ‘controversial’ topics, often defined as such by religious institutions. According to the ALA, one of the top reasons for books being challenged – requested to be removed – in library systems is the portrayal of sexuality, particularly in childrens and young adult books that contain LGBT characters.

For example, the top ten challenged books of 2016 include five books with LGBT content, including two books about transgender kids (I Am Jazz by Jazz Jennings and George by Alex Gino).

Here’s a cool video that shows all ten of those books:

Access to LGBT books has both personal and political significance to me. As a young reader, in my late teens, I pretty much desperately searched for books to help me understand my attraction to other guys. I wondered if there was something wrong with me, if it was even possible to live my life as gay. I knew no one who was gay. The little bit I knew about gay people was from overheard jokes, based on stereotypes. Gay men were effeminate, buffoons. And I caught some information from the news, which occasionally covered the AIDS epidemic, a frightening image of what it meant to be gay.

I wasn’t out, and I certainly wasn’t courageous enough to ask a librarian to point me in the right direction. So I quietly and surrepticiously searched the libary catalogue system for words like “homosexuality” and “gay.” In those days, LGBT books tended to be shelved in discreet, back or upper level areas of the stacks. It might have helped on one hand for the books I was looking for to be more visible, to help me understand that I had nothing to be ashamed about. Though at the time, it was helpful for me to be able to sneak into a desolate area of the library, grab a book, hide myself in a cubby, and read without anyone knowing what I was reading. In college, I got a little bolder and actually took some of those books out of the library, though I kept them hidden in my bedroom.

That was back in the late 1980s, and the books I found were either clinical books that were fairly equivocal about the nature of homosexuality – a perversion or a natural place on the spectrum of homosexuality – or they were gritty books about gay subculture and the sex trade (books by William S. Burroughs and Paul T. Rogers’ Saul’s Book, which have been banned or challenged over the years). In most ways, they were pretty far aloft of my experience of myself and the world, but they showed that gay people existed, a fairly mind-blowing discovery for a younger me, and comforting. If I hadn’t found those books, I don’t think I would have shaken off the anxiety and depression that was killing me. A few years later, I embarked on living an honest life as a gay man.

Nowadays, it’s gratifying to see many libraries acquiring a diverse collection of LGBT books, from childrens, young adult, adult fiction and nonfiction, and a variety of genres. I don’t mean to denigrate William Burroughs, but it’s pretty nice that young LGBTs aren’t limited to his body of work as a sole point of reference!  And libraries now have LGBT books mixed in with their popular collections and childrens/young adult collections. Some of them even create displays for Pride Month and National Coming Out Day.

From talking to LGBT kids, which was my principal métier as a social worker, I can attest to the fact that many young people can access LGBT-themed books more easily today. They’re coming out younger, with greater confidence and with family support, and some describe LGBT literature as fairly normalized in their schools and libraries, and/or are comfortable with advocating for better representation of LGBTs. Some have parents who take the lead in that regard, and not infrequently, when I meet new acquaintances, readers and other writers, they ask me where to find my books because they have a son or niece or a neighbor’s kid who is gay.

Still, there are some LGBTs who have described their experiences as similar to my own — wanting to read books with characters like themselves but needing to do so privately because they’re not quite comfortable being “out.” And, particularly in socially-conservative rural and suburban areas, it’s not so easy for them to find LGBT books.

That’s why Banned Books Week remains necessary. It reminds us that the progress we have made is both fragile and not fully realized when you look across the country, and wider across the globe. As recently as last year, This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki, a young adult graphic novel with LGBT characters, was removed from libraries in Minnesota and Florida through challenges.  The ALA Office of Intellectual Freedom tracks book challenges and finds that 10% of them lead to the removal of a book. That might not sound like a lot, but in each community where censorship occurs, it affects many thousands of people, in addition to perpetuating the view that portrayals of sexuality, particularly LGBTs, are unnatural and unsafe for young people.

You can support the freedom to read by raising awareness of Banned Books Week, and books that are targeted themselves. Here’s a handy resource page from ALA and an infographic that shows the scope of the problem: