One of my favorite things to do as an author is speaking to young people about writing and LGBT lit. I wrote about my first gig ‘on the road’ at the Gay/Straight Alliance at Amherst High School, where I graduated many moons ago. More recently, I was invited to talk to the Trans-action group at Pride for Youth, which is an LGBT organization that I worked at for many years.
My visit brought up a similar sense of nostalgia. I hadn’t been back to Pride for Youth since 2012 when I made the tough decision to move on to a job in academia. For several years before that, I had been a bit removed from working directly with teenagers as I was in the role of managing government contracts and doing legislative advocacy and fundraising. Stepping into Pride for Youth untangled memories from earlier in my career when I ran groups for teens and worked at the drop-in center. I had sometimes used writing exercises as a method of self-expression, sharing similar experiences, and having fun.
Trans-action is a group for transgender, gender queer, and gender non-conforming young adults between 15 and 24 years of age. The group leader Aidan Kaplan had briefed me that group members come from towns throughout Long Island, and on any given week, anywhere from five to fifteen young people turn up for the group to share personal challenges, support each other, and get educated about physical and emotional health and activism.
When I first started working with kids in the 1990s, I was happily surprised by how many were interested in writing, particularly poetry. Of course, I’ve always loved writing, but in my day, and in my conservative hometown, you generally kept that a secret, and certainly boys didn’t write poetry.
It took me by surprise again meeting the Trans-action kids and discovering how many of them were avid writers. Some wrote poetry and lyrics. Some wrote more about their personal experiences. A few copped to participating in fan fiction forums, which I told them isn’t anything to be ashamed of. Both Cassandra Clare and E.L. James had roots in fanfic, and I shared with them that my earliest writing was imitative of the authors I enjoyed at the time. Still, it became a topic that we joked about.
This is the Transgender Pride flag, which was introduced in 2000 at a pride parade in Phoenix, Arizona.
I told them about my journey as a writer, which is entwined with my journey as a gay man, and to an extent with my journey as an LGBT rights advocate. Then we talked about what they liked to read and why, and why they liked to write. I also talked about transgender, bisexual, lesbian and gay fiction being a social justice issue, and not unexpectedly, that was a topic many of them already had opinions about. Besides Jazz Jennings’ Being Jazz, most were not aware of any books about transgender teens, and certainly not any fiction. We had a discussion about the problem of growing up without any positive representations of transgender people, and I shared some books suggestions such as Cris Beam’s I am Jay and Alex Gino’s George.
I then led a short writing exercise. My lead-in to it took me right back to my days as a social worker with teens. As soon as I explained they were to write a story incorporating three random elements, one young man groaned: “Oh yeah. We did this in 7th grade English class.” So much for wowing them with my sophistication.
Anyway, if you’d like to try the exercise: write a story that incorporates Saskatchewan, betrayal, and a box of Fruity Pebbles. The results were fantastic and ran the gamut from personal reflections on isolation to paranormal stories to humor pieces and beyond.
Although, as a mild indictment of the New York State public school system, not one of the kids knew where Saskatchewan was, or even what it was (sorry Canada). I got a big grin when a young man wrote about Saskatchewanians speaking French. 🙂
You can find out more about the excellent organization Pride for Youth here. They depend on donations, of any size, to keep up the lifesaving work they are doing.
And if you have a youth group you’d like me to come and talk to, drop me a line!
