(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Looking for LGBTQ literature [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']
Date: 2023-05-27
When I came to write my first LGBTQ novel, I looked for a subject that was powerful and true to the world I found around me. My first novel came to be about a group of random gay folks in 1984 in a small New England town when a young gay man is beaten up and thrown off a bridge and drowns and about what that loss made a person think or feel or want to do. Other, later novels were about a small group of LGBTQ people who drink a lot and go out to clubs and who look after Amos, their friend who is dying from AIDS. They give him a place to die, and they treat him with love and respect. I also have written about a man searching for a community and a family where he felt at home. I have written a novel about Stonewall, about gay men fighting back. There has been much courage and heroism in the LGBTQ community during the last fifty years.
But current publishers seem to think the LGBTQ community doesn’t like reading about the real lives of LGBTQ people and our courage and heroism. Where are the novels about the Pulse Nightclub massacre in 2016 in Orlando? The massacre at Club Q in Colorado Springs in November 2022? The Williams Institute says that LGBTQ people are nine times more likely to be victims of hate crimes, but where are the novels on these victims or the effect of these crimes on the rest of the LGBTQ community? The rates for gay teenage suicides are four or five times the rates for straight suicides. Where are the novels on gay teenage suicides? I read a letter from a reader a couple of days ago. The reader wrote about a novel of mine, “This is a disturbing book.” Then he wrote, “It changed my life.” Why aren’t we talking—arguing—about these things? Where is the serious gay novel about us getting marriage equality? Our marriages are not like Benedict’s and Beatrice’s, who get married, and what happens next is forgotten—or ignored. Today, in the twenty-first century, in real life, we get married—or don’t—and live on afterward for years, decades. And we face bigotry along with marriage. Yesterday morning, Republicans promised to attack marriage equality “next.” I want serious LGBTQ literature about something serious and heavy, using all the tools that literary fiction supplies, some book that is really worth my time and attention, something courageous and valuable and profound about my life. There is not much of this kind of literature in the bookstores.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/5/27/2171781/-Looking-for-LGBTQ-literature
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
