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LGBTQ Literature: A Reset (Kind Of) [1]

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Date: 2025-01-26

LGBTQ Literature is a Readers and Book Lovers series dedicated to highlighting literature that has made an impact on the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people. From fiction to contemporary nonfiction to history and everything in between, any literature that touches on LGBTQ themes is welcome in this series. LGBTQ Literature posts on the last Sunday of every month at 7:30 PM EST. If you are interested in writing for the series, please send a message to Chrislove.

Good evening, faithful LGBTQ Literature readers. It’s been a few months since I announced that this series was going on hiatus until the New Year. I (and, undoubtedly, all of you) hoped that the series would be returning after the inauguration of Kamala Harris and the revival of American optimism. Instead, we’re at the beginning of a nightmare.

Like many of you, I’ve struggled immensely after the November election. I’ve been doing my best to take care of myself, but I will admit that I have not done the best job at that task over the last couple of months. But I’m here, and so are you. Life does and will go on, at least for the foreseeable future.

This series, too, will go on, at least for the foreseeable future. I’ll be honest: I nearly walked away from it. After November, I kind of lost my desire to do anything even remotely adjacent to politics, and that included this series. In the past few weeks, however, I have had a change of heart.

I remember back to when I was an undergraduate, taking a class on totalitarianism. One of our final assignments was purely reflective. We were asked to discuss what we—on a very personal, micro level—would do if we ever found ourselves in the grips of a totalitarian regime. I don’t remember exactly what I wrote, but I remember the gist of it. I talked awfully tough. I talked about resistance on every level. I talked about not letting my country go down without a fight. Things of that nature, written with the idealism (and zealotry) of a 20-something-year-old. I wrote those words when the idea of the United States falling to totalitarianism seemed like something out of the realm of science fiction.

Well, here we are. We’re not on the cusp of totalitarianism—at least not yet—but authoritarianism is here. Let’s call it what it is: Fascism is here. I’m not saying anything you don’t know, and you’ve probably been saying it longer than I have (I took a while to fully shed my optimism). We don’t know how long it will stay, or what will come of us in the process, but denying the dark reality of where we are in this present moment does no good.

And yet, Trump is no Stalin. He’s not even a Mussolini. He wishes he had the gravitas of a real dictator, but he doesn’t. What we face is not (yet) what Europeans faced in the mid-20th century. And I’m ready to throw in the towel already? Without even a fight? Did I really mean the words I wrote, or were they just bullshit I knew my professor would want to read?

This was already something I was mulling over in my head when I had a moment this week that shook me. In my history class, we were talking about the Reconstruction amendments, and it occurred to me in the moment that I should probably explain this “birthright citizenship” thing in the 14th Amendment. As I usually am, I was careful not to inject politics directly into it, but I did not shy away from explaining it in such a way that any student paying attention to current events would know that Trump’s executive order was blatantly unconstitutional. When I got done explaining it, I paused. Several hands immediately shot up. The first question: “Do you think the birthright citizenship you just went over is currently in danger?” I responded as best as I could—again, without directly “going there”—and answered a few more questions. The class was alive all of a sudden. I thought we’d resolved all the questions, and we moved on, and then a hand went up in the front of the room. The student asked, “What is the status of children born right now?” I didn’t even realize at first that she was still on the birthright citizenship topic. She was concerned, I could see it in her face. This was not a question from a curious student—it was a question from somebody whose life may be personally touched in the worst way by this administration, hoping for some words of calm from an “authority.”

I’ve heard a lot of good advice from fellow liberals lately about how we should approach the next four (or however many) years. But the piece of advice that really sticks with me is that we all need to pick a thing. Or two things, even. And then just focus on those things. I’m taking that advice to heart as we prepare for the marathon that we face.

So here is my “thing”: As long as I am able, I will do everything I can to educate my students in the ways that they need educated. This semester, we will likely be talking a lot about citizenship, immigration, and nativism. We’ll be talking about tariffs—and I mean really getting into the weeds. I’ll need to be agile and willing to adapt, because the news is going to spray at us like a firehose, but I am determined to fill in the civics gaps that my students so clearly suffer from, in addition to giving all the historical context they should need to understand the gravity of what is happening. It’s not much, and it won’t change the world, but it’s something. It’s my thing.

What does all of this have to do with this series? Well, I’m kind of approaching this series and its future in the same way. If I’m going to keep this series going, I want it to have a purpose. There is no question that the next few years are going to be brutal and oppressive for LGBTQ people in this country, and some parts of our community will be targeted more than others. I want this series to highlight and really lift up the stories of LGBTQ resistance. Which, if you think about it, we already do in this series. Show me an LGBTQ Literature diary, and I’ll point out how it’s related to queer resistance. So it’s not the substance that is changing, but how we frame that substance may change. And I am defining “resistance” broadly here. Queer love is—on its own—a form of resistance. In these dark times, we need to love and resist more.

I am still seeking writers to carry out this “new” (but actually old) purpose. This series is still about all the things it has always been about, but I am going to ask our writers to think about how their contributions will help in the present moment. Some of us may provide historical context, some may write about queer love stories, some may highlight ways in which LGBTQ people have resisted similar or worse moments in the past. There is still a place for all LGBTQ literature here, because—and I hope this is clear—LGBTQ literature is resistance, by its very nature.

When it comes to my own contributions, the substance might change. I’ve already shelved books I had planned on writing about, and I’ve elevated other books that I think fit the present moment better. I will kick off 2025 with a diary in February, after which I hope we can find some other writers. As always, this series is at its strongest when we have a diverse set of writers—in fact, I’d say it’s more important than ever. So if you’re interested in writing for LGBTQ Literature sometime this year, please don’t hesitate to reach out! Either way, I’ll see you in February.

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