Posts on glbtq

Here's the promised book display to highlight our new GLBTQ list. "Different Families / Same Love"—that goopy enough for you?

The lit holder has copies of our Gay and Lesbian, Adoption, and Celebrate Diversity lists. And the books are a selection of picture books from those lists!

Sorry for the crummy (as usual) photos. I'd blame the camera, but—no, actually, I'll just blame the camera.

Back in September, Lee Wind posted a blurb for a new young adult book called Mousetraps (Carolrhoda, 2008), by Pat Schmatz. Intrigued, I added it to my to-read list. Fast-forward a month to the SCBWI Wisconsin conference. Who’s one of the very first people I meet? Pat Schmatz. Small world!

I bought Mousetraps, Pat signed it, I read it, I dug it. I asked Pat if she’d be interested in a blog interview (my first!), and here we are. But first, a little more about Mousetraps.

Maxie’s junior year of high school begins with a surprise: Rick is back. Rick, the boy she was best friends with, before he became a bully magnet. Rick, who moved away in seventh grade after he was brutally gay bashed.

Rick wants to rekindle his friendship with Maxie, but she’s not so sure. Rick’s as much of a target as ever. And there’s something different about him these days. There’s a look he gets in his eyes sometimes, cold and hard, that scares her.

Maxie is a sensitive, yet matter-of-fact, narrator who occasionally dips into the poetic but never dives into melodrama, even when things get dark—and they do get dark. She’s a cartoonist—way back when, Rick designed crazy, Rube Goldberg-esque mousetraps, and she drew them—and her lively drawings (penned in real life by Bill Hauser) are integrated perfectly with the text.

Mousetraps also touches on nontraditional families, interracial relationships, and a bit of romance. I especially appreciated that Rick experiences homophobic bullying irrespective of his sexual identity. He’s clear proof that homophobia hurts everyone, not just individuals who are GLBTQ.

The notoriously difficult-to-impress Kirkus Reviews says of Mousetraps, “Rick and Maxie’s thought-provoking story, juxtaposed against Hauser’s renderings of Maxie’s cartoons, is unexpectedly, richly dark, with no easy answers. Both chilling and sweet.”

Now, without further ado, here’s Pat!

LC: Coming dangerously close to the dreaded “where do you get your ideas” question, I was wondering if you could pinpoint the initial germ that evolved into Mousetraps.

PS: I kind of hate to admit it, but Mousetraps started in my mind the day of Columbine. I was home for lunch and Columbine was on the news, and even as I was watching the event transpire on TV, I had an impression of Rick. From that day on, I was completely obsessed with the topic and read everything I could get my hands on, and the whole time, I had Rick’s voice in my head.

LC: Rick could have been only a martyr or psychopath; instead, he’s a fully-realized, sympathetic character. What were the challenges in shaping him without veering into Jekyll/Hyde territory?

PS: First of all, thanks for saying that about Rick. I have huge affection for that character, and he’d hate to be seen as a martyr or a psychopath. When I read news stories about school shootings, I never see those kids as one-sided, no matter how the media portrays them. I suppose that’s because I’ve known enough people, personally, who have survived these kinds of challenges that I know they aren’t one-sided, or even two-sided, and the character of Rick is a conglomerate of several kids I have known well.

LC: Since 2000, we’ve seen a number of dark teen novels responding to the Jonesboro and Columbine school massacres of 1998 and 1999 (e.g., Todd Strasser’s Give a Boy a Gun, Walter Dean Myers’ Shooter, Nancy Garden’s End Game). Mousetraps, too, could have ended in tragedy. What made you steer toward a more hopeful conclusion?

PS: I wrote six sharply different conclusions to Mousetraps over the nine years I worked on it. One editor a few years ago rejected the book, but in her editorial letter she suggested yet another option for the ending, and I gave it a try. That took me in a totally different direction.

I still see all of the conclusions as continuing to be Real and True in some sort of parallel simultaneous universes. We have crossroads moments where we can step this way or that way, and like the mousetraps, whichever direction we choose sets off an entirely new chain of events. So experimenting with the different conclusions was like imagining…what if, in this moment, this character stepped this way instead of that way? Either choice is emotionally possible, and my job as the author is to be true to the chain of events that would follow.

Finally, the ending I chose—with a lot of help and guidance from my editor, Shannon Barefield—felt right. Also, it was the clearest choice for the story that I wanted to tell, which is Maxie’s story—although of course Rick has a huge part in it.

LC: How do you think homophobia and bullying in America's schools have changed since you were a teen, if at all?

PS: When I was a teen, this stuff wasn’t called “homophobic,” or even “bullying.” We all just knew that some kids were mean, and some kids got picked on. Now that we have words for it, and we use them, I’d like to think things are at least potentially different. Kids actually know to say things like, “the biggest homophobes are usually gay themselves,”—that was a comeback and a concept that didn’t exist when I was a teen. Also, people like Maxie’s uncles do exist, as out gay fully-functioning adults, and they not only can help kids maneuver their way through this stuff but are visible as role models. Bullying still happens, probably as bad as ever, but I do think the kids who are getting bullied have a better chance to get support and backing. Even if an individual kid isn’t getting adequate protection, s/he can find the concept of support on line, in books, and even on the news. That’s a big plus.

LC: Did you envision Mousetraps as an illustrated novel from the beginning?

PS: Not at first, but the better I got to know Maxie, the more I saw her drawings in my head. For a while I was hoping to have Mousetraps be a graphic novel but I didn’t have the skills to do the drawings myself. The design team at Lerner worked with me on the current form, sort of a hybrid.

LC: Please tell us about your path to publication and about your first two books, Circle the Truth (Carolrhoda, 2007) and Mrs. Estronsky and the UFO (Blue Works, 2001).

PS: Mrs. Estronsky is a middle-grade novel about a girl who sees a UFO with her piano teacher. I sent that one out, time after time, using Writer’s Market as a guide. Of course I was thrilled when Windstorm Creative picked it up for their youth division, Blue Works.

Meanwhile, I became involved in the Minneapolis writing community, which led me to Andrea Cascardi of Transatlantic Literary Agency. I sent her the manuscripts for both Mousetraps and Circle the Truth, a younger YA about a boy in a blended family who, as he questions truth and reality in his life and his home, finds that those lines keep shifting. Andrea agreed to represent me, gave me some terrific editorial advice on the manuscripts, and then started to send out the revised versions. Each manuscript went to a number of houses over a three-year period before Carolrhoda made an offer on Circle, and then contracted for Mousetraps as well.

LC: How did you stay positive through the long submission process?

PS: It wasn’t so much a matter of staying positive, as staying busy. I started Circle the Truth immediately after finishing the first draft of Mousetraps, so my focus was there. Also, I was getting enough positive feedback—nice rejection letters, a Minnesota State Arts Board Grant, and the huge boost of getting Andrea as my agent—to keep me rolling.

LC: You grew up in rural Wisconsin and live there today. In what ways does that setting and culture manifest in your books?

PS: Mrs. Estronsky and the UFO is completely grounded in rural Wisconsin. I wrote it when I was living in California and was incredibly homesick for the upper Midwest. As a child, I spent a lot of time alone outdoors and I still tend to see the world through that lens. Although the next two books both take place in urban settings, weather and season play a definite emotional role in each story. Also, all three books take place in the upper Midwest, which certainly has a particular cultural flavor.

LC: Can you expand on that, for readers who have never had the pleasure of living in the upper Midwest?

PS: I find the upper Midwest—both rural and urban—to have a particular kindness, something almost like innocence. That’s not quite the right word, but it’s a related concept…and so characters with a gentle sort of progressive political sensibility, like Maxie’s parents and the Unks, and Toby’s family in Circle the Truth, can be found everywhere. Also, the region tends to be very weather-focused, even in the cities, and many people are involved in outdoor sports like ice fishing or skiing. And of course, there is always the snow that must be moved one way or another, and people have different ideas about how that should be done. I don’t know if that particular discussion is peculiar to the upper Midwest, but it seems like snow blowers are more universal, for instance, on the east coast.

LC: Mousetraps and Circle the Truth have a very different feel. Maxie narrates Mousetraps in matter-of-fact first person, while Circle the Truth is told in a more lyrical third person voice. What do you find to be the challenges of writing in first versus third person? How do you decide which to use?

PS: I tried both books in both first and third person, and in each case tried to find the voice that best suited the story. I find first person much more difficult in general. Crazy-making, actually, because the narrator is so strictly limited in what s/he can perceive and how those perceptions can be expressed. But it does allow for a more natural voice, and I like that.

LC: Who are your favorite/most influential authors?

PS: S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders is my most influential book, and my most loved. Other influential books include A Wrinkle in Time by L’Engle, Henry 3 by Krumgold, The Forgotten Door by Key, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Lee.

As a kid, I loved everything by Beverly Clearly, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Jim Kjelgaard, and Mark Twain. As an adult, my favorite authors include Markus Zusak, Anne Patchett, Stephen King, Kate DiCamillo, and E.L. Konigsburg.

LC: What can we hope to see from you next?

PS: I’ve been working for several years on a YA novel called Bluefish. I haven’t hit it quite right yet, but I think I’m getting there. I also have an as-yet untitled adult novel and a picture book in the works.

Steve Berman, author of Vintage: A Ghost Story (which I greatly enjoyed and reviewed here), was interviewed by Fanboys of the Universe. Take a listen and you'll hear some passages from the book, the story behind the story, and Berman's thoughts on the higher-than-average appeal of speculative fiction for queer readers. Great interview, Steve!

Progress report on what my library has done since the ILA conference session on library service to GLBTQ teens:

• We have ordered (but not yet received) Serving Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning Teens: A How-to-Do-It Manual for Librarians, by Martin and Murdock (Neal-Schuman, 2006).
• As of today, our list of recommended Gay and Lesbian Books for Young People is available on our website and in the library.
• Modernizing/streamlining catalog headings hasn't happened yet, and I don't think it will for at least another month what with various other things happening. But it's still on my agenda.

So, more about the list. "Gay and Lesbian" is not a very inclusive title, I know. But we were going for transparency, and it was the best title we could think of that wasn't too long, clever, obscure, general, or clinical. We figure that people looking for a GLBTQ list will recognize this as such, and that people serendipitously finding the list will have a good idea of what it includes. The list description spells out the contents further.

As for what's on the list, it's got books about queer youth, children and teens with queer family members and friends, various other queer issues, different types of families, and some other gender identity issues. The books have an intended audience of preschool through high school. All the books are owned by the library at present. It's not comprehensive, but I squeezed in as many titles as I could within our one-sheet, double-sided constraints.

I'm very appreciative of my boss (Hi, boss! Yes, my boss reads my blog), my uber-boss, and my fellow youth librarians, who have been very supportive of this list. (So far, no one has asked why we need this list.) My boss has even suggested we do a display to highlight the list, after our Day of the Dead display comes down. That's really gutsy, but what is a good librarian, if not gutsy? Let's do it!

I'm thinking about voting early. I've heard from several people who have done so, and they've all had waits of 45 minutes or more. Given how crowded my polling place was during the primary election at 6 in the morning, I'm a bit fearful of what it will be like next Tuesday. I've still got to do my research, though.

If you live in Cook County, Illinois, be sure to check out the invaluable Vote for Judges.org. See what various bar associations think of the decisions handed down by judges up for election or retention. Here's what the site says about who's behind the ratings:

The Alliance of Bar Associations for Judicial Screening is comprised of the Asian American Bar Association, Black Women Lawyers’ Association of Greater Chicago, Chicago Council of Lawyers, Cook County Bar Association, Decalogue Society of Lawyers, Hellenic Bar Association, Illinois State Bar Association, Lesbian and Gay Bar Association of Chicago, Puerto Rican Bar Association of Illinois, and Women’s Bar Association of Illinois working collaboratively to improve the process of screening judicial candidates in Cook County, Illinois.

Sometimes a judge will get a universally good or bad score. Most times, it's mixed, and then you can make your choice based on the values of the association that gave its thumb's-up or -down.

At the state level, the big referendum is whether Illinois should hold a constitutional convention. The Illinois Library Association has spoken against it. There's some more extensive and balanced discussion on Illinois Issues. Right now I'm leaning against it, if only for the enormous cost, but I want to do some more research before I vote.

At the national level, the Human Rights Campaign has published its 110th Congressional Scorecard. You can see how U.S. senators and representatives voted on various pieces of legislation of relevance to the GLBTQ community. Most of the decisions go along party lines, of course, but it's still worth checking out if you've got folks up for reelection in your district.

Fifteen years ago this October, I started becoming aware that I was attracted to girls as well as boys. I still have my journal from that fall. The entries are rambling and melodramatic and tortured. They'd be ridiculous if they weren't so full of self-loathing.

Now I'm thirty, happily married to a man, comfortable with my attraction to both sexes, and, unfortunately, assumed straight by the average person on the street. I'm not whining; I'm well aware of the preferential treatment society and the law give me simply because my partner is a man, not a woman. I don't even have to come out.

But being bisexual is part of my identity. I've made peace with it, and I want people to be aware of it. Because my connection to my husband is so visible, so obvious, so easy, I've found it hard to combat the assumption that I'm straight. I worry that it's irrelevant. I worry that I won't be taken seriously.

This week, I found this personal essay on the Human Rights Campaign website, " Coming Out as a Happily Married Bisexual." Jesse Liberty, a bisexual man, writes:

In my mid-20s, I married a woman, and now, 21 years later, we are still monogamous and happy. The people we meet assume I am straight. This has always bothered me, but until recently I couldn’t see how it was anything but my own private business. Without really thinking about it, the closet closed around me.

Wow, I thought. That's totally me.

I'm not as brave as Jesse, to come out as universally and overtly as he describes. But for those who read this blog, I hope this post will help explain why I'll talk about my husband one moment and launch into GLBTQ issues the next, and why I'm so invested in writing books with queer main characters. (Not that there aren't straight supporters out there who do the same, e.g. the marvelous author Ellen Wittlinger. Thank you, straight supporters!)

So there you have it. I'm a writer, I'm a librarian, I'm bisexual. Happy National Coming Out Day!

I encourage you to check out the HRC's NCOD materials as well as Lee Wind's coming out links. There's tons of stuff on Lee's site, so do a find-in-page for "Coming Out?" to zero in on it. Author Brent Hartinger's personal essay is especially worth reading.

I spent some time this morning reading Walt Whitman's "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," probably the first slow, proper read I've given it. It's beautiful. The rolling, wave-like rhythm, the image of the mournful bird singing by the ocean in autumn, the awakening of a poet's soul, the endless cycle of birth and death... Blah blah blah, Walt Whitman was a genius, blah blah.

My reason for sharing it today, though, is this stanza:

O you singer, solitary, singing by yourself—projecting me;
O solitary me, listening—nevermore shall I cease perpetuating you;
Never more shall I escape, never more the reverberations,
Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me,
Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what there, in the night,
By the sea, under the yellow and sagging moon,
The messenger there arous’d—the fire, the sweet hell within,
The unknown want, the destiny of me.

The Destiny of Me is a play written by Larry Kramer, who was better known as a gay rights and AIDS activist than as a playwright. The play is about a young man grappling with being gay. This Whitman stanza is the epigraph.

When I was in high school, one of my older friends performed a portion of The Destiny of Me as his "dramatic interpretation" piece for forensics competitions. Though he didn't explicitly come out until years later, those Saturday performances in dingy classrooms, with their tiny audiences of high school and college students, were the beginning. At least, that's how they seemed to me, watching him whenever I could, wondering if I could gather the nerve to tell him I understood.

I couldn't, didn't. He went off to college, and except for a couple of notes and emails that talked around the subject, we never spoke of it. My friend is now out to his family and friends. He's happily (and legally—thank you, Massachusetts!) married to his husband. But I still feel regret that neither of us was brave enough to come out to each other in high school.

Tomorrow is National Coming Out Day. I encourage everyone, regardless of your gender/sexual identity, to take time in the next couple of days and come out in support of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and otherwise queer members of your community, your country, your world.

Don't be shy in asserting your belief in GLBTQ individuals' right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—equal rights in the workforce, in the community, and in the eyes of the law. By doing so, we create a more enlightened and accepting environment for everyone. We make it easier for the closeted teens of today to gather their nerve, come out, and embrace their destiny.

---

Catch this week's Poetry Friday round-up at Picture Book of the Day!

Yesterday I was making a flyer at work and wanted some clip art images of families. Mindful that there are many different kinds of families, I went looking for a little diversity—namely, racial and gender diversity—in the Microsoft Office clip art.

In my search, I was pleasantly surprised to find that MS has included several images of families with same-gender parents (search "gay families"). There are only eight among hundreds, but I bet that's eight more than there were ten years ago.

Diversity is still lagging on other dimensions, however. It's hard to find images of obviously multiracial families. I found a small handful, but there isn't a catalog heading for them, making it difficult to find them. All-white families dominate, followed by all-black families. There's a small number of obviously East Asian-featured families but pretty much zip in terms of obviously South Asian, Hispanic, or other "brown" ethnicities (though if you search for Muslim families, you'll find a few in traditional dress).

OK, Microsoft, you're on your way, but you're not there yet. Get to it!

I'm playing catch-up with my book display photos (which are, I realize, probably more for my own archival benefit than anyone else's). Here's the one I took down this week...

...with some historical fiction, some mysteries, and some historical mysteries. Today, I put up this Halloween horror display...

...as well as this mostly realistic fiction display.

I'm unable to escape the irony of creating a book display for junior high kids with the heading "just be yourself," considering that it's hard enough to know yourself, much less be yourself, at any age—especially when you're in junior high. But hey, it's something to aspire to.

The "just be yourself"/"stand up for what you believe" display is full of books about individuality as it relates to exploring one's own identity and/or standing up for social causes. It also serves as an opportunity to include a larger-than-usual number of books with GLBTQ characters in a nod to National Coming Out Day on October 11.

ETA, 10/7/08:
Upon request, here are the titles I originally pulled for the individuality display: Stand Tall (Bauer), Walking Naked (Brugman), Born Confused (Desai), Crossing Jordan (Fogelin), Leaving Fishers (Haddix), Totally Joe (Howe), The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place (Konigsburg), Absolutely, Positively Not (LaRochelle), Peace Is a Four-Letter Word (Nichols Lynch), Going Going (Nye), Define Normal (Peters), That Fernhill Summer (Rodowski), How to Get Suspended and Influence People (Selzer), Stargirl (Spinelli), The Gospel According to Larry (Tashjian), That Girl Lucy Moon (Timberlake), Missing Abby (Weatherly), Adam Canfield of the Slash (Winerip), Make Lemonade (Wolff), The House You Pass on the Way (Woodson), and Am I Blue?: Coming Out from the Silence.

All week, I've been talking about the (generally unfortunate) practice of limiting access to library materials. High time to talk about increasing access, don't you think?

Last week at the ILA conference, I had the pleasure of attending a session called "I'm Coming Out: The Ins and Outs of Serving GLBTQ Teens," presented by the knowledgeable and dynamic Monica Harris of Oak Park Public Library. Here are some of her suggestions for improving service:

• Bolster your collection with recent and high-quality books (fiction and nonfiction) dealing with queer issues in a positive way. Include books that discuss alternative viewpoints as well, e.g., Greenhaven Press's Opposing Viewpoints series.
• Make queer books visible in a non-stigmatizing way. Don't set aside a special section for them or label them. Instead, keep them out on the shelf with all the other books. Include them in book displays, book talks, and recommended reading lists of any genre.
• Improve access through the library catalog by ensuring books include subject headings that are up-to-date, consistent, and reflect what teens would actually be searching for. (More on this below.)
• Make the library a "safe space." Don't stigmatize patrons through obvious discomfort with words like "gay" or "lesbian," uncomfortable body language, probing questions, etc.; act natural and neutral. Don't tolerate hateful language in the library. If there's a need/opportunity in your community, consider setting aside a "safe space time" when teens can gather for guaranteed hate-free time and space (sort of like a gay-straight alliance).
• Know your local organizations. Be able to refer questions to community organizations when the need arises. Stay in touch with local GSAs, helping out with obtaining materials, recommended reading lists, etc.
• Don't make assumptions. Don't assume that every patron looking for GLBTQ materials is, him/herself, GLBTQ. You would be dead wrong.

Some additional suggestions from attendees:

• Make a recommended reading list of GLBTQ books and have it available online and in the same binder as your department's other recommended reading list. Even if patrons don't specifically request it, they may come upon it serendipitously and find it helpful.
• Don't assume that because books aren't circulating heavily they're not being used. Books on sensitive topics often see a lot of covert in-library use, even if patrons aren't comfortable checking them out to take home.
• Increase visibility with paperback copies. Okay, this was actually my own suggestion. Face-out paperback shelving, e.g. carousels or staggered wall shelving, makes any book that much more visible.

Unlike some conference sessions I leave feeling simultaneously inspired and utterly overwhelmed, I left this session confident of some simple steps my library can take to improve service. Here's what we've started working on, just in the past week:

• Ordering a copy of Serving Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning Teens: A How-to-Do-It Manual for Librarians, by Martin and Murdock (Neal-Schuman, 2006), highly recommended by Monica. There was only one copy in the consortium as of last week; now there will be at least two.
• Working on a recommended reading list of GLBTQ books. I'd begun one months ago but got side-tracked. Now I've dusted it off and will soon have it ready to circulate.
• Looking at catalog subject headings and talking about how to improve them.

I want to talk more about the subject headings. When I started putting together that GLBTQ list, I noticed it took a lot of different subject searches to turn up the books I already knew about. How did I know I wasn't missing ones I didn't know about? Thinking back to my own high school years, I remember finding the same thing in my hometown library catalog. Trying to track down those books was like a treasure hunt—or a wild goose chase. Any way you spin it, it's ultimately bad news if you want people to easily find the books they need.

After ILA, I took a closer look at the catalog. And what I found, frankly, appalled me. (Though I will be quick to add that I'm not laying blame on anyone here. Headings change over the years, catalogers are often working off records created by the Library of Congress or other catalogers in parts afar, cataloging is subjective, etc. Inconsistency happens!) Here's a taste of the scattering of subject headings we currently have:

• Homosexuality
• Gays
• Lesbians
• Gay high school students
• Sex role
• Identity
• [nothing pertaining to sexuality or gender at all]

If you're familiar with the workings of most online library catalogs, you will already know that a subject search for "gay" will not include items catalogued under "gays," much less "homosexuality." "Lesbians" is essentially a narrower term for "gays," but as far as the computer knows, they're mutually exclusive. What teen is going to know to do a search for "sex role" to turn up books that deal with gender fluidity? As for "identity"—um, could we be any more vague?

I took a gander at the current Library of Congress bible of subject headings to see what our options are for improving catalog subject access. I liked what I saw. Some examples:

• Gay youth
• Lesbian youth
• Bisexual youth
• Children of gay parents
• Transsexual people

There's no "transgender(ed) youth" heading at this time, and I couldn't find a heading for some variation on "gay family members and friends." (The "Gay family" subject heading appears to refer to a family by the name of Gay.) But the options are way better than much of what we currently have in place.

In all this talk of improving access to GLBTQ materials, a question that can't help floating to the surface of my brain is, "If we're making these materials easier for the right people to find, aren't we also making them easier for the wrong people to find?" In this case, "the wrong people" are those who encounter a queer book and decide it doesn't belong on the library shelves.

After all, homosexuality is consistently among the top reasons for book challenges. From 1990–2000, gay material was cited as a problem (though not necessarily the only problem) in 515 out of 6,364 challenges (just over 8%). And, of course, the true story of a same-sex penguin couple raising a chick together, And Tango Makes Three, topped ALA's list of most frequently challenged books in both 2006 and 2007.

The answer is, of course, yes. If you make it easier for one person, you make it easier for everyone. But libraries cannot, must not, act in fear of potential challenges. We are in the business of providing information. Don't let the nay-sayers stop you from doing your job.