-
CWPA 2019
On the origins of Queer Book List… “There is an old saying in Indiana, “Bit by bit our sweaters we knit,” that says a lot about the evolution of GLBTQ literature. Like the knitting of a sweater, it has been a similarly slow, sometimes tedious and often incremental process plagued by more than a few dropped stitches along the way. But despite the occasional setbacks, progress has been made” (Cart and Jenkins, 2006, p. 165). Queer Book List was born out of the early stages of my preparation for my Orals exam. At the time of starting the site, the only comprehensive list of queer young adult novels that I…
-
Interview with Jessica Meats
About a month ago, I was contacted by Jess, a science fiction and fantasy writer who was interested in learning more about Queer Book List. Over the course of several emails we learned more about each other and the work that we do. Below you will find an interview that I conducted with Jess to learn more about her writing, her work and her opinions on queer representation. You can also head over to her site to read her interview of me. Can you start by introducing yourself? I’m Jessica Meats, also known as Jess. I’m biromantic asexual. In my day job, I work as an IT consultant, helping companies…
-
Coming Out Through Reading
I came out to myself the summer in between my freshman and sophomore years of high school and began coming out to my friends and family the following fall. Before that, however, I felt lost and confused. I did not really find myself attracted to anybody of any sex, but I knew that I was not like the other guys I was encountering in my classes and in the halls. During my freshman year, I remember reading The Epic of Gilgamesh and Siddhartha — both books that are largely centered on male friendships. These relationships fascinated me, and I could not help but to see them as queer — even before I…
-
The First Time I Taught A Queer Text
I spent the last semester of my undergrad student teaching. I was assigned to teach two classes of juniors. For most of the semester, we worked on The Great Gatsby. It was a fairly traditional unit in which we talked about themes like the American Dream, the 1920s, and gender roles. While teaching the novel, I could not help but to think back to my own experience as a junior reading The Great Gatsby. As I discuss in another blog post, I became fixated on the idea that Nick has romantic feelings for Gatsby. I kept this in the back of my mind over the course of the unit. On what was…
-
Does It Get Better in Small Schools?
My high school was a small oasis in a largely Republican borough in a largely Democrat city in a mixed state that typically comes up blue. When I say small, I mean that my graduating class consisted of 117 students (after 3 girls became pregnant and either transferred or dropped out). In total, the school consisted of around 500 students. We did not even have our own building, and instead shared it with three other schools, each relegated to their own wing and sharing areas such as the gym, auditorium, and lunch room. Because of this, getting high involvement rates for any after school event was always difficult. During my…
-
Queer Book List Origin Story
It was during my years as an undergrad that I first began to take interest in literature about queer adolescence. At the time, I was only interested in adult literature and focused on coming out narratives and coming of age narratives in particular. During my first semester of graduate school, I took a class on children’s and young adult literature. It was during this class that I first thought to look at young adult literature in an academic and theoretical way. As I began to work on a paper on queer young adult literature for that course, I realized how limited the resources were. Very few records exist tracking queer…
