CCW 2019

The Theory Behind Queer Book List

In her groundbreaking 1998 essay “Sponsors of Literacy,” Deborah Brandt argues that literacy, and more accurately illiteracy, is not a problem of the individual, but of the social, cultural, and political environment. Brandt claims that “Intuitively, sponsors seemed a fitting term for the figures who turned up most typically in people’s memories of literacy learning: older relatives, teachers, priests, supervisors, military officers, editors, influential authors. Sponsors, as we ordinarily think of them, are powerful figures who bankroll events or smooth the way for initiates” (167). The vast majority of these sponsors have historically been anti-queer. Indeed, for many young queers and proto-gays the only sponsor that they could rely on was influential authors. Unable to turn to their family, teachers, and religious for guidance and queer education, many young people turned to books.

From the decades leading up to Stonewall and the gay rights movement to today, young queers and proto-gays turned to the written word for help with their self-discovery. Indeed, many spent hours searching through the shelves of their local libraries, just hoping to find some sort of indication that they were not alone. In the aptly named 1991 essay, “Out of the Closet, on to the Bookshelf,” early gay rights writer Edmund White discusses his search for books that he could identify with as he was coming of age in the 1950s. White writes: “the only books I could find in the Evanston, Illinois, Public Library were Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice (which suggested that homosexuality was fetid, platonic and death-dealing) and the biography of Nijinsky by his wife” (White 275). While these models were poor, they were all White had to draw from, and they ultimately led to White struggling with his sexuality for many years. Even now, decades later, and with queer acceptance on the rise, many young people still turn to books for guidance. In Saved by the Page, an exploration of the power of literature, creator and editor J.D. Netto asks a variety of individuals to reflect on the ways in which books have saved them. In one such reflection, “Openly, Honestly Me,” the writer who goes only by Alex lists the various lessons that he learned from books that he has read: “Openly Straight taught me I shouldn’t be ashamed of who I am, and that I shouldn’t try to be something I’m not. I didn’t need a mask to live a ‘normal’ life, I just needed to be me, whoever that was” (Alex 63-64).  This relationship with books is certainly common within the queer community, and I was no exception.

A Personal Project at Heart

Growing up in the largely conservative borough of Staten Island, just a short ferry ride from the queer utopia of New York City that I knew little about, I had no one to turn to when I began to question my sexual identity. I began to turn to books, looking for any reflection of myself that I could find. I remember reading The Great Gatsby and spending a great deal of time examining the queer undertones between Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby. Mostly, however, I spent my time reading both fanfictions and original stories online because it was the only place where I could find explicitly queer main characters. Eventually, I began writing my own stories and posting them online for the world to see. It was as a part of this online community of readers and writers that I found the language and the voice that I needed to express myself fully. And yet, I still would have preferred to find queer representation on the shelves of my local library or book store.

That is why I first became invested in queer young adult literature when I discovered the genre during my first semester of graduate school. It was an entire world that I never knew existed, a world that would have been a great help to me back when I was in high school. The books were all around me; I just did not know how to find them. From that moment on, I read any queer young adult book I could get my hands on. During these early moments of my research, the idea for Queer Book List first began to form. Initially, the goal for the website was simple. As I read all of these books, I wanted to share my thoughts on them. I wanted to create a resource that people could turn to in order to find the books that I could not. This list alone became a larger project than I could have ever imagined, with the number of queer young adult books being published increasing each year.

An Expanding Community Resource…

• Queer Book List began primarily as a catalog of queer young adult novels.
• In addition to cataloging, my goal was to post reviews of the books that I was reading
• As I began to think about the project more, I realized that my primary interest and goal was to turn Queer Book List into an educational resource
• The first major expansion to Queer Book List came in the form of the resources tab, where I provide educational resources for both instructors and students at the high school and university level
• Most recently, the website has been expanded to include a Blog section, where I can discuss topics that I think are important and hopefully create a community

Looking to the future…

Works Cited

Alex. “Openly, Honestly Me.” J.D. Netto’s Saved by the Page, edited by J.D. Netto, 2018, pp. 63-64.

Brandt, Deborah. “Sponsors of Literacy.” CCC, vol. 49, no. 2, 1998, pp. 165-185.

White, Edmund. “Out of the Closet, on to the Bookshelf.” 1991. The Burning Library: Essays, edited by David Bergman, Vintage International, 1994, pp. 275-283.