The Sexual Violence in YA Literature Project: Help us shape upcoming posts on LGBTQIA+ books
Today’s post is a call for information and input. In late summer of 2015, the Sexual Violence in Young Adult Literature project will be expanding to look at sexual violence, issues of consent, and depictions of positive sexual experiences in LGBTQIA+ young adult books. I will be heading up this part of the SVYALit project, along with Vee Signorelli from GayYA and Nita Tyndall, a contributor to GayYA. We’re excited to take on these important topics.
What will our series of posts look like? Well, right now we’re discussing having a Google Hangout/virtual discussion group, inviting writers to contribute guest posts, and looking in-depth at many titles in multiple categories that we are still creating. We’d like to include statistics and other factual information, like where to find other resources for information and help, in some posts, as well a post contextualizing LGBTQIA+ young adult literature’s history as well.
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What do we need from you? We’d love input on titles we should consider and subtopics you’d like to see addressed. Right now, our categories are about sexual violence in LGBTQIA+ books, depictions of consent, and portrayals of positive sexual experiences (including on-the-page sex scenes). Know of YA books that would address any of these topics? Have thoughts on what you’d love to see us write about? Know of other resources or any other places where these topics have been covered? Writers we should approach about guest posts? Share with us! You can leave comments here or tweet us.
Amanda MacGregor @CiteSomething
The tumblr for all of the SYVALit posts created so far can be found here and the project index is here.
Please share this post—the more eyes we can get on this, the more useful input we will (hopefully) receive! Interested in guest posting about a specific title or topic? We’d love to have you!
Filed under: #SVYALit, #SVYALit Project, 2015
About Amanda MacGregor
Amanda MacGregor works in an elementary library, loves dogs, and can be found on Twitter @CiteSomething.
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Hi,
This sounds like a great topic to explore. In the past year, I’ve been a drop-in member of a book club comprised of some friends who all happen to be lesbians and gays, and we’ve been reading LGBTQIA teen literature. As the lone straight person, it’s been a very eye-opening experience, plus a whole lot of fun, of course. One plot piece we’ve seen repeated in a lot of the literature is what they coined the “Gays in Refrigerator” trope, jumping off the “Women in Refrigerators” phrase. This is in reference to using a hate-crime against a LGBTQIA character as a plot point, particularly in a book where a straight character is the main character. It’s a trope my particular friends are tired of seeing. I wonder if this would be a good subtopic to your discussion on sexual violence? Good luck!
Thanks for this comment, Liz. I bet you’ve read some great books! Filing your comment away for our planning purposes–I appreciate it!
Thank you so much for approaching this topic and creating this project! A truly necessary topic that needs to be discussed and examined. Just wanted to give you a heads-up that my forthcoming novel THE FORGETTING deals with sex trafficking. It will be released on February 3, 2015 and was just selected as the February 2015 Junior Library Guild pick. I’m happy to be involved with this project in any capacity. Thank you!
Thanks for the comment here, Nicole! I followed you on Twitter and pointed Karen to your comment too. Going to look into your book!
A Goodreads list – YA books about rape and sexual abuse: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/22136.Young_Adult_Books_About_Rape_Sexual_Abuse
The LGBT books I see on the list include “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”
“Aaron” – this is more NA, the author rewrote it for a YA audience as “A Broken Kind of Life”. There is also sexual abuse in her series “Waiting for Forever” (Written as Jamie Mayfield)
“Bait”
“Target” (the kid is straight, but is assaulted and then wonders about his sexuality)
The list is pretty skimpy on the LGBT actually.
My YA LGBT group has a bookshelf for books tagged with “abuse” although some is physical not sexual abuse – 41 books
https://www.goodreads.com/group/bookshelf/49526-ya-lgbt-books?order=d&per_page=30&shelf=abuse&sort=date_added&view=main
One of our members wrote a book he says is non-fiction about his experiences being trafficked for sex. I haven’t read it though. “Paulyanna international Rentboy”
I’ll think about what might be useful to you. We have some authors, including Cody Kennedy, who work with abused youth as well as write YA. We can probably round up info for you.
This is great, Kaje! Pasting it into my notes and sending you a quick email to get you into my inbox. Thanks for this.
Wow! I’m so excited for this project! I’ve actually been thinking about starting a project about portrayals of sexuality of all kinds in YA lit, LGBTQI-centric but not exclusively. I’d love to collaborate or write a guest post. One of the titles I find instructive but disappointing in this area is RAGE by Julie Anne Peters. It aims to depict relationship violence between two teen girls but grossly misreads what kinds of behaviors qualify as abuse. I also wrote a blog post about Almost Perfect a while back that might be relevant: http://www.meganhonig.com/libraries/2011/01/acceptance-is-the-wrong-goal-brian-katchers-almost-perfect-and-the-stonewall-book-award/. Anyway, I’d love to contribute in whatever way I can. So glad this is happening!
I am loving all of the great people this project is already connecting us to! Emailing you in a minute here, Megan. Thanks for the comment!
I think a good subtopic would be sexual violence perpetrated or endorsed by religious institutions or people, or the victims of violence being shamed by religious institutions or people in YA (LGBTQ+ or otherwise ) literature.
This is an interesting subtopic, Julia! I’d have to think what titles would fit this list, especially for LGBTQIA+ books. I’m going to point Karen to your comment here, too. Thanks for the input!
Julia,
You are right, there is a lot of institutional sexual violence that happens in our world, including in the church or religious institutions. We touched on this some in our first #SVYALit Google Hangout. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend you read THE GOSPEL OF WINTER by Brendan Kiely which is specifically about the Catcholic church abuse revelations that happened in the early 2000s.
I’m trying to think of some other good YA titles that deal with sexual abuse by church members but I will have to do more investigation.
Karen
I love that you’re taking this on. It’s a very important subject! One book that came to mind immediately was Golden Boy by Abigail Tarttelin, which while not YA, won an Alex award last year. It’s about an intersex teen (who identifies as male) who is a victim of sexual violence at the hands of a family friend. It is heartbreaking, but so well written, and a book I think everyone should read. I know it really opened my eyes to a whole world of things I didn’t know about intersex individuals and the various conditions that fall under the umbrella term “intersex.”
Another book I read recently was Arin Andrews’ memoir Some Assembly Required. It has some discussion of sexual interactions between gay, lesbian and trans* teens, and again I felt it was an important book. Not as well written, but I feel that the subject of LGBTQI sex in YA literature is so underrepresented that his book definitely deserves a place on lists such as yours. I haven’t yet read the companion memoir by Arin’s ex-girlfriend Katie Rain Hill, but I believe she also discusses their relationship during their transitioning process.
I know there are others I can’t think of, but I’ll post/tweet more as they come to me.
Thanks for this, Amy! At some point I had put Golden Boy on my reading list, but have completely forgotten about it. I really appreciate this reminder! Adding your comment to my notes for the project. I reviewed Hill and Andrews’ memoirs this fall for the site and think they’re such important (and interesting) books! Definitely tweet any other thoughts–I’m @CiteSomething.