On #YesGayYA

Brent Hartinger's post on Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith's issues with agents wanting to straighten gay characters is good, and thoughtful, and very much in line with my own thinking.

Even today, leading gay characters means book challenges and lost school and library sales. It probably means being put in a different category in the eyes of most bookstores and librarians. You're a "niche."

For whatever reason, you likely won't end up a "true" break-out bestseller.

...

This may be sad or frustrating, but saying that GLBT-themed young adult books are still not quite "mainstream" or "commercial" doesn't seem like a particularly controversial statement. It seems like just a statement of fact.

And people in publishing are thinking about this fact, whether they say it out loud or not.

In other words, the status quo isn't just a case of editors and agents being homophobic. This may be part of it, but it's actually much more complicated than that.

I am nonplussed by certain people sticking their fingers in their ears and saying "LA LA LA WILL GRAYSON WILL GRAYSON. Therefore there is no problem!"

For the record -- the agents and editors that I have had have never been anything but completely supportive of whatever sexualities characters in my books have had. However, I can also completely believe the experiences that Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith have had, for pretty much the same reasons that Brent Hartinger describes: it's the difference between a book that has a chance of getting into CostCo and one that doesn't.

Today I was thinking of a patron I used to have at my old branch who always used to ask me for YA books with lesbians in them. On her first visit I was like, "We have... uh... we have... I WILL PUT ALL THE BOOKS ON HOLD FOR YOU." On her second visit I was like, "Have you read... oh yeah. Well there's... right, you've read that already. UMMMMM." On her third visit I was like, "HEY MALINDA LO WROTE A NEW BOOK."

Is there any reason we can't do right by her?