While you're waiting for the next Literally Lesbian book review (coming later this week!), read this great article from Autostraddle!
"Regardless of veracity, the conversation has indeed begun, and perhaps there’s still time for it to be redirected. Gay teens are more visible on television than ever before, and a large reason for that is how vocal the LGBT community has been about needing that representation. Can we make the same change for LGBT literature? I think we can.
I predict, based on nothing besides my own psychic instincts, we’re going to see the numbers of LGBT-identifying high schoolers skyrocket over the next five years and this is a huge opportunity for the LGBT YA market."
I like the article, but I disagree with their interpretation of Malinda Lo's stats. Queer YA is, by her calculation, about 0.2% of YA lit. That is pathetic. And the fact that even that is dominated by cis gay boys is just as bad. If anything, we should have more queer YA in percentage than the percentage of teens that identify as queer, because a) those books are so incredibly important to those who do, b) just because they don't yet identify that way doesn't mean they aren't questioning and wouldn't appreciate books to help them in that and c) not just queer kids can read queer lit. Sigh.
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