Do It Yourself Inspiration: Let's Make A Scholarship for GLBTQ & Allied Teens

So check out what Lauren from Shooting Stars magazine is cooking up - an auction to raise funds for a new scholarship for 15-19 year olds, about Living Beyond Tolerance.

It's a great idea, and I for one can't wait to see what's up for auction (and hey, if you wanna donate stuff for the auction, or just donate $ for the scholarship, more info is here.)

After all, it's a great thing to get each us of to answer the question:

What am I doing towards making sure everyone is more than tolerated, but accepted?

And the teen with the best essay answering that question will get a scholarship to help pay for their education. Sounds sweet! But how sweet will depend on how many people join in the auctions and the donations.

And for all you teens out there - start writing those essays!

Namaste,
Lee

A cool opportunity for young writers: A new ficitonal short story anthology is looking for tales of "Being Queer"

Hey, teen and young adult writers!

Check out this call for submissions from Bold Strokes books for a new anthology, OMGQueer.




They're looking for fictional short stories about "being queer" from 14-24 year olds across the USA.

"Use the power of fiction to tell us about coming out (or not), about dating, about sex, about what "family means to you, etc."

Their deadline for submissions is October 15, so now you have a great goal for your summer writing. Good luck!

Namaste,
Lee

ps - My thanks to fellow writer Emily Jiang for sharing this with me so I could share it with you!

The Dark Wife: A Lesbian Revisionist Re-Telling of the Persephone and Hades Myth, where Hades is a Goddess!

by Sarah Diemer


"Persephone has everything a daughter of Zeus could want - except for freedom. She lives on the green earth with her mother, Demeter, growing up beneath the ever-watchful eyes of the gods and goddesses on Mount Olympus. But when Persephone meets the enigmatic Hades, she experiences something new: choice.

Zeus calls Hades "lord" of the dead as a joke. In truth, Hades is the goddess of the underworld, and no friend of Zeus. She offers Persephone sanctuary in her land of the dead, so the young goddess may escape her Olympian destiny.

But Persephone finds more than freedom in the underworld. She finds love, and herself."



"The Dark Wife" was published by the author, who wrote this beautiful blog post about why she was re-telling this Greek myth with a Lesbian twist.

Add your review of "The Dark Wife" in comments!

"Just Kids" by Patti Smith

There are very few instances when I have no idea where to begin. This would be one of them. Patti Smith’s memoir Just Kids is absolutely phenomenal. Though she’s not a lesbian, she writes just as much about herself as she does about Robert Mapplethorpe, first her lover and later her other half.

In writing about her relationship with Robert, she brings up the idea of the Kinsey Scale a few times, (possibly without noticing it). Her relationship with Robert throughout her life was complex to say the least. They were madly in love but broke up because he was actually gay. They stayed together throughout their lives as roommates and best friends still, and Robert would sometimes proposition Patti for casual sex after that point. Smith talks about getting her inspiration for her art at points by observing many beautiful women; and though she points out that she had a strange attraction to them, she also says that she was not a homosexual. I see both as examples of the way certain people lean on the Kinsey Scale, something I believe in.

I just have to mention point-blank that Patti Smith is an incredible storyteller. Being a poet, she makes sure to pack each word with enough electricity to power an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. What I mean to say is, the language she uses is simply beautiful. I found myself looking at every sentence a little longer than I normally would, as if each one was a piece of art in a gallery. Not to mention, she lived the perfect rock and roll lifestyle in the 60’s and 70’s. She ran around New York dressed like a beatnik and almost homeless, lived at the infamous Chelsea Hotel, and even had conversations with the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. The amazing part is that she accomplished all of this while completely sober, save for a few dances with marijuana and an accidental acid trip. I can honestly say that I would kill to have lived that life for even a week.

One of my favorite things about her memoir though, is the lack of didacticism. She doesn’t preach any sort of spirituality or mindset; she just talks about how she lived her life. She leaves the message of her life and art up to the reader. I could interpret her stories any way I wanted to, to draw out some personal meaning for my own life. I believe that’s what makes the book so universal. So often in life, we have to figure things out for ourselves, which is often really difficult. Finding meaning in a book that doesn’t explicitly spell it out is great practice.

Just Kids has a lot of mature subject matter like S&M and hard drugs, so I would say that a very mature high school student could read it. The story flows nicely and the words themselves are artfully selected.

Patti Smith is one of those authors that I’m going to keep thinking about. There are certain books that I’ve read where I haven’t understood the meaning right as I read it, but I could feel the change they brought to me. I feel so much more enlightened by her novel, even though I’m not sure how. As I continue to grow and mature, the things she’s experienced will have more relevance to my life and I can draw upon her memoir to navigate through my own life at that point. Hers is one of those books that I know I won’t forget about. The optimism I feel after having read it is too important to forget about.


Review by Soraya. Add your review of "Just Kids" in comments!

Cursebusters! A Kick-Butt Queer-Inclusive Time-Traveling Adventure

by Julie Smith

"Budding-psychic Reeno is the most accomplished teenage burglar in California, but one tiny screw-up and poof!—she's sentenced to Bad Girl School. And that isn’t even her worst problem. Her sister Haley’s dying of an illness no one can diagnose, and now she can’t even help.

But wait, maybe she can! The school psychics have found each other and formed their own club. With the help of her gay friend Carlos and the other Ozone Rangers, Reeno finds out Haley’s disease is the result of an ancient Mayan curse. And A.B., the group's sinister non-faculty adviser, claims he knows how to break it.

All Reeno has to do is time-travel to an ancient Mayan city and steal a little item A.B. needs to save the world. Since she’s an ace thief, he has complete confidence she can execute the task before the outraged Mayans can execute her.

But can she trust A.B.? Despite his cuddly appearance, she knows he’s a merciless predator and ruthless assassin.

And he's not even human."

Add your review of "Cursebusters!" in comments!

Have You Read "Am I Blue?" By Bruce Coville? You MUST!

Okay, one of the good-problem challenges is that I can't read everything, which is why this blog is set up to highlight your reviews. I work to make my lists of GLBTQ teen books comprehensive, and give good info about what they're about with links to the author's sites and to get a copy.

So it's not unusual for me to finally get to a book after it's been blogged about, and in this case, last summer's intern Hannah wrote up the "Am I Blue? Coming Out From The Silence" post, as Bruce's story provided the name for the anthology edited by Marion Dane Bauer.

But I just sat down and read Bruce's 13 page story that starts off the collection, and all I can say is, WOW!

You have to read this!

What if a fairy godfather told you that one of the three great gay fantasies was to imagine what it would be like if every gay person in the country turned blue for a day?

Well Vincent (who isn't really sure if he's gay or not, but keeps getting beat up because the bully in his school thinks he is) just met his fairy godfather, and he's going to get his wish...

It's an amazing story, and I'm so glad I read it.

I hope you read it, too.

And for those of you in the U.S.A., it's a great way to celebrate our Independence Day, the 4th of July!

Namaste,
Lee

30 Days of Gay T-Shirts: Results (and a video montage!)

Okay, so as a challenge I spent 30 days in a row – every day of June 2011, wearing gay t-shirts – and no, it wasn’t a FASHION challenge, to come up with 30 different shirts that proclaimed that I’m gay and proud.

Instead, what I was going for was a social experiment.

I wanted to see what would happen, both externally and internally, if I refused the default white-straight-man privilege I walk around with and put it out there, on my shirt for everyone to see that I’m a member of a minority group.

Now my friend Jacqueline Woodson, who is a brilliant author and African American, doesn’t like the word “minority” and wants people to stop using it. She asks, “minority to whom? To what?” And in many ways she’s right. Perhaps the term “minority” has taken the place of "disenfranchised." We use "minority" to cover women, who are actually a majority numbers-wise, when we really mean a group denied access to social and economic power and equality for being who they are.

For most straight people, my being gay is not a visible characteristic, unless I’m holding my husband’s hand. And being a Dad, when I’m out in the world with our kid, most everyone assumes I’m straight (I get a lot of “mom’s day off?”)

So for a solid month I wanted to be OUT there, and just see how the world reacted. Here's what happened:

The Real World
Being a ‘hidden’ minority has this horribly awkward moment that I’ve experienced a number of times in my life where someone’s being really nice and then they reveal their prejudice to you, thinking that you share their feelings, not knowing you belong to the group they’re disparaging.

It’s happened with people not knowing I was Jewish, but most of all it’s happened with people not knowing I’m gay.

June 1, 2011 - Day One

On day one, There was a fifth grade boy who scowled at me when he read my “smile if you’re gay” shirt, but I think he just wanted to make sure I knew he wasn’t gay. Interestingly, the shirt didn’t say “smile only if you’re gay.” It was definitely the shirt that got the most reaction throughout the month.

And because of the t-shirts, it was a month of no accidental gay slurs, and no accidental oh-I-thought-you-were-straight moments. (The only meanness came from a tiny (less than 15) group of protesters at the Los Angeles Gay Pride Parade, and I (and most of the other hundreds of thousands of celebrants of Gay Pride) ignored them behind their fence, caged not just by police-erected steel wire but by their own hate.

Otherwise in the month, there were some socially awkward moments in conversations with straight adult acquaintances – who know I’m gay - when they would be talking with me and then notice my shirt, and then they’d sort of verbally stumble. But generally, people were gracious – and if they had any issues, they had the good grace to keep it to themselves.

And once I explained my "It's Okay To Be Takei" shirt, it was a big hit at the teacher and staff "Empowering Diversity" training session I did for an elementary school on day 14!

June 14, 2011 - Day fourteen

And on day 17, at the zoo with my kid, a woman come up to me, with her two kids just behind her, and asked about my Trevor project t-shirt since her nephew was also named "Trevor."

June 17, 2011 - Day seventeen

I was very self-conscious as I explained to her that the Trevor Project was a 24 hour a day crisis intervention hotline to help gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth. How would she react? Would she be homophobic in front of my kid? I felt myself tensing up, but all she said was, "Oh, that's great." And then she walked away. A minute later she was back, wanting to introduce me to her friend that she was there at the zoo with, a man with a child the same age as hers. And it turns out he was another gay dad! A bit of serendipity, and a lesson about making assumptions, that I wouldn't have had if not for wearing that shirt!

And throughout the month, my friends were awesome, sending me t-shirts to add to my growing repertoire, and cheering me on. You all ROCK!


The Online World
I posted a photo of myself every day in each day’s shirt on twitter and facebook, and had lots of “likes’ and a few hundred comments – all supportive. Sure, these were from among my over 2,000 friends and followers, but that level of interest and encouragement was really surprising and gratifying. So thanks, everyone.

The Interior World of Me
I think this is where the most profound shift happened.

June 30, 2011 - Day thirty, and the final day of the challenge

I used to grab for my “legalize gay” shirt and hesitate, wondering if it would be awkward or too in-your-face-gay for what I might be doing that day. Where I might be going. And that self-censorship was troubling to me. Doing this project and wearing the out gay shirts every day became a habit. (Yes, just like MotherReader's and my annual Kidlitosphere Comment Challenge – 21 days of commenting more on blogs to make a new habit).

As the month went on, I stopped being so self-conscious and stopped thinking about what my shirts were saying as I went about my day, so that when my husband and kid and I went out to the movies on day 26 and I was wearing my “closets are for clothes” t-shirt and the usher kept smiling at us, and was extra-nice and chatty, I didn’t even connect it to my shirt until later.

But when I talked to my husband about it, I realized it was definitely the t-shirt.

June 26, 2011 - Day twenty-six

I think wearing the gay t-shirts on the outside helped me own who I am more on the inside, and helped me be more okay inside my own skin.

It made me more proud, and more confident as a Gay man.

And going forward, I’ll wear that every day of my life.

Thanks for sharing the journey,
Namaste,
Lee

What's the Gay Community's Response To Racism? Silence? Well, Here's A Moment Where We Can Raise Our Voices Against Anti-Black Bullying & Violence!

This is really horrible. A sophomore on the wrestling team, an African American student at Santa Monica High School in Los Angeles County, California, was heading to practice and was confronted by the sight of a brown practice dummy with a noose around its head. Then he was grabbed by two teammates, and chained to a locker. Racial slurs were used (the TV report says they called him "slave.")

My friend Dermot (who is black and gay) who gave me the heads-up about this, and pointed out that if the student had been gay, the gay community would be, right now, in an uproar.

The student targeted by this hate crime was black, and our GLBTQ community hasn't stood up to shout about how horrible this was. Is. How unacceptable. How important it is for us to change not just anti-gay bullying and prejudice, but ALL bullying and prejudice. We have to end Homophobia, Yes. But we also have to end Racism. And end Misogyny. Gay people. People of Color. Women. Our Allies. We all need to stand up and shout that we won't allow these events to occur to ANYONE.

Also insidious is the element of the cover-up by the school and team, stories of students told to delete photos of the incident, the targeted student's own silence, all to try to silence that this happened and to avoid it 'reflecting poorly' on the team or the school.

This incident happened back in May and it only hit the news yesterday.

I want to tell my friend that the Queer community DOES stand up when racism happens. That our voices ARE raised up in protest.

But looking back to the past, I'm not sure I can point to any anti-black incident and say "Here. We, the Gay community, stood up here on behalf of black equality."

And when I realized that, I was even more horrified. I want to help change this.

This is NOW.

And I think we, and our allies, need to raise our voices!

What's the best way to do that? A petition? A call for diversity training for that team? The whole school? How can we best raise our voices? Let me know your thoughts in comments.

Namaste,
Lee

Me by Ricky Martin

I’m not going to lie; I didn’t have the highest of expectations for "Me" by Ricky Martin. Actually, even when I went to the book store to buy it the cashier looked at me and said, “really?” I decided to delve straight into it anyways and see what Ricky Martin is really all about. And as I read his book, I realized that I shouldn’t have been so quick to judge it. His story is actually quite interesting.

Martin’s writing style is typical of most celebrity autobiographies, which is fine. I also had to remind myself that he is an actor and musician, not a professional author. He starts his story reminiscing about his days as a six-year-old boy in Puerto Rico, singing into a spoon for his family. I thought that was a nice, cute way to start the story. Not only is it a nice anecdote, but it also completely (and obviously) ties into his career in the future. In this, I mean to say he does a nice job tying up loose ends that would seem not to fit into the story. The spoon anecdote is definitely a good one, but what would have been the point of including it if Martin had not become a singer in his adult life? This may seem like a minor good point, especially for a written work (where it can be so easy to tie everything together), but it actually points to a greater skill. Ricky Martin has the incredible ability to psychoanalyze himself and everything he’s done and relate it all back to something in his childhood. Everything connects to something previous. He’s also found a deeper spiritual meaning for every event that’s happened in his life and he never fails to explain it. Some people would probably get bored reading that, while others will enjoy it. But that makes the book much more than a celebrity autobiography.

Me, being the nitpicky reader I am, have only two real criticisms. The first being the amount of the book where he talks about his humanitarian efforts. Obviously it’s great that Martin’s devoted himself to such a noble cause, (that cause being trying to stop human trafficking), but spending around a quarter of the book talking about it seemed a bit much in my opinion. After seeing the phrase “men pay thousands of dollars for the virginities of eight-year-old boys and girls” for about the fourth time, I’ll admit that I had to skim the rest of the section. But I will say that I do believe him when he says that his efforts are not simply to make him look good. He really does believe in his cause and is truly horrified by the problem. My other criticism, being a very minor one, is one of fact checking. Being a musician myself, I was very happy to see that he cited his early musical inclination was rock music. But he mistakenly said that Led Zeppelin was an American rock band, when in reality the entire band is from England. Ordinarily I wouldn’t be so disturbed by that mistake, but Led Zeppelin is my favorite band. And the fact that he made a mistake about where one of the most famous bands in history is from makes me feel a little hesitant about the truth of all the other facts in the book. But that’s just a really minor error.

Though this book is written for adults, I believe that kids as young as 15 could read it. The style is very clear and his word choice makes the book a universally easy and quick read. There are brief sentences about sexual encounters and a large section of the book is about human trafficking, so I probably would not want to read this book if I was not mentally ready to hear about those things.

The best point of Martin’s memoir though would be his message. Though the underlying theme is Zen Buddhism, he makes sure to incorporate all beliefs into his book. His main idea is really that of coexisting. He preaches, without being overtly didactic about it, that we must not simply tolerate other people and what they do or believe in, but we should accept them as they are and peacefully live with them. I think that distinction between tolerance and acceptance and spreading the message of acceptance is going to play a really key role in these next few years, especially for the GLBTQ community.

Review by Soraya. Add your review of "Me" by Ricky Martin in comments!

Bruce Coville: The Exclusive SCBWI Team Blog Pre-#LA11SCBWI Conference Interview

Bruce Coville has written over 100 books for children and young adults, and if you haven't yet seen him speak, you're in for an incredible experience - Bruce isn't just an award-winning and best-selling author, he's a master storyteller.

His talk about the importance of the "numinous" is something I often think about in regards to my own writing, and I can't wait to experience his Monday intensive on "The Art Of Writing Fantasy."

Here, Bruce gives us the scoop on his upcoming conference Keynote, and it sounds amazing...




For more information about the conference and to register, go here.

And don't forget to bookmark The Official SCBWI Conference Blog!



I hope you can join me in seeing Bruce weave his magic!

Namaste,
Lee

Say "I Do!" Gay Marriage Will Be Legal In New York State in less than a month!

This is very exciting!




Late Friday night, the gay marriage law passed the NY Senate and was signed into law by Governor Cuomo.

I liked Maureen Dowd's column where she told it like it is about Obama getting three-quarters of a million dollars from gay donors while this whole vote was on the verge of happening in New York and yet Obama still did NOT come out for Gay Marriage rights:

"But for the president, “the fierce urgency of now” applies only to getting checks from the gay community, not getting up to speed with all the Americans who think it’s time for gay marriage."

Super frustrating.

But this fascinating analysis of how gay marriage became law in New York state here gives me a lot of hope about the power of coming out and living our truth, and the future.

Very exciting times we live in, people.

We all just have to keep on standing up for equality and fairness across the board for EVERYONE, and teach and learn how to celebrate our differences!

And we'll get there. Person by person. State by State. Country by Country. Until we've transformed our world.

Namaste,
Lee

Hudson Taylor is an Ally to the GLBTQ Community, and he's trying to change the world of sports to be less homophobic & more respectful of all people!

Hudson was a three time All American wrestler in Division One of the NCAA and was ranked number three in the entire nation. He's straight, and wrestled with a Human Rights Campaign equality sticker on his helmet to show his support for GLBTQ equality, for which he got a lot of flack.



Now he's the wrestling coach at Columbia University, and he's created a website and campaign, Athlete Ally, where people can go to sign this pledge: "I pledge to lead my athletic community to respect and welcome all persons, regardless of their perceived or actual sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. Beginning right now, I will do my part to promote the best of athletics by making all players feel respected on and off the field."



How awesome is that? Check out this interview with Hudson:



Want more to love about this Ally? He's getting married (to a woman) in Washington, D.C., because it's somewhere Gay people can get married as well!

So what are you waiting for? Go sign the pledge!

And Thank You, Hudson!

Namaste,
Lee

Transition: The Story Of How I Became A Man

By Chaz Bono

Upon buying my copy of Chaz Bono’s latest memoir, "Transition: The Story of How I Became a Man," I was very excited to start reading. I was ready to hear all about his recent gender reassignment surgery and the way his family reacted to everything. However, I got much more than I was expecting. And I mean that in a good way, a really good way.

Having a huge interest in psychology, I was delighted to see that Bono started his book from the very beginning of his memory. From the first anecdote about “a girl named Fred,” I was drawn in. All the preconceived notions I had about transgender people were slowly debunked and explained to me. I never really understood how a person could feel like such a stranger in their own body. But the way Chaz wrote about his entire life seemed so natural. When I read the first sentence I had no doubt about the author’s gender being male. Most people who have never met a transgender person automatically assume that it’s easy to tell what gender they were born as. And I have to say that that is a complete and utter falsehood. I can’t see Bono as being anything other than male; especially from the way he describes his feelings as a child. The way he describes the symptoms of his gender dysphoria (which would be defined as the discrepancy between how the body presents its sex and how the brain perceives its sex) is an example of incredible self-reflection. It is also incredible that he looks back on coming out as a lesbian and still didn’t feel completely comfortable. Chaz’s ability to look back on his life and point out the definite signs of his being born into the wrong body is really what sets this memoir apart from others. My only criticism of his writing is that sometimes he tends to go off on short tangents - for example, he talks about his relationship with his dad during his childhood. The book works in a linear, chronological manner so it becomes unnecessary for him to add that later on his dad became more traditional because he talks about it in later chapters. The book is a short and relatively quick read at about 240 pages. I also recommend this book for people who are 16 or older because there are many sexual and basic self-discovery elements that I wouldn't have gotten until I was an older teen.

The most important thing about his book is the message it gives to all people. More than being a guide to Chaz’s own life, this book is a guide to everybody’s lives. "Transition" shows Bono’s physical transition into becoming a man, but more importantly it highlights his journey to self-acceptance. He struggled so much throughout his life trying to find himself and who he really was. And though he admits that he came into his own a little late for his taste, late is always better than never. His message is overwhelmingly positive, and utilizes certain properties of Zen Buddhism that I personally believe are integral in everyone’s lives. He reminds us that we have to accept the fact that we cannot control everything. At a certain point, we have to live for ourselves, and anybody who cannot handle that does not matter to us. Each and every one of us is free to be whomever we choose. His book and message give everyone in the world who reads it the idea that we belong in this world as we are, and nobody can take that away from us.


Review by Soraya. Add your review of "Transition: The Story of How I Became A Man" in comments!

Introducing our 2011 Summer Intern, Soraya! AND the launch of the GLBTQ Biographies and Memoirs Book Shelf

Hi there! I’m Soraya, this summer’s intern, and I’ll be entering my senior year of high school in September. I’m very excited to be working with “I’m Here, I’m Queer, What the Hell Do I Read?” this summer! As an ally to the GLBTQ community, I think it’s really important to reinforce the fact that there are people who go through the same experiences and that nobody’s alone. We as people tend to lose sight of the fact that many people have stories for us to learn and grow from. I’ll be writing reviews on a wide range of biographies and memoirs from GLBTQ celebrities and activists, so keep your eyes peeled for those! Thanks for reading!

So here's what we've got so far of the still-coming together list of GLBTQ Biographies and Memoirs that Soraya will review this summer:

1) Transition: The Story of How I Became A Man - Chaz Bono
2) Me - Ricky Martin
3) Man in the Middle- John Amaechi
4) The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas- Gertrude Stein
5) Ellen: The Real Story of Ellen Degeneres- Kathleen Tracy
6) Just Kids- Patti Smith
7) Like Me: Confessions of a Heartland Country Singer- Chely Wright
8) The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist and Sexual Renegade- Justin Spring
9) Unbearable Lightness- Portia de Rossi
10) Naked- David Sedaris (he's one of my favorite authors, EVER)
11)The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk- Randy Shilts
12)Deflowered: My Life in the Pansy Division- Jon Ginoli

Do you know about a great GLBTQ Biography or Memoir of great teen interest that Soraya should consider adding to her list? Let us know in comments!

Congratulations to Soraya on getting the internship, and to all of us, because we're going to find out about some great queer non-fiction this summer!

Namaste,
Lee

Nightsiders: A postapocalyptic short story collection with a Transgender Teen Character!

By Sue Isle

"In a future world of extreme climate change, Perth, Western Australia’s capital city, has been abandoned. Most people were evacuated to the East and organized infrastructure and services have gone.

A few thousand obstinate and independent souls cling to the city and to the southern towns. Living mostly by night to endure the fierce temperatures, they are creating a new culture in defiance of official expectations. A teenage girl stolen from her family as a child; a troupe of street actors who affect their new culture with memories of the old; a boy born into the wrong body; and a teacher who is pushed into the role of guide tell the story of The Nightside."

The Transgender teen searches and finds both a way to physically realize the person they are and also an acceptance of this in a postapocalyptic world.


Add your review of this collection of four short stories, "Nightsiders," in comments!