Now, in 2002, it appears that things have changed. The 1990's produced a spate of YA fiction with lesbian and bisexual characters, including:

All of these books except three are now out of print or have "limited availability" (the exceptions are "Happy Endings are All Alike," "Hard Love," and "Finding H.F") - which means you're unlikely to find them in your neighborhood bookstore. You can find them through various web sites like Amazon.com, but that mainly benefits nostalgic adults like me, since questioning teens are unlikely to want or have the ability to order lesbian-themed books online using their parents address and credit card.

Surprisingly, "Happy Endings Are All Alike" and "Annie on My Mind" are still the lesbian books most often found in school libraries, despite being published twenty years earlier than some of their successors.

While there is much that is good about "Happy Endings," the fact that one of the teenage lesbians in the book gets raped (and it's fairly graphically described) makes it less than ideal as an introduction to confused or questioning teenage girls who are already worried about the repercussions of being gay.

"Annie on My Mind" has a similarly negative overtone to it, for although it emphasizes the message that prejudice is wrong and love conquers all, the reader is left with a distinct impression that lesbian life is automatically hard, since both the young girls and the older lesbian couple in the book suffer discrimination because of their sexuality.

There's nothing wrong with preparing young lesbians for the difficulties they may encounter in coming out, but it would be nice if there were also some YA books that didn't make it appear that lesbians were destined for a life of hardship, physical harm, and/or career-ending discrimination.

Besides a penchant for emphasizing the negative aspects of being lesbian or bisexual, only three of the books feature girls who aren't white ("The Necessary Hunger," "The House You Pass Along the Way" and "Hard Love"). And only one of these is still in print ("Hard Love") - which means if it's hard to find books for lesbian teens in general, it's almost impossible to find them about lesbian teens of color.

On the positive side, they do utilize a diversity of settings (rural, suburban and urban), which helps shatter the myth that all lesbians live in San Francisco.

Of course, questioning lesbian or bi teenagers can always head over to the gay and lesbian section at their local bookstore if they live in an urban or suburban area, since most of the massive chain stores like Barnes and Noble and Borders now carry these sections. But many of these books are too graphic for younger readers (including the famous "Rubyfruit Jungle," which despite the teen heroine is not really a suitable book for most younger teens). And, to focus on logistics, it's also unlikely that closeted or questioning teens will want to stand in front of a section clearly labeled "Gay and Lesbian." I know some adult lesbian/bisexual women who are still uncomfortable doing this.

This option also doesn't help the large number of young teenage girls who don't yet know they're lesbian or bisexual - kids like me, who manage to make it all the way through high school feeling a little different but not yet able to put a finger on what it is. A YA book about well-adjusted lesbian teens might help them name it sooner - and begin to build a foundation for understanding that lesbians/bi women can be happy, too.

YA novelists have made great strides in this area in the last twenty years, but it's not enough just to write the book, bookstores have to actually carry them. Since they currently aren't doing a very good job of that, it appears that lesbian and bisexual teens today are still likely to find themselves in the same situation I did - standing in a used bookstore somewhere during their college years fingering a battered copy of "Happy Endings are All Alike" and wondering why they couldn't have found something like this earlier.

Updated article on the state of YA novels with lesbian themes available here.