Your New School Library: “The Difference Between You And Me,” Beauty Queens,” and “M+O 4Evr”

“Your New School Library” is a column of book reviews that highlight the expanding role of lesbian, bisexual, transgender and strong female characters in literature for children and young adults today. Once a month, we tell you about books that help young girls be awesome.

When I started this column, I had read a decent amount of queer lit for teens in the past and was excited about it mainly in terms of visibility, in terms of books being a support structure for teens. 

But I have to say, the quality of literature I’ve continued to read each month far surpasses what I had read before, what I even predicted I would get to review for this series. It is such a delight. And I know there are even more books, books that are around now and books that are on their way, that I’ll get to read and review, and even more importantly, that youth will get to read and relate to and laugh and cry with.

And I am just so excited. 

The Difference Between You And Me, Madeleine George, Viking/Penguin (2012)

This book starts with a manifesto written by our dear protagonist Jesse, demanding justice for all “weirdos, freaks, queer kids, revolutionaries, nerds, dweebs, misfits, loudmouths” and many others, along with declaring that “Normalcy is death!” and “Weirdness is life!”

In other words, I knew I was going to like this book.

As the title implies, the plot centers around two very different main characters, with chapters alternating between each of their points of view. Jesse is our idealistic radical, the out dyke who cuts her own hair with a Swiss Army knife and believes that her manifestos can, and must, change the oppressive culture of her high school. Emily is the opposite of all that Jesse stands for – she wears pink cashmere sweaters, has the perfect boyfriend, runs student-council with an iron fist and believes in things like pep rallies.

The one thing they have in common is that they both really, really like making out with each other once a week in a neglected library bathroom.

We need to pause and focus on this making out for a moment. Because this secret bathroom kissing is SO GOOD! I could have read about Jesse and Emily kissing all the live-long day. Allow me to type up this whole paragraph for you because I just want to read it over and over again. 

(You should know, first, that this description is even better when you understand how wound-up of a young lady Emily Miller is. She is one of those teenage girls who strive for perfection so ardently that it is almost hard to watch, who is always prepared with a game plan and a dazzling smile. Yet when she kisses Jesse, this is what happens):

When Jesse Halberstam kisses me, she’s really focused and really intense. She puts her hands on the sides of my face to hold me where she wants me, or she winds her fingers up in my hair and tugs it tight, and somehow, just by the way she touches me, she makes my mouth open, she makes my eyes close, she makes me breathe faster and faster until I feel dizzy and I think I might black out. Sometimes when she’s kissing me, I swear to God, the edges of my body melt and I become sort of part of her. Sometimes when she kisses me I forget my own name.

It’s not just that the connection between these two girls in these scenes feels so electric, it’s that they also feel so authentic in a deep, gut-level way – all of which must be attributed to the way George so expertly crafts these characters. Even though their attraction to each other seems to make no sense, you believe in the feelings they have for each other in an acute, true way. It’s not simply an opposites-attract deal, the allure of the different; it was, as Emily described “a soul connection.” Admittedly, “soul connection” might seem like a corny phrase, but once you get to know Emily and Jesse, it fits. And if you’ve ever felt a soul connection with someone, someone who doesn’t seem to make sense, yet this thing is just there – well, then you’ll get it.

And then, StarMart shows up. 

StarMart is a mega-box-store retailer who’s threatening to move into Jesse and Emily’s quaint town, and Jesse – who has ended up befriending our third main character, Esther, a true pacifist and activist – becomes part of a full-scale protest against their corporate encroachment. Emily, meanwhile, has landed an internship at their headquarters, and is just so, so excited about scoring a sponsorship deal with them for the school dance this year! (They will finally get to have all the good snacks!)

I also have to mention that while she is not as important to the plot as Emily and Jesse, I. Love. Esther. She is one of those high school outcasts who’s so focused on her passions that she doesn’t even realize, nor care, what an outcast she is. She is also obsessed – and I mean obsessed – with Joan of Arc. Basically, she is a dream. Her purpose in the novel – other than making me laugh out loud – is to show that while she should also be Jesse’s dream girl, you really can’t choose who you fall in love with, sometimes.

Emily and Jesse’s differing politics finally become personal with StarMart, and they are forced to confront things they have become experts at ignoring. Both of them must weigh their hearts versus their brains, and decide, once and for all, if the differences between them are too wide to cross. 

I cannot recommend this book enough. Great kissing, great characters, great political and cultural messages, humor and heartbreak – it all works, and was truly a joy to read. Bravo, Madeleine George, Bravo.

Beauty Queens, Libba Bray, Scholastic (2011)

“I think I was always in the jungle. Before. It was always there. I think I had to come out here to find the answer.”

“And what did you find?”

“I love myself. They make it so hard for us to love ourselves.”

Do not be deceived by this cover – this is not a story about pretty girls. I mean, okay, so it is – but not in the way you’d expect. Beauty Queens is part absolute hilarity, part scathing critique; the most entertaining feminism-guide-for-girls I’ve ever read. Along with hitting every important aspect of feminism I could think of, it also rages against all manner of ills brought on by a shallow and corrupt capitalistic society in general. From the first page on I was either chuckling out loud or wishing Libbra Bray was sitting next to me while I read so we could enthusiastically fist-bump together repeatedly. In other words, I loved every moment.

Our protagonists are all contestants en route to the Miss Teen Dream Pageant when their plane crashes into a desert island. While most of the folks on board die immediately, including all of the chaperones and airline employees (bummer for them), a chunk of the teen girls survive and spend the rest of the 390 pages struggling to stay alive on the island. Although “struggling” is perhaps too heavy of a verb for the Miss Teen Dreamers – it wasn’t necessarily easy, but they did alright for themselves. After all, they’re teenage girls, and the power and ingenuity of teenage girls should never, ever be underestimated.

Imagine Lost without that terrifying black smoke monster, with a compound run by the all-powerful Corporation replacing that creepy place where The Others lived. Imagine Lord of the Flies without all those boring dudes, with empowerment and liberation replacing that downer, fatalistic message about humanity.

Beyond the critique and the fun, one of the other reasons you should want to read it? Among the beauty queens, there’s a lesbian. There’s a transgender girl. There’s a deaf girl who’s also a bisexual girl. There’s also an Indian-American girl who had to fake a “my-parents-immigrated-to-this-country-to-follow-their-dreams” storyline to give the judges and the American people what they wanted to hear. There’s a black girl who has to make sure she’s reserved and friendly enough to not appear too “ethnic,” to avoid what the judges don’t want to hear. 

I believe my favorite girl is actually Miss Nebraska, who self-describes herself as one of the “wild girls,” a girl who is in tune with her body and her vibrant sexuality and her powerful desires to be – well, wild, and free, to what society would deem a dangerous degree. She has spent her teen years thus far tamping down the wild girl, hiding her sex drive, after thoroughly understanding how wrong she supposedly is, burning in her shame. 

There are girls who appear smart and girls who appear dumb. But in the end they can all harbor hurt and they are all capable of courage and strength. And on the island, with nothing to rely on but themselves, they begin to unravel the lies they have been told about themselves, the truths they have been too afraid to admit – that they are more than what adults and parents and boys and the media want them to be, and that it is okay to not sparkle all the time.

As the truths of each girl’s identities were slowly revealed throughout the novel, I began to immediately hear the critics in my head – that when there is this level of diversity portrayed, whether it be in a book or a TV show or a movie, it is “too much,” “overkill.” It seems any time a minority is included in a work, particularly when the author is of the non-minority group, that author must be “pandering” to said minority group for money or attention, or out of societal pressure, feels the need to include those characters as “tokens.”

But after thinking about it for a moment, I had the realization – no. If you took a random selection of a dozen American girls? This would most likely be your group. There would be sexual minorities. There would be racial and ethnic minorities. There would be religious minorities. There would be those who are differently abled. Okay, you might not have every single one, but most of them would all be there. Libba Bray’s portrayal of a group of seemingly similar girls (all beauty queens) who turn out to all be wonderful different (in a variety of ways) is not overkill – it is accurate. It is just an accuracy that has not been portrayed in the past. It is an accuracy that we are still, in all forms of media, struggling to get right.

Issues of authenticity will always be an important debate to have, and one that I personally may never feel completely settled on. For example, Libba Bray is a straight, white woman (although perhaps I should clarify that she’s married to a man, which shouldn’t necessarily make one confident about her sexuality) who takes on a variety of experiences she has not personally lived. But what I do believe is that as an author, as any kind of creator, while you may not always have the authenticity to speak for a certain group and you should never pretend you do, you should be able to portray the diverse scope of the world to the best of your abilities  – not to be diverse, but to be accurate. In fact, I believe that is kind of sort of your job. And Libba Bray does a smashingly good job of it.

To step only slightly off of my soapbox for a moment – did I mention there are pirates? There are pirates. (Well, fake reality-TV pirates, but still.) Did I fully explain that there is an evil Corporation that is ruining indigenous cultures as well as our own by the minute and the beauty queens are going to take them on? Did I note that Miss New Mexico walks around with a plastic airline tray lodged in her forehead the entire time? Did I forget to quote this line-“It’s always darkest before the ultimate sparkle”?

Why are you not reading this already?

M+O 4Evr, Tonya Cherie Hegamin, Houghton Mifflin (2008)

If you put all three of the books in this month’s column on your “to-read” list (which I hope you do), I must warn you – this one is markedly different from the first two, both in style and tone. It’s also a few years older, but when I found it just recently and examined the cover and dust jacket I felt a small thrill. Finally, finally – I had found a lesbian young adult novel featuring two black protagonists. Are there other ones out there I’m missing? Please tell me if I am. I just feel sad that it took me this long to find one, and that even this one seems to have flown under the radar.

It’s a little book, less than 200 pages, but it packs in a lot of heartbreak and a lot of nuance. The love it describes between M and O isn’t clear-cut, isn’t delivered in a neat package.

Another warning: Marianne, the M in the equation of the title, dies. This isn’t too much of a spoiler since it happens early on in the narrative. At first, I sighed to myself in a slightly disappointed way, perhaps influenced by recently reading an excellent article by Laura Goode about the “dead or straight” trope in lesbian coming-of-age tales. (Some great, well-researched reviews of some classic lesbian lit in that article! Read it!) 

But after we learn a little more about M’s wild heart, it seems like she had been on the road to tragedy for a while – and not necessarily just because she and O (Opal) grew up stealing kisses under a blackberry bush. This isn’t necessarily a lesbian running away from the burden of being a lesbian, but a teenage girl running away from the burden of being a teenage girl.

O is our narrator, and her entire life has been infused with M in a total, all-consuming way. Both practically raised by O’s grandmother, they are inseparable from ever since O can remember. Yet it is a connection that is more than good friends, more than just “love you like a sister” – there is something clearly deeper, but it’s something that seems to never be able to fully take off from the ground, to be fulfilled in the way that O absolutely aches for it to.

Indeed, as high school progresses, M pulls further and further away from O, from everyone – and there’s nothing O can do about it except hurt. And cling to her dream of taking M far away from their small Pennsylvania town one day soon, whisking her to California when she finally gets that full ride from Stanford – until there is that knock on her bedroom door, until M’s body is pulled from the ravine.

My favorite parts of this novel were learning about O’s family, such rich and realistic characters, as well as the tale of Hannah, a local historical legend of a runaway slave girl who M and O grow up hearing stories about. Hannah represents the determination in freedom and the commitment to love, and M and O think they sometimes see her running through the woods where they spend so much time. I liked how time periods shifted and swayed in the novel, giving us pieces of M and O’s history, along with Hannah’s, bit by bit in a unique narrative.

Yet overall, I felt like this book needed more space to breathe to really come into its own and gives these characters the full depth they deserved. M was such a mystical, powerful figure, yet I still feel like I never knew her well enough, never truly knew why she drew away from O and caused so much pain, why she disappeared in that ravine. I didn’t know O well enough, either, for that matter.

Still, the story it tells is different from any story I’ve reviewed here so far – the experience of two girls in a white town who must deal with hatred and prejudice in more than one way, in subtle ways and obvious ones. The weaving of contemporary love story with historical fiction is also wonderful and intriguing, and makes me curious to see what else Tonya Cherie Hegamin has in store. And publishers: keep bringing on the diversity, please. Thanks. Love, me.