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Your New School Library: Julie Anne Peters, Alex Sanchez, and Emily Franklin

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

While the three books I chose for this month’s column are all quite different, they do have a few things in common. One, they all cover issues I had never seen queer YA lit really cover in depth before. And for the most part, the writing styles of each rank closer to what is “typically” considered to be YA. Although saying that does cause me to cringe slightly, as I don’t think there’s anything really “typical” about this genre and the writing within it, but alas. I want to give fair warning that there’s perhaps less Emily Danforth lyricism here, but more appeal to reluctant young readers who need to hear these stories. So if you’re already a YA skeptic, it’s safe to say you can probably skip these. But if you’re a teenager, these stories could provide immeasurable comfort, and that’s what’s important. Let’s start with the most intense.

Rage: A Love Story, Julie Anne Peters; Knopf/Random House, 2009.

Julie Anne Peters has been one of the most prolific lesbian YA writers for well over a decade now, and while I always enjoy her books, typically full of diverse characters and sweet storylines and a decent amount of sexytimes, I’ve never viewed them to be particularly earth-shaking. While they often deal with tough issues, they’re quick, satisfying reads. Yet Rage: A Love Story already seemed different before I even started reading, if even from the title and cover alone, both of which I think are brilliant. The dedication at the front of the book also reads intriguingly: “To Alyson Lacoste, who asked me to write this book and I said, ‘No. Absolutely not.’ Alyson is a very persuasive young woman.” 1) That is a strong reaction to have to a book idea, and 2) Can I hire someone to give me book ideas?

This novel is a few years old, but after I finally got down to reading it this winter, I thought about it for days.

[Trigger warning for this entire review.]

This is a story about abuse. It’s about abuse in a number of ways, from and between all different kinds of people who are supposed to love us better. Our protagonist is Johanna, a high school senior about to graduate who’s recovering from the deaths of both of her parents, both of which she had to separately handle on her own. Instead of focusing on her grief, though, she mainly chooses to obsess over Reeve, the Out and Experienced Bad Girl Lesbian of her dreams. An opportunity falls into Johanna’s lap in a strange way: she’s been assigned to tutor Johanna’s brother, Robbie, a physically daunting young man dealing with mental illness. As Reeve and Johanna slowly start to come closer together, you’re not sure whether Robbie was born differently abled, or if his condition is trauma-induced. He and Reeve live in a chaotic, violent, abusive household, one that’s horrifying to witness. It’s also the reason that Johanna forgives Reeve for the marks she starts to leave on her arms, for all the shoves and pushes and sudden mood swings. She will not be intimidated by Reeve’s troubled life, and her often upsetting actions. Johanna needs to protect her. And Reeve doesn’t mean it. They love each other, and that is the most important thing, above all else.

Other characters come into play as well, such as Johanna’s distant older sister and her “best friend” who’s going through her own troubles, both of whom Johanna continues to push away from, frequently for no reason at all other than the fact that they could threaten to stand in the way of her and Reeve’s love. After a few chapters, your first thought starts to be, “Heeyy, so these are a lot of people with a lot of issues,” yet they’re all real people, and there’s still good in all of them. Johanna seems to be the most independent of the bunch: she works hard at her part-time job and spends her spare time comforting old people at a nursing home, for Pete’s sake.

Yet as the story unfolds, you become unsure who you’re supposed to be more frustrated with: Reeve, or Johanna herself for her clearly unbalanced, singular obsession with their relationship. The villain and the victim are not black and white, and both elicit sympathy at various points. And while you know their relationship is unhealthy, you still feel the spark between them that makes part of you, somehow, still want to hold out hope for a happy, sexy life for them, as in Johanna’s oft-imagined “joyland.”

But in such a volatile environment, it’s inevitable that the center cannot hold, and things fall apart, in devastating ways. Not only is this an important book for victims of abuse, either domestic, parental, or even between friends, but it helps shatter that weird myth that somehow still exists, that lesbians don’t suffer abuse like straight couples do. (You know, because females are so naturally nurturing and gentle and stuff.) While haunting, this book still offers threads of hope, and it’s essential that it exists.

Boyfriends With Girlfriends, Alex Sanchez; Simon & Schuster, 2011.

Alex Sanchez, along with David Levithan, are the prolific YA counterparts of Julie Anne Peters in the gay world, and while I read and enjoy their dude-centric books, there hasn’t been a ton to offer AfterEllen readers in terms of lady love on their pages. That is, until Sanchez’s Boyfriends with Girlfriends, which offers a sexuality for pretty much everyone! There’s the know-that-I’m-gay guy, the know-that-I’m-a-lesbian girl, the questioning girl, and my favorite of all: the bisexual guy!

The plot centers around two boy-girl friendships who basically all fall in love with each other. I mean, monogamously. Let me try to explain: There’s Lance and Allie, and then Sergio and Kimiko. Lance is your stereotypical, musical-theater-loving white young gay, while Sergio is Mexican and bisexual. When they meet for the first time at a mall food court after some quality IMing time (oh, young love!), they both bring along their best ladies to help ease their nerves. Kimiko is out to Sergio but closeted with her parents; Allie believes she’s straight and is getting over a two year relationship with her ex-boyfriend. Her straightness is called into question once she meets Kimiko, however; they discover a shared interest in manga, and Kimiko lets Allie borrow her favorite (gay) series. (Smooth move, Kimiko!) So there’s Lance-Sergio, and, maybe, Kimiko-Allie.

So it all sounds a bit teen soap opera-ish, and it is. And there might be just a tad too many issues going on at once: Kimiko struggling with coming out to her conservative Japanese parents; Lance losing his virginity; Allie questioning her own desires. I’m also going to interject a random complaint here: in both this novel and in Rage, one of the girls is super attracted to the other girl’s “super low, low, low rise jeans” that offer a sneak peak of some thong action. Help me out, young lesbians: do you actually find this attractive? Because I certainly don’t find it attractive now, and I don’t think I did then, either. Right? But anyhoo!

What I appreciate the most, however, in this sexuality free for all is how Sergio’s bisexuality is dealt with. Lance has had some bad experiences with one of those gay-with-Lance but straight-to-everyone-else popular boys of high school, and he’s convinced Sergio’s admittance to being bi is just another word for what that dude was. Lance expresses his belief that being bi is just an excuse for people who are lying to themselves, a viewpoint that I’ve seen repeated ad nauseam in the gay community. He says in the first chapter, “At least Sergio was admitting he liked guys. That was a move up from Darrell. But why didn’t he just take the next step and say he was gay? Maybe he wasn’t as mature as Lance had hoped.” They get into an argument later in the novel, when Lance literally can’t get over the fact that Sergio has had full blown girl sex–and like, wanted to!–and doesn’t understand how he can just “switch” between boys and girls. Sergio responds, “It’s not ‘switching.’ It’s just accepting different sides of myself.”

I’ve read some moving YA novels about exploring the depths of sexual fluidity (A.S. King‘s Ask the Passengers from last year is a notable one), but this solid declaration of bisexuality felt different to me, and just as important. Yeah, Sergio and Lance’s conversations can seem somewhat simple and didactic, but Lance is still voicing the beliefs that are, for whatever reason, still so prevalent: that bisexuality isn’t real, that it’s a thing people who don’t know themselves well enough make up. It’s an insulting and judgmental belief, and it felt so lovely to have a character who didn’t just say, “I think I like boys AND girls and it’s really confusing!,” but said definitively, “I like boys. I like girls. And that’s just who I am.” Add on top of that how great it is to see cultural diversity in these pages, and you get a book that could be helpful for countless youth.

Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom, Emily Franklin & Brendan Halpin; Walker Childrens, 2013.

Ever since reading a number of news stories about courageous young lesbians fighting for their right to attend prom over the last few years, (we still love you, Constance!), I’ve been waiting for this book to be written. (Julie Anne Peters also released a prom related novel last year, It’s Our Prom (So Deal With It).) As an educator, there’s something that just really gets me about these stories, something that’s emblematic of way too many stories about education in general: the students are the ones being brave and level-headed, and it’s the adults that rise to staggering levels of cruel, embarrassing stupidity. Even today, we are dealing with the fallout of Indiana special education teacher calling for a straight-only prom in her town, admitting that she believes gays are worthless human beings. Keep it classy, adults! (If it makes you feel better, the school district itself has been behaving wonderfully, and liking this Facebook page supporting the inclusive prom, which now has over 27,000 likes, may help boost your faith in humanity a little.)

But back to the book at hand: This story is alternately told through Tessa’s point of view and that of her best friend, Lucas. They’ve been friends since they were tikes, to the point where they know everything about each other, except for a few small things. Luke has no clue that Tessa’s gay, and Tessa has no idea that Luke is in love with her. Whoops! This all comes to a head when Luke decides to make a sweeping declaration. He not only asks her to prom, he asks her to prom via the huge reader board at Tessa’s parents’ grocery store, where they both work in their small Midwestern town, for all to see as they drive boy. Oh boy, Luke. Sweet, sweet, unknowing Luke.

The reader board incident pushes Tessa to finally come clean and tell the world that she not only doesn’t want to go to the prom with Luke (no offense, bro) but that she wants to go to the prom with a girl, if that’s okay. Which, of course, ends up being really not okay, apparently. Tessa, not necessarily wanting to start a movement or anything, just wanting to stop lying to the people she loves most, doesn’t even know what an uproar she’s unwittingly created until her locker starts getting vandalized and the picketers start showing up in front of her parents’ store. The worst part of all is that Luke isn’t speaking to her, and for a minute, appears to be on the side of the picketers.

While Tessa does have a somewhat tenuous relationship with a girl, the real story of the book is her and Luke’s friendship, and in a way, I found that refreshing. Not everyone’s first relationship is all consuming (as in Rage), and not everyone just happens to luckily be surrounded by a bunch of other queers (Boyfriends With Girlfriends). Sometimes, especially in a town town, the biggest part of coming out for a teen is ensuring that you’re still okay with your old, straight friends that always knew you the best, and they’re okay with you.

Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom ends on a hopeful note, yet one that’s not entirely perfect, either, which I respect. Although actually, whether it is perfect or not might be up for debate, but I can’t spoil everything, so you’ll have to read it yourself to see what you think.

While these three books are ones I’ve been meaning to review for a while, I plan on getting back to a more normal schedule with this column, and reviewing some of the Stonewall winners from this year, along with other newer titles, very soon!

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