Queer desires have found their way into literature for thousands of years. Authors from ancient Greece and Rome, such as Plato and Homer, include love between men in their writing, and Sappho’s reputation as the mother of lesbian poetry is acknowledged by those who have never read her work.[1] By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Europe and the United States, representations extended beyond celebrating same-sex sexual and romantic desire to playing a vital role in the development of LGBTQ+ identities. In fact, the social development of LGBTQ+ identities runs through LGBTQ+ literature, as demonstrated by many of the sections in this chapter.
For instance, the American writer Walt Whitman’s poetry collection Leaves of Grass, a lifelong project first published in 1855 and continuously revised until his death, brims with erotic descriptions of men without ever characterizing same-sex desire as an identity. More blatantly queer is the British author Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness(1928), which tells the story of “invert” Stephen Gordon’s lesbian romance and her life negotiating social isolation and stigma as a result of her masculine gender presentation and desire for women. Similarly, the African American author James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room(1956) deals directly with issues of masculinity, homosexuality, and bisexuality through its thoughtful protagonist.[2]
Attempting to describe a canon of LGBTQ+ literature or to create a genealogy of texts spanning continents and centuries is an impossible task. Instead, this chapter explores specific fields of LGBTQ+ literature. Abiding by this limitation acknowledges that any survey of a field as vast and diverse as LGBTQ+ literature cannot be meaningfully cataloged in a single chapter. Students may wish to select one section and pair it with primary sources for an in-depth look at a field. The chapter focuses primarily, although not exclusively, on post-1950 work published in the United States to explore multiple fields of LGBTQ+ literature: children’s picture books, young adult novels, comics, pulp fiction, and memoir. Each section provides readers with a historical overview of the field and introduces readers to key terms, debates, and primary texts in the field. Each section also contextualizes the creation, publication, distribution, and reception of LGBTQ+ literature within a shifting sociocultural landscape. Readers will gain an understanding of social, political, and economic constraints and opportunities that have influenced the creation, distribution, and consumption of LGBTQ+ literature, which has always met with unique pressures from cultural gatekeepers.
Contributors to this chapter consider literature both a product and producer of history, and they suggest that literature plays an essential role in queer culture, community, and identity formation. The genealogical structure most sections adhere to allows readers to consider how literary content changes at different historical junctures. Even more, by reading two or more sections, similarities in content can be compared across fields. Additionally, each section identifies and describes key tropes that emerge in the field discussed. These tropes reflect shifts in societal attitudes about LGBTQ+ identities. For example, in pulp fiction and young adult literature, representations of gay and lesbian love have historically been tragic; happy endings have only recently begun appearing.[3] The quantity and quality of LGBTQ+ literature for young adults reflect shifts in social acceptance, which influences the publishing industry’s willingness to publish these books and the ability of teens to access them in bookstores, libraries, and even schools. It’s fair to say that LGBTQ+ literary and cultural texts are slowly making their way into dominant culture, which means more diverse representations and more positive representations are increasingly available to all readers.
Jennifer Miller’s section, “LGBTQ+ Children’s Picture Books,” maps the development of LGBTQ+ children’s picture books in the United States from the 1970s to the present. Maddison Simmons undertakes a similar project in “Tropes in Lesbian Young Adult Literature” as does Robert Bittner in “Trans and Gender-Nonconforming Characters in Young Adult Literature.” Both trace content shifts in representations of lesbian and transgender or gender-nonconforming youth in middle grade and young adult literature. All three sections demonstrate that representations of LGBTQ+ youth in books written for young people have contributed to parallel shifts in sociocultural understanding and acceptance of LGBTQ+ people. However, there is no linear path to progress; representations remain dominated by cisgender white middle-class gay men in young adult fiction, and middle-class white representations still dominate children’s literature, although transgender and gender-nonconforming characters are increasingly prevalent in the latter.
“LGBTQ+ Comics,” by Mycroft Roske and Cathy Corder, focuses on popular and underground U.S.-based comics. They consider how the 1954 Comics Code influenced queer representations in comics by forcing them underground. The Comics Code was prompted by the psychiatrist Fredric Wertham’s book Seduction of the Innocent: The Influence of Comic Books on Today’s Youth, which argues that comics turned vulnerable youth into delinquents.[4] Similar claims about the seductive power of culture have been used to justify censoring other forms of culture with a young audience, including film and picture books. Whereas cultural gatekeepers worked to censor comics, lesbian and gay pulp remained relatively free from the censor’s wrath. Cathy Corder’s “Lesbian and Gay Pulp Fiction” explores the melodramatic world of pulp, which often depicted young women and men in sex-segregated spaces falling in love. There are rarely happy endings in the realm of pulp, which tended to reproduce the trope of the tragic queer found across LGBTQ+ fields of literature. However, these books were formative in the lives of many gay men and lesbians at a time when few other representations existed.
The chapter’s last section, Olivia Wood’s “LGBTQ+ Memoir and Life Writing,” is unique in focusing on nonfiction books. Wood notes that because of homophobia and transphobia, LGBTQ+ life writing has only recently become available. She explains that life writing before the twentieth century was often in diary form and not meant to reach a public audience. In fact, according to Wood, LGBTQ+ memoirs produced for public consumption are a relatively new phenomenon that didn’t take off until the 1990s. Like the other sections in this chapter, Wood’s demonstrates that increased social acceptance of LGBTQ+ people has prompted increased representations.
This chapter does not represent LGBTQ+ literature in its entirety. Each section shares a snapshot of a particular aspect of LGBTQ+ writing as it has developed in the United States over the last several decades. This deliberate choice introduces important and engaging content to readers in a way that encourages meaningful exposure and exploration.
LGBTQ+ Children’s Picture Books (by Jennifer Miller)
LGBTQ+ children’s picture books use images and text to explicitly represent LGBTQ+ identities and experiences. They counter dominant sociocultural constructions of gender, sexuality, children, childhood, and family.[5] These texts contribute to a queer world-making project by rendering queer genders and sexualities visible, viable, and accessible to young audiences ranging from babies to twelve-year-olds. According to Jan M. Ochman, children’s picture books are a powerful socializing agent because they help children form a self-image, develop a sense of cultural expectations, and imagine inhabiting social roles.[6] In addition to doing important socializing work, LGBTQ+ children’s literature is a rich historical archive that reflects struggles occurring within culture to define the meaning and value of genders and sexualities that fall outside narrow and oppressive norms.
The best way to tell the story of LGBTQ+ children’s picture books is through the books themselves. This section examines English-language texts published in the United States and Canada between 1970 and 2018. It describes key texts and identifies key themes, as well as shifts in thematic content. It concludes with a brief discussion of how LGBTQ+ children’s picture books became an identifiable subfield within the category of children’s literature.
A Genealogy of LGBTQ+ Children’s Books Published between 1970 and 2018
Overt representations of LGBTQ+ identities and experiences are a fairly new occurrence in children’s picture books, which is why most queer scholarship about children’s literature seeks to uncover the queer potential in more readily available classic texts.[7] LGBTQ+ children’s picture books slowly began to appear in the 1970s, a trend that accelerated greatly after 2010.
1970s: Sissy Boys
A few books about boys who challenged gender stereotypes, a theme that remains popular, were published in the 1970s. The trend began with Charlotte Zolotow’s William’s Doll(1972), which is the story of a little boy who wants a doll. No one supports William’s desire for a doll, although his grandmother eventually buys him one. She appeases his angry father by explaining a doll will help William be a good father. The gay author Tomie dePaola’s Oliver Button Is a Sissy (1979) also tells the story of a boy who doesn’t enjoy typical boy things. Oliver is bullied at school because of his effeminate behavior. When his parents enroll him in dance he gains confidence and even acceptance from peers as a result of his talent. This book has a positive message, although it demands that pro-gay youth demonstrate exceptional behavior to be accepted by peers and family. The queerest of the 1970s trifecta of “sissy boy” books is Bruce Mack’s Jesse’s Dream Skirt(1979), which explores a boy’s desire for a skirt. Jesse’s mother accepts him as do his peers, who end up emulating his style.[8]
1980s: Lesbian Moms
Very few children’s books containing overt LGBTQ+ themes were available between 1979 and 1989. Jane Severance published two books with Lollipop Power Press, a small feminist press located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, that published twenty-two books in its decade-plus of operation. When Megan Went Away(1979) is told from the point of view of a girl processing the separation of her mother and her mother’s partner. Her mother is emotionally unavailable during this period as she deals with her own pain. Lots of Mommies(1983) is about a girl raised communally by several women. Severance creates a robust cast of lesbian characters who provide the protagonist with a happy, albeit unconventional, home. Annie Jo is a carpenter, Vicki is a school bus driver, and Shadowoman is a healer. These texts are important historical artifacts of lesbian culture and lesbian cultural production in the late 1970s and early 1980s.[9]
In an email exchange on August 16, 2018, Jane Severance told me that she was only a few years out of high school when she wrote her first children’s book. She describes herself as “heavily involved in the women’s/lesbian movement, mostly concentrated on working at Woman to Woman Bookstore in Denver.” Severance observes that “parents were looking for books showing children with different families, children making nontraditional choices and being supported for making those choices.” It was in this context that Severance, with no training but a lot of passion, began writing. Severance received “a lot of flack” for showing a lesbian couple in an unflattering light in her first book, but Severance notes that lesbian mothers “were generally not supported, which meant that they couldn’t always make good parenting choices.” Her work is a product of the moment it records and in many ways is far more antinormative than many of the LGBTQ+ children’s picture books that followed hers and that remain in circulation.
Lesléa Newman’s Heather Has Two Mommies (1989) (figure 11.1) inaugurated a new trend in LGBTQ+ children’s literature by representing lesbian families as patterned after heteronormative conventions. Importantly, Newman published Heather Has Two Mommies without the help of a traditional publisher. In an email exchange from January 28, 2019, Newman told me, “Though Heather Has Two Mommies isn’t self-published, I did actively participate in its publications. My business partner at the time, Tzivia Gover, and I came up with the term co-publishing. She had a desktop publishing business, and when no traditional publisher was willing to publish Heather, we decided to do it ourselves. We raised $4,000 via a letter-writing campaign, found an illustrator and a printer, and brought the book out in December of 1989.”[10] Micro presses and mission-driven (as opposed to profit-driven publishers) self-publishing continue to be a mainstay of LGBTQ+ children’s literature publishing. In fact, crowdfunding though platforms like Kickstarter are the latest tech version of the letter-writing campaign Newman used to fund her project.
Figure 11.1. Lesléa Newman’s Heather Has Two Mommies (1989). (Deborah Amory.)
1990s: Gay Uncles
Throughout the 1990s, small presses with a mission, such as Alyson Publications, which was founded in 1980 and created a children’s book imprint, Alyson Wonderland, in 1990, were at the forefront of creating LGBTQ+ children’s literature.
Books helping children understand and process loving and losing adults with HIV/AIDS began to appear in this period. A Name on the Quilt (1999), written by Jeannine Atkins and illustrated by Tad Hills, is the story of a family memorializing a beloved family member after his AIDS-related death. In the book, which is told from the point of view of the man’s niece, the family creates a patch for the AIDS Memorial Quilt. This is one of the few books that gesture toward gay community and activism while representing HIV/AIDS; most depict gay men in isolation, as outsiders within the heterosexual family unit. This is the case with Lesléa Newman’s Too Far Away to Touch (1995) (figure 11.2), in which a young girl’s uncle, who is ill from AIDS-related complications, helps her begin to process his eventual death by explaining that he will always be with her.[11]
My Dad Has HIV (1996) takes a different approach. It is an accessible text about HIV told from the point of view of a seven-year-old child whose father has the virus. The book was cowritten by Earl Alexander, an HIV/AIDS instructor, and two elementary school teachers, Sheila Rudin and Pam Sejkora. The father’s sexuality is never discussed, instead the book focuses on normalizing HIV/AIDS.[12] That it took until the 1990s to see representations of HIV/AIDS make their way into children’s literature evidences the cultural lag that can be seen until around 2010, when LGBTQ+ children’s literature really became a site of advocacy and activism for LGBTQ+ youth.
Figure 11.2. Lesléa Newman’s Too Far Away to Touch (1995). (Deborah Amory.)
2000s: Gay and Lesbian Parents
In the first decade of the 2000s, well-budgeted LGBTQ+ children’s literature that explored a variety of themes became the norm instead of the exception. Most of these books continued to focus on lesbian and gay adults through stories that focalized the experience of children related to them. Increased publishing opportunities eventually led to more diverse representations after 2010.
Lesléa Newman, the prolific author of Heather Has Two Mommies (1989) and Too Far Away to Touch (1995), continues to publish in the field. Her experiences negotiating the publishing industry reflect publishing shifts. She went from raising funds to publish her first book through a letter-writing campaign in 1989 to being solicited to create board books with LGBTQ+ themes in 2009. In our email correspondence Newman wrote, “I was asked by Tricycle Press to write a set of board books: one about a child with two moms and one about a child with two dads. Which I did. Tricycle was subsequently bought out by Random House, and the two books, Mommy, Mama, and Me and Daddy, Papa, and Me are still in print (10 years later!) and doing very well” (figure 11.3).[13]
Figure 11.3. The board book Daddy, Papa, and Me (2008). (Deborah Amory.)
Dozens of books about lesbian- and gay-parented families have been published since the 1990s, with most being writing after 2000. This increased social acceptance and public visibility of lesbian and gay families parallels political discussions about marriage equality and LGBTQ+ adoption. If traditional publishing companies with marketing and production budgets are now publishing LGBTQ+ content, that attests to the marketability of these books, not just to LGBTQ+ families but to all families who wish to provide their children with realistic windows into the world.
2010s
This is not to say that all queer content has found a home in traditional publishing or that traditional publishing is even desirable for all authors producing LGBTQ+ children’s picture books. For instance, Myles E. Johnson’s Large Fears(2015) (figure 11.4), a series of vignettes about Jeremiah, a queer Black boy who loves pink and wants to go to Mars, was crowdsourced.[14] In a 2019 Twitter exchange with me, Johnson said, “Crowdsourcing has limits, but it is perfect if you see a demand and just let the audience fund it instead of waiting on gatekeepers.” Johnson’s unique narrative style and focus on the subjectivity of a Black queer boy make pursuing traditional publishing, which primarily considers marketability and profitability, challenging.
Figure 11.4. Myles E. Johnson’s Large Fears (2015). (Deborah Amory.)
Small, mission-oriented presses and self-publishing are still more likely than traditional publishers to publish content that intersectionally engages marginalized social identities. For instance, Inhabit Media, an Inuit-owned publishing company founded in 2006, published Jesse Unaapik Mike and Kerry McCluskey’s Families (figure 11.5), a picture book that affirms various family forms, including lesbian and gay families.[15]
Figure 11.5. Jesse Unaapik Mike and Kerry McCluskey’s Families (2017). (Deborah Amory.)
Although a handful of books on transgender experience have been published traditionally, most continue to be published by nontraditional means. The very queer Flamingo Rampant, a Canadian micro press funded by crowdsourcing, explores queer gender and sexual identities as they intersect with other identity categories, including race and ability.[16] In one of their first publications, A Princess of Great Daring(2015), written by Tobi Hill-Meyer and illustrated by Elenore Toczynski, a transgender girl has not seen her friends all summer and prepares to share her gender identity with them for the first time. Jamie’s two moms drop her off at her friend’s house, and her friends are playing a game in which they save a princess from a dragon. Jamie offers to be the princess, and the boys are excited to have someone to rescue. Jamie interrupts the traditional narrative by declaring that she will be “a princess of great daring.” Concerned that they will have no one to rescue, one of the boys, Liam, volunteers to be captured by a dragon, but even the dragon defies gender expectations. She grabbed Liam only because she was lonely. When the game ends, Jamie’s friends tell her that she makes a great princess. She takes the opportunity to explain that she is a girl. They immediately accept her, and ask how they can best offer their support.[17]
Not surprisingly, in more traditional presses, marriage became an increasingly popular theme throughout the first and second decades of the 2000s, mirroring the increased visibility of sociopolitical debates about marriage equality. Sarah S. Brannen’s Uncle Bobby’s Wedding (2008) tells about Chloe, a little girl worried that her favorite uncle will have less time for her once he marries his partner. Extended family are accepting of the same-gender relationship, and Chloe comes around once she realizes the joy of having two uncles.Lesléa Newman’s Donovan’s Big Day (2011) (figure 11.6) also takes up the theme of same-gender marriage, this time through the point of view of a young boy whose mothers are marrying.[18]
Figure 11.6. Lesléa Newman’s Donovan’s Big Day (2011). (Deborah Amory.)
Additionally, over the last several years, books have introduced very young readers to transgender and gender-nonconforming children, and to a lesser extent, adults have begun to appear. For instance, Worm Loves Worm (2016), written by J. J. Austrian and illustrated by Mike Curato, is a candid story about two worms who fall in love and wish to marry. Their insect and arachnid friends demand they jump through all the traditional hoops, including getting rings even though they don’t have fingers and buying a cake even though they eat only dirt. They go along with everything until it comes to choosing who will wear the white wedding dress and who will wear the tuxedo. At that point, the worms queer gender expectations when one wears the dress with a top hat and the other wears the tuxedo with a veil. Another example, Square Zair Pair (2015), written by Jase Peeples and illustrated by Christine Knopp, takes place in a fantasy world inhabited by Zairs. Zairs hatch from eggs that grow from vines. Some are tall and square; others are short and round. Round and square Zairs always form a pair by attaching tails. One day two square Zairs pair. The community is outraged and demands they leave the group, using rhetoric like that of the real-world Right. After the exiled Zairs save the other Zairs from starving during an unexpected winter storm, they are accepted back into the community, which echoes the demand for queers to be exceptional to be accepted.[19]
Stories about same-gender-desiring children are also (slowly) beginning to appear. In Thomas Scotto’s Jerome by Heart (2018) two boys share an affectionate friendship that makes the adults in their lives uncomfortable. This is one of only two representations of same-gender love between children available in children’s picture books.[20]E. J. Martinez’s When We Love Someone We Sing to Them: Cuando Amamos Cantamos (2018) is the other (figure 11.7). It is a joyful celebration of father-son relationships and young love. Martinez’s depiction of the Mexican serenata tradition subtly queers custom.
It was not until 2009, with the publication of Cheryl Kilodavis’s My Princess Boy, that transgender and gender-creative children began appearing in children’s picture books. The gender-creative protagonist, who is never named but instead referred to by the narrator-mother as “my Princess Boy,” seems to be effortlessly accepted by family and friends. This book and others like it break out of the sissy-boy mold present in earlier books by representing gender-nonconforming boys who enjoy toys and activities associated with girls as accepted by family and peers.[21]
Figure 11.7. Javier Martinez’s When We Love Someone We Sing to Them: Cuando Amamos Cantamos (2018). (Deborah Amory.)
Two years later, the gay author Marcus Ewert published one of the first children’s picture books, 10,000 Dresses (2011), illustrating the experiences of a transgender girl. The child, Bailey, is bullied by family members who insist she is a boy even though she knows she’s a girl. Rex Ray illustrates the text, providing the reader access to Bailey’s inner life by depicting her dreams and thoughts. Every morning when Bailey wakes up, she tells a family member about the dress-wearing dream she had the previous night. Every morning a new family member dismisses her dream, ignores her attempt at self-definition, and tries to silence her. After her brother threatens her with physical violence, Bailey runs away from him. She meets an older girl named Laurel who is the only character besides Bailey who is given a name and face. The two girls create beautiful dresses together. The final image is of the girls wearing the dresses they worked together to make. The book alludes to chosen families through Bailey’s experience of rejection by her heterosexual family and the support she finds with Laurel.[22]
I Am Jazz (2014) is an autobiographical children’s picture book coauthored by Jessica Herthel and the title character, Jazz Jennings. Jennings, now a young transgender woman with her own TLC show, first entered the spotlight in 2007 when she was featured on a 20/20 documentary about transgender children. This book is a significant contribution to LGBTQ+ children’s literature because it is coauthored by and narrated from the perspective of the transgender child protagonist.[23] LGBTQ+ books published in the last few years demonstrate how social and cultural visibility of LGBTQ+ youth has increased. Representations that affirm LGBTQ+ youth especially reflect medical models of care for young queer people that better meet their needs.
The Making of LGBTQ+ Children’s Literature
The conversations that surround LGBTQ+ children’s literature, specifically, challenges and celebrations of its existence, are an important part of the field’s story. The internet has played a critical role in increasing the visibility of LGBTQ+ identities and aiding postmillennial queer community building. Blogs by book reviewers, parents, teachers, social workers, and librarians have provided a virtual grassroots campaign to spread the word about LGBTQ+ children’s books. For instance, Mombian: Sustenance for Lesbian Moms is a parenting blog that was founded in 2005 when the creator noted “a lack of sites with current, practical news and information for LGBTQ parents, or sites that looked at other aspects of LGBTQ culture with a parent’s eye.”[24] The blog contains a wealth of information about LGBTQ+ children’s culture and smart reviews of dozens of books.
The recent emergence of literary awards provide LGBTQ+ children’s literature a degree of respectability and authority. For instance, the Stonewall Book Award, which is administered by the American Library Association’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table, was established in 1971, but a Children’s and Young Adult Literature Award was not created until 2010. The Lambda Literary Awards began acknowledging and awarding LGBTQ+ authors and writers of LGBTQ+ content in 1989 and created a category for Children’s and Young Adult Literature in 1992. Awards lend legitimacy to the subfield. Both of these relatively new awards help LGBTQ+ children’s books get the accolades they deserve.[25]
Less affirming discourses predate blogs and awards. Children’s literature has many gatekeepers: parents, educators, librarians, even publishers themselves. Representations of lesbian, gay, and transgender experiences, expressions, and identities remain some of the most contested within the world of children’s literature. According to the American Library Association, two of the top ten most contested books of the 1990s represented queer parenting: Daddy’s Roommate, by Michael Willhoite, and Lesléa Newman’s Heather Has Two Mommies.[26]
Controversies over LGBTQ+ children’s literature are hardly a thing of the past. In the 2010s, myriad attempts to keep books with LGBTQ+ content out of libraries and classrooms have sprung up across the United States as well as globally. In Kansas there were attempts to remove I Am Jazz and other books with transgender characters from libraries. Attempts have been made to ban the books of LGBTQ+ children’s picture-book author Gayle Pitman in Colorado, Texas, and Illinois.[27] The political, cultural, and personal significance of LGBTQ+ children’s picture books can be best understood by cataloging responses to it. Like the texts themselves, discourses that challenge and discourses that celebrate the work are critical archives of feeling and practice that reflect shifting social and cultural responses to LGBTQ+ identity.
Choose an LGBTQ+ children’s picture book to read. What aspects of LGBTQ+ identity, community, or culture are represented?
What changes in topics, tone, and style do you see in books published earlier versus more recently? What key themes can you identify through them?
Miller talks about children’s picture books as “a powerful socializing agent.” How might the book you chose to read be described as helping children develop a sense of cultural expectations or understand diverse social roles?
Check Your Knowledge
Contributed by Has Arakelyan, Rio Hondo College
Multiple-Choice Questions
1. Which ancient author is recognized as the “mother of lesbian poetry” and is referenced in the chapter?
A) Sappho
B) Homer
C) Plato
D) Radclyffe Hall
2. What is a key reason why LGBTQ+ children’s picture books are considered powerful socializing agents?
A) they only depict traditional family structures
B) they help children form self-image and understand diverse social roles
C) they avoid controversial topics
D) they are exclusively written by LGBTQ+ authors
3. The 1954 Comics Code influenced queer representation in comics by:
A) forcing queer comics underground due to censorship.
B) encouraging more LGBTQ+ content.
C) promoting positive portrayals of LGBTQ+ characters.
D) requiring all comics to be peer-reviewed.
4. Which book is credited with inaugurating a new trend in LGBTQ+ children’s literature by representing lesbian families?
A) William’s Doll
B) Jesse’s Dream Skirt
C) Heather Has Two Mommies
D) My Princess Boy
5. What publishing trend is highlighted by the success of Myles E. Johnson’s Large Fears (2015)?
A) the effectiveness of crowdsourcing for marginalized voices
B) the dominance of traditional publishers
C) the decline of LGBTQ+ children’s literature
D) the exclusion of intersectional identities
6. Which theme is most commonly associated with early LGBTQ+ children’s picture books from the 1970s?
A) sissy boys challenging gender stereotypes
B) marriage equality
C) transgender visibility
D) HIV/AIDS awareness
7. What is a major challenge faced by LGBTQ+ children’s literature in schools and libraries, as described in the chapter?
A) lack of interest from children
B) overrepresentation of transgender characters
C) attempts to ban or remove books with LGBTQ+ content
D) excessive marketing budgets
8. Which of the following is true about the representation of HIV/AIDS in LGBTQ+ children’s literature?
A) It was widely represented before the 1990s.
B) It began to appear in the 1990s, often focusing on family and community impact.
C) It is only discussed in adult literature.
D) It is never addressed in children’s books.
9. What role do literary awards like the Stonewall Book Award and Lambda Literary Awards play in LGBTQ+ children’s literature?
A) They decrease the visibility of LGBTQ+ books.
B) They are not mentioned in the chapter.
C) They only recognize adult literature.
D) They lend legitimacy and authority to the subfield.
10. How do recent LGBTQ+ children’s picture books differ from earlier works, according to the chapter?
A) They offer more intersectional and diverse representations.
B) They focus exclusively on cisgender characters.
C) They avoid themes of family and community.
D) They are less likely to be self-published.
How have shifts in social acceptance and publishing practices influenced the themes and diversity of LGBTQ+ children’s literature over time?
In what ways do children’s picture books serve as both historical archives and agents of social change for LGBTQ+ communities?
Discuss the impact of self-publishing and crowdsourcing on the representation of marginalized identities in LGBTQ+ children’s literature.
What are the implications of censorship and book bans for the visibility and acceptance of LGBTQ+ identities in educational settings?
How do literary awards and online communities (such as blogs) contribute to the legitimacy and dissemination of LGBTQ+ children’s literature?
Multiple-Choice Questions - Answers
1. A) Sappho
2. B) they help children form self-image and understand diverse social roles
3. A) forcing queer comics underground due to censorship.
4. C) Heather Has Two Mommies
5. A) the effectiveness of crowdsourcing for marginalized voices
6. A) sissy boys challenging gender stereotypes
7. C) attempts to ban or remove books with LGBTQ+ content
8. B) It began to appear in the 1990s, often focusing on family and community impact.
9. D) They lend legitimacy and authority to the subfield.
10. A) They offer more intersectional and diverse representation
