The Introduction of Lesbian Young Adult Fiction (Maddison Lauren Simmons)
To explore the rising importance and acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community and uncover tropes and themes, this section examines lesbian young adult fiction, novels written for twelve- to eighteen-year-olds, that have a lesbian protagonist. Eight popular and accessible U.S. novels written since the 1970s are the basis of this examination, with one or two books selected from each decade. All include a woman attracted to other women, with most of them being clear that the character is a lesbian (or in one case, bisexual). In the discussion, queer refers to cisgender women who identify as lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, or queer.
The first lesbian-specific young adult novel was not published until 1976, Rosa Guy’s Ruby.[28] According to Christine A. Jenkins and Michael Cart, the general types of stories with queer characters published between 1969 and 2016 had one of three themes: “homosexual visibility,” “gay assimilation,” or “queer consciousness/community.” Homosexual visibility refers to a character coming out and the tension that “might happen when the invisible is made visible.” Gay assimilation involves a “melting pot of sexual and gender identity,” and these stories involve characters who “just happen to be gay” but it’s not their main characteristic. Finally, stories that involve queer consciousness “show LGBTQ+ characters in the context of a community.”[29] Although the homosexual visibility category is seen in nearly every novel, gay assimilation novels were more common in the 1990s to early 2000s, and stories with queer communities were more common after 2000. This could be due to changing attitudes with respect to the queer community over the decades. Novels closer to the 2020s have more positive and diverse queer representation.
Like LGBTQ+ literature more generally, lesbian young adult fiction tends to fall into one of the three categories Jenkins and Cart introduce. In addition, the narrow field of lesbian young adult fiction includes these tropes: (1) the Miserable Lesbian, which refers to lesbians depicted as unhappy and lonely, (2) the Lesbian Victim, who has experienced acts of homophobia and violence as punishment for her sexuality, (3) the Confused Parents, who think that they did something wrong while raising their daughter and that’s why she’s gay, or they think that someone turned their daughter gay, (4) Lesbian Self-Discovery, in which she feels right with her sexuality and queer love interest, and (5) Found Family, focusing on the importance of friends and on those in the queer community triumphing over hardship and coming together as a family when the biological family of a queer person is lacking.
The earliest lesbian young adult novels are littered with unhappy and lonely queer characters, secret relationships, and violence against the lesbian characters. Of the eight books examined for this project, the stories published in the 1970s and 1980s (and even some into the early 2000s) exhibited these tropes of the miserable lesbian and the lesbian victim, but they accomplish the homosexual visibility and gay assimilation that Jenkins and Cart defined. Although they may have been unhappy, queer characters were at least there, allowing some sort of visibility, even if the queer character didn’t get a happy ending. This is important because it showed lesbian characters during a time when the LGBTQ+ community was not accepted in general society. Between the 1970s and early 2000s, novels that enfolded the beliefs of society at the time encountered less pushback than those featuring an out and proud lesbian who had no problems with her sexuality. People expected lesbian and queer characters to face setbacks because of their sexuality, but as they became more represented and accepted, over time the stories about queer characters were able to evolve from miserable lesbians to lesbians who are out and proud and facing little to no pushback for their sexuality.
Rosa Guy’s Ruby(1976) is often heralded as the first lesbian young adult novel. In the book, eighteen-year-old Ruby Cathy and her family move from the West Indies to Harlem, New York. The story describes the family’s adjustment to Harlem and Ruby’s budding relationship with Daphne Duprey, a self-confident and charming girl in Ruby’s classroom. Ruby is described as a terribly lonely girl plagued by sadness, but she sees Daphne as a way to escape her loneliness. Although the story doesn’t touch on lesbianism much and never explicitly defines Ruby as a lesbian, this was the first young adult novel that involved a relationship between two women. This book is a great example of Jenkins and Cart’s homosexual visibility because, although Ruby is not happy, at least her story was published and people could read about a young queer woman and her relationship with another woman.
Julie Anne Peters’s novel Keeping You a Secret (2003) is about Holland, the protagonist, realizing she has feelings for a girl named Cece and their eventual relationship. This novel harks back to the miserable lesbian trope of earlier years because Holland gets kicked out of her house once her mother learns about her and Cece. But it also anticipates the presence of queer community, because Holland uses local queer resources to move into a queer-run apartment complex. This novel includes the confused parent, lesbian victim, and self-discovery tropes and falls in line with all three themes of Jenkins and Cart. Although her life seems bleak after she is kicked out, Holland believes that one day things will be okay and she will have a home, pride, and acceptance within the queer community.[30]
By the early 2010s, the queer community theme and found family trope are widely used. Published in 2012 but set in 1990, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, written by Emily M. Danforth, is set in a conversion therapy camp. This story involves the miserable lesbian, lesbian victim, and found family tropes and falls into Jenkins and Cart’s queer community category. Although the camp itself is extremely toxic and is meant to break down the very essence of who each camper is in order to convert them to heterosexuality, the friendships formed between the more rebellious campers are a saving grace in a place where they would otherwise lose sight of who they are. As the first semester at the camp comes to an end, all the campers go home to their families during winter break. After spending months with new people and having practically zero contact from her life before, Cameron notes how strange it feels to be leaving camp. She realizes that the camp has become home, but more specifically, she realizes just how important the friendships she made have been. Despite the circumstances that brought them together, Cameron feels closer to the other campers than she does to her aunt, who sent her to the camp. This shows that, even though this type of camp was meant to strip away the essence of who a queer person was, it didn’t always work and sometimes created stronger friendships and a strong found family.[31]
These Witches Don’t Burn (2019), written by Isabel Sterling, is about a teen witch named Hannah who has to deal with her ex-girlfriend and an attack on her coven while managing life as a teenager. This novel is filled with positive representations of queer characters, and Jenkins and Cart’s theme of queer community is very present in this novel. The trope of self-discovery is also prevalent, but because Hannah is an out lesbian from the first page, the trope focuses more on her feeling right with her new love interest than on wrestling with her sexuality. A lot of queer characters throughout These Witches Don’t Burn show queer consciousness and the importance of positive queer representation. There are lesbian neighbors who are married and expecting a child, there’s a trans coworker at Hannah’s job, and various other queer students. When Hannah first meets her new coworker Cal, she slips up and mentions her ex and then has to say that her ex is another woman. She immediately is nervous, her internal monologue saying, “Coming out is always nerve-wracking, no matter how many times I do it.” Cal then comes out to her, mentioning an ex-boyfriend of his and that he’s trans, and Hannah recalls “instantly feeling a tighter kinship with my new coworker, like seeing a familiar face in a crowd of strangers”[32]There’s a powerful dynamic when queer people meet in a public space and recognize that the other is queer. When two queer characters meet in a story and recognize that the other is queer, it lets readers know that nothing bad is going to happen to them (at least with the other person) because of their sexuality.
When LGBTQ+ people are not accepted by their birth families, stories of found families and queer communities resonate deeply. These tropes and themes are important not just as story elements but for queer readers to see themselves in fiction. Even with the ruling of Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, which legalized gay marriage in all fifty states, there are still homophobic people who don’t support queer people. Although society is generally becoming more inclusive and welcoming of different people, not everyone is lucky enough to be loved and supported by their biological family when they come out. Queer friendships are usually stronger than other types because most queer people live with the fear that they will eventually come in contact with someone who hates them just because they’re queer. Finding another queer person and creating a found family that provides safety, love, and support is an incredibly important event in real life and in literature.
The trope of self-discovery and feeling right with a queer partner is in nearly every novel of this project. The character deals with their sexuality or, if they were already out, with their feelings for another woman. In Annie on My Mind (1982) and Keeping You a Secret (2003), especially, in a moment of gay panic, the main character slowly realizes she is queer and freaks out, but her worries melt away once she kisses her love interest and feels that nothing had ever been more right or made as much sense. In the novels published after 2010, there is less of this gay panic and more nonchalance about sexuality, because the main character was usually already aware of her sexuality and okay with it.[33]
Even if the story has many pitfalls and trials for the queer characters, at least each novel mentions that being with the right person, no matter their gender or sexuality, feels right and good and brings peace. It’s something that most people can relate to, and it’s a powerful sentiment that normalizes queer relationships by implying that queer people and queer relationships are not inherently disgusting or wrong. Allowing queer characters the same ability to find Mr. or Ms. Right, but of the same gender, normalizes queerness in a heteronormative society.
Since the 1970s, lesbian young adult novels have moved away from the miserable lesbian trope and toward happier lesbian characters who find a strong queer community and feel love and acceptance. The trend of the tropes and themes discussed here suggest that, one day, queer experiences will be filled with less tragedy, but until then, literature will continue to have a strong queer community and an influx of queer-affirming stories.
Read
Malinda Lo writes about her journey toward embracing literature and movies that feature lesbian characters in her blog post “The Invisible Lesbian in Young Adult Fiction,” February 10, 2020 (www.malindalo.com/blog/2020/2/4/the-invisible-lesbian-in-young-adult-fiction).
What is your experience of viewing or reading about lesbian characters? Does the discussion of tropes in lesbian young adult literature help you understand your own response?
Lo states, “Cis queer women have always been marginalized because we exist at an intersection of misogyny and homophobia, at minimum. Add in race, disability, class, etc., and things become even more complicated.” Discuss any connections you see between this statement and the tropes in lesbian young adult fiction discussed here.
Lo talks about the relative lack of recognition for lesbian young adult fiction in the last ten years, using literature awards as an example. She asks specifically why cis queer girls have not been recognized and introduces the idea of misogyny not as a personal attitude but a system that enforces attitudes. Expand on her ideas using what you have learned about how tropes in lesbian young adult fiction have evolved over time.
Trans and Gender-Nonconforming Characters in Young Adult Literature (Robert Bittner)
Literature for young readers fluctuates constantly to reflect and speak to the experiences of children and teens in different geographic and community-oriented contexts, changing—sometimes rapidly, as in the case of gender and sexuality—over time as the sociopolitical landscape shifts.[34]Literature reflecting the realities of LGBTQ+ youth is indeed very reactive to the sociopolitical landscapes in which it is written and published. As queer and trans acceptability grows in mainstream media and the political landscape, so too does representation increase in the literature published for young people.
This section focuses primarily on literature produced between 2000 and 2020 for middle grade readers, between the ages of eight and twelve, and young adult readers, between the ages of twelve and eighteen. Starting with a look at where transgender representation in young adult literature began, this chapter then follows a time line of transgender and gender-nonconforming representation in middle grade and young adult literature, highlighting the evolution of gender identities in these years. The last part of the chapter explores tropes—commonly used themes or literary devices that can become cliché over time—within trans and gender-nonconforming narratives and how they can be problematic.
Beginnings
The year 2004 is often cited as the beginning of transgender representation in literature for young adults, and in many respects, this is true. In this year Luna, the first young adult novel with a transgender character, was published, but it was not the first instance of a transgender character in young adult fiction.[35] That distinction is given, as Jenkins and Cart note, to Francesca Lia Block’s short story “Dragons in Manhattan,” published in her 1996 collection Girl Goddess #9.[36] They further note that although the story itself is young adult, the trans character is an adult, unlike the vast majority of trans characters in young adult literature today.
Five years after Block’s short story, Emma Donoghue published “The Welcome” in Michael Cart’s edited collection Love and Sex: Ten Stories of Truth (2001).[37] Both Block’s and Donoghue’s short stories feature trans women, as does Luna. These firsts are to be commended for paving the way for future transgender and other gender-nonconforming characters, but since that time, scholars have noted the problematic nature of these early representations, particularly in Luna, mostly due to the emphasis on Luna’s sibling, rather than Luna herself, and also because Luna is portrayed as a burden to her family and friends throughout the novel.
The existence of other gender-nonconforming characters in young adult literature is a relatively new phenomenon spanning just over two decades, even less when looking only at full-length novels. With this in mind, the many varieties of gender identities now represented is impressive, especially considering how long it took to move beyond gay and lesbian characters.[38] Since Luna, there has been greater inclusivity of characters who are not cisgender, including transgender, genderqueer, intersex, bigender, nonbinary, and two-spirit representation.
These diverse gender representations are important for many reasons. Rudine Sims Bishop notes in her work on children’s literature that books function as mirrors and windows.[39]Diverse representation, therefore, allows more young readers to see themselves reflected in the books they read, thus reinforcing that their existence is legitimate and worthy of deeper exploration in literature. As windows, literature for young readers allows a glimpse into the lives and worlds of others. This is the lens through which the remainder of this section is constructed, thereby emphasizing the necessity and impact of diverse representations of gender in young adult literature.
A Time Line of Firsts
Building on the momentum from the publication of Luna (2004), Ellen Wittlinger wrote Parrotfish(2007)—the first instance of a trans man in young adult literature—which follows Grady in his physical and mental transition while dealing with an unaccepting family (figure 11.9). Two years later, BrianKatcher’s novel,Almost Perfect(2009) arrived on the scene and won a Stonewall Book Award from the American Library Association, the oldest and largest U.S.-based professional organization for librarians. Katcher’s novel began to gather more negative reviews from trans teens over the years following its publication, however, because of the many stereotypes the narrative relies on. In the same year, the novel Punkzilla (2009) by Adam Rapp was published and two more short stories came out in Michael Cart’s edited collection How Beautiful the Ordinary: Twelve Stories of Identity (2009).[40]
Figure 11.9. Ellen Wittlinger’s Parrotfish (2007). (Deborah Amory.)
Another first occurred with the publication of I Am J by Cris Beam in 2010 (figure 11.10). J is assigned female at birth and is looking for medical intervention to transition, but because he is not eighteen and his parents don’t know that he is trans, he cannot legally access hormone treatment. But what makes this novel a first is that J is both Jewish and Puerto Rican, making this the first instance of a nonwhite transgender teen in young adult literature.[41]
A banner year for literature for trans and gender-nonconforming young adults, 2012 saw the publication of three novels with transgender characters and the first instance of a two-spirit secondary character. Happy Families by Tanita S. Davis explores the lives of a Black family as their father comes out as transgender, and Rachel Gold’s Being Emily(2012) follows Emily as she is forced into reparative therapy to “cure” her transness.[42] Emily Danforth’s The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2012) also focuses on conversion therapy, and although it focuses on a lesbian protagonist, Danforth includes a two-spirit character named Adam.[43] Last, Kirstin Cronn-Mills published the Stonewall Book Award–winning Beautiful Music for Ugly Children (2012).[44]
Figure 11.10. I Am J by Cris Beam. (Deborah Amory.)
In 2013, Kristin Elizabeth Clark published Freakboy, a novel in verse from the perspectives of three different characters, two of whom are transgender. Another book,Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan, features alternating chapters from the perspectives of different characters, one of whom is transgender, which revolve around an attempt by two boys to break the world record for longest kiss.[45]
Middle grade literature saw its first transgender protagonist in 2014 with Ami Polonsky’s Gracefully Grayson. Additionally,For Today I Am a Boy, by Kim Fu, includes the first Asian trans protagonist (figure 11.11). But what makes 2014 stand out, in addition to these texts, is that the first instance of an intersex character appeared in Bridget Birdsall’s Double Exposure, in which Alyx struggles to understand and accept her body and her gender in a world of binaries. This year also saw the publication of a pair of trans young adult memoirs by Katie Rain Hill and Arin Andrews. Hill’s Rethinking Normal and Andrews’s Some Assembly Requiredexplore the lives of these teens both individually and during the time that they were dating each other. These books started a small wave of trans young adult memoir over the next five years. A further nonfiction title, Beyond Magenta, by Susan Kuklin, features the stories of trans youth and the challenges they face every day living in the United States.[46]
Figure 11.11. For Today I Am a Boy by Kim Fu. (Deborah Amory.)
Another transgender middle grade novel, George, came out in 2015 (figure 11.12). The book was written by Alex Gino, a genderqueer author, and garnered a number of awards. In 2021, the book was retitled Melissa to show respect for the protagonist’s gender identity. Robin Talley published What We Left Behind(2015), about Toni, a character questioning their gender.[47] According to Jenkins and Cart, within this novel “every conceivable word in the transgender vocabulary is bandied about, dissected, and analyzed,” making this novel not only enjoyable but also informative.[48] Two more intersex protagonists also showed up on the scene: Alex as Well(Alyssa Brugman, 2015) and None of the Above(I. W. Gregorio, 2015). And to make 2015 even more exciting, Pat Schmatz published Lizard Radio, featuring a nonbinary protagonist.[49]
Figure 11.12. The original publication and cover of Melissa by Alex Gino. (Deborah Amory.)
If I Was Your Girl(2016) was the first young adult novel written by a transgender author, Meredith Russo. That same year, Jeff Garvin published Symptoms of Being Human (2016), a novel focusing on a gender-fluid teen who explores expectations of a binary world both in high school life and online through a series of blog posts. Anna-Marie McLemore published a highly decorated novel called When the Moon Was Ours(2016), which features dual protagonists, one of whom is trans. Girl Mans Up(2016), a novel about a gender-nonconforming teen by Canadian author M-E Girard, was also published the same year.[50]
Books like Lizard Radio and When the Moon Was Ours showed the possibilities of combining trans narratives with genre fiction, a trend that continued into 2017 with Dreadnought by April Daniels and Mask of Shadows by Linsey Miller. An acclaimed nonfiction book by Dashka Slater, The 57 Bus(2017), chronicles the true story of a young trans girl whose skirt was set on fire in a prank and the young Black man who was painted as a monster in the wake of the crime. Jaya and Rasa, by Sonia Patel, a novel set in Hawaii, explores not only gender but also the plight of young sex workers. Another middle grade novel, Felix Yz, by Lisa Bunker, features a gender-fluid grandparent who goes by Grandy.[51]
In 2018, Adam Garnet Jones adapted his feature-length film into a young adult novel called Fire Song, which features Canadian Indigenous queer youth and looks at gender roles and gender expectations within that context (figure 11.13). Mason Deaver brought out another nonbinary character in I Wish You All the Best in 2019, and what makes it even better is that Deaver is a nonbinary author. Kings, Queens, and In-Betweens, by Tanya Boteju, features drag, gender questioning, and explorations of gender nonconformity with a diverse cast of primary and secondary characters.[52]
Two 2020 novels bringing new gender identities into mainstream young adult fiction are Kacen Callender, who writes about a demiboy in Felix Ever After, and in Somebody Told Me, Mia Siegert examines what it means to be bigender.[53]
Figure 11.13. Adam Garnet Jones’s Fire Song. (Deborah Amory.)
Many more new and emerging identities no doubt will be featured in the coming years, and considering how long it took from the emergence of queer literature for teens in 1969 to the first trans young adult novel in 2004, there has been a huge change in what is included under the umbrella of gender and sexual diversity in literature for teens. However, because there are still so few representations in the larger landscape, it is necessary to understand at least a few of the common and problematic tropes that exist in the body of transgender and gender-nonconforming literature for young adults. And along with those tropes, the overwhelming majority of existing young adult and middle grade fiction revolves around white middle-class suburban families under the umbrella of contemporary realistic fiction, making it difficult to even find racial and class diversity among trans and gender-nonconforming representation.
Tropes and Troubles
Many trans young adult novels until very recently have been written by cisgender authors, and therefore a large majority of earlier young adult novels feature tropes such as the wrong-body narrative in which being transgender is described almost entirely as being born into the wrong body. Although some trans people may feel this way, many do not, and for nontransgender audiences to see this trope time and again can reinforce the idea of a universal trans experience. Other tropes discussed here include the acceptance narrative, the hero’s journey, and the focus on physical transitioning in middle grade and young adult novels featuring trans and gender-nonconforming young people.
Clarence Harlan Orsi notes in the Los Angeles Review of Books, “A lot has changed for trans people in the last 15 years, yet the novels reflect a relatively unified perspective. . . . After reading only a handful of these books . . . , I could usually predict what would happen next.” He continues, “In the end, though, . . . they teach the kids (and parents) who read them what it means to be trans.”[54] When young adult novels and other forms of mainstream media continue to push the same tropes over and over again, audiences construct a false understanding of trans lived experiences, including the idea that trans existence is defined by physical and psychological trauma. Brian Katcher’s novel makes for an almost perfect (pardon the pun) jumping-off point to better understand other common tropes.
Almost Perfect is an award-winning novel, but its narrative arc and character descriptions follow what steadily became a well-worn trope thanks to Luna and Parrotfish. These early novels, and many since, follow a trope that Vee Signorelli calls the acceptance narrative, in which the focus is on cisgender characters and their ways of coping with transgender people in their lives. Even when the novels have trans narrators, they are still often focused on the reactions of cisgender peers or family members. Signorelli claims that in the acceptance narrative trope, cisgender characters often realize they have been horrible to trans people and should be nicer, but not until after many years of torment and trauma.[55]
In 2016, Signorelli expanded on the acceptance narrative, explaining a slightly more nuanced, but still problematic, trope in young adult literature: the hero’s journey. This trope seems more hopeful at first; the trans character tends to be the hero of their own story, and they often end up in a more hopeful place at the end. But within the main narrative arc, the trans character still endures hardship in the form of physical or psychological trauma. With both of these typical narrative trajectories involving violence toward trans characters, the ultimate message for young readers is that it is impossible to exist as a transgender or gender-nonconforming person without inevitable trauma. As Signorelli notes, “Over and over again, our pain is used, and misrepresented. To make the very people who make this world so terrifying for us feel good about themselves.”[56]
Even in memoir and other nonfiction, texts tend to focus on physical transition, medical intervention, and navigating trauma, which in turn raises the question: Who are these books for? With fictional trans characters and trans teen memoir focusing mostly on the transgender body, readers are left with the idea that being trans is entirely about the physical self, not about other aspects of life and enjoyment. It seems that much of the existing literature is still written to educate nontransgender readers rather than tell individual stories where trans characters can experience joy, purpose, and fulfillment.
Because so many novels follow this path, the idea of a universal trans experience means that existing literature may seem diversified on the surface, but underneath, the core of many trans young adult narratives is the same. Novels such as those by Deaver, Callender, Gino, and even those by trans youth themselves, like Katie Rain Hill and Arin Andrews, attempt to break free from the universality of so much existing representation. By using personal experiences—as trans and gender-nonconforming individuals—these authors can mirror their experiences within the literature that they create, thus allowing for more accurate and nuanced representation of trans and gender-nonconforming lives.
Things are certainly improving, but there is still a long way to go.
The Gender Question: Kacen Callender and Alex Gino on Nonbinary and Transgender Stories
Callender and Gino talk about how they write stories for young people in The Gender Question: Kacen Callender and Alex Gino on Nonbinary and Transgender Stories.(centerforfiction.org/videos/the-gender-question-kacen-callender-and-alex-gino-on-nonbinary-and-transgender-stories/)
How does Callender, after reading an excerpt, account for intersectionality in Felix Ever After? What does Gino add to this discussion?
The excerpt Callender reads from Felix Ever After is about the importance of names for trans characters and people in general. What happens to Felix in the scene, and how do Callender and Gino respond to it? What other young adult novels address this issue?
How do Callender and Gino describe gatekeepers? What forms does gatekeeping take? What makes queer content particularly vulnerable to censors according to these authors?
Check Your Knowledge
Contributed by Has Arakelyan, Rio Hondo College
Multiple-Choice Questions
1. Which novel is often cited as the first lesbian young adult novel in the United States?
A) Annie on My Mind
B) Ruby
C) Keeping You a Secret
D) The Miseducation of Cameron Post
2. The “found family” trope in queer young adult literature refers to:
A) biological relatives who accept the protagonist.
B) teachers and school staff.
C) friends and queer community members who provide support and love.
D) imaginary companions.
3. In trans and gender-nonconforming young adult literature, the “wrong-body narrative” is problematic because it:
A) reinforces the idea of a universal trans experience focused on physical transition.
B) always results in a happy ending.
C) centers on nonbinary characters.
D) avoids discussing trauma.
4. Which of the following is a significant “first” for intersectional representation in trans young adult literature?
A) the first nonbinary protagonist in Lizard Radio
B) the first Asian trans protagonist in For Today I Am a Boy
C) the first trans man protagonist in Parrotfish
D) All of the above
5. According to the chapter, what is a major trend in recent trans and gender-nonconforming young adult literature?
A) decreasing diversity of gender identities
B) increasingly nuanced and authentic representation by trans and nonbinary authors
C) exclusive focus on white, middle-class characters
D) avoidance of genre fiction
How have the major tropes in lesbian and trans young adult literature evolved over the past several decades, and what social factors have influenced these changes?
In what ways do “found family” and “queer community” themes provide support and validation for queer youth, both in literature and real life?
Discuss the impact of cisgender authors writing trans narratives. What are the benefits and drawbacks, and how does authorship affect authenticity and representation?
How do intersectional identities (race, class, ability, etc.) complicate or enrich the stories told in lesbian and trans young adult fiction?
What role do gatekeepers (publishers, educators, parents) play in shaping which queer stories reach young readers, and how might this influence the diversity of available narratives?
Multiple-Choice Questions - Answers
1. B) Ruby
2. C) friends and queer community members who provide support and love.
3. A) reinforces the idea of a universal trans experience focused on physical transition.
4. D) All of the above
5. B) increasingly nuanced and authentic representation by trans and nonbinary authors
