Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith have a post up at Genreville, Say Yes to Gay YA:
I've seen a lot of people say some incisive things about this, and I wanted to emphasize two things in particular to bear in mind. As Seanan McGuire points out, the issue here isn't that there are YA books with queer characters out there. Buying, reading, and recommending the YA books with queer characters that have been published is an excellent way to show your support for queer characters in YA fiction, to be sure. But a few isolated exceptions that prove the rule don't disprove the rule. And characters who are subtextually rather than textually queer in YA books aren't examples of queer characters in YA books; they're examples of characters in YA books who may or may not be in the closet.
The other thing is that this particular instance is most obviously about a gay character in a YA book, but the same gatekeeping happens in regards to characters of color, to disabled characters, to just about any and all characters who aren't the normative straight, white protagonist that agents and publishers seem so happy to put out ad infinitum. None of the POV characters in Brown and Smith's novel are white, and I suspect quite strongly that even if all the POV characters were as straight as a yardstick, they'd still be having trouble finding representation. Maybe they wouldn't have been told explicitly that race was the reason; maybe they would have. It wouldn't change the effect of this systemic bias, regardless.
This is not about one particular book; nor is self-publishing this particular book going to solve the systemic biases in the publishing industry.
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lightgetsin
On a happier note, Gene Yang, who is going to be doing the post-series A:TLA comics, has an interview up at Racebending.com! I am SO EXCITED.
The agent offered to sign us on the condition that we make the gay character straight, or else remove his viewpoint and all references to his sexual orientation.
I've seen a lot of people say some incisive things about this, and I wanted to emphasize two things in particular to bear in mind. As Seanan McGuire points out, the issue here isn't that there are YA books with queer characters out there. Buying, reading, and recommending the YA books with queer characters that have been published is an excellent way to show your support for queer characters in YA fiction, to be sure. But a few isolated exceptions that prove the rule don't disprove the rule. And characters who are subtextually rather than textually queer in YA books aren't examples of queer characters in YA books; they're examples of characters in YA books who may or may not be in the closet.
The other thing is that this particular instance is most obviously about a gay character in a YA book, but the same gatekeeping happens in regards to characters of color, to disabled characters, to just about any and all characters who aren't the normative straight, white protagonist that agents and publishers seem so happy to put out ad infinitum. None of the POV characters in Brown and Smith's novel are white, and I suspect quite strongly that even if all the POV characters were as straight as a yardstick, they'd still be having trouble finding representation. Maybe they wouldn't have been told explicitly that race was the reason; maybe they would have. It wouldn't change the effect of this systemic bias, regardless.
This is not about one particular book; nor is self-publishing this particular book going to solve the systemic biases in the publishing industry.
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lightgetsin I was recently treated to another round of “disabled people need to just ask for accommodations, then they’d be given them,” with the usual accompaniments of “you shouldn’t be so angry” and “you should be nicer."
So I figured, okay. I know this is bullshit from a lifetime of experience, but let’s gather some data.
What I did
I gave myself 7 days. Every time during that 7 days I ran into a particular kind of inaccessibility, I wrote to the owner/relevant authority and asked them to fix it. I aimed for short, factual, informative request letters.
On a happier note, Gene Yang, who is going to be doing the post-series A:TLA comics, has an interview up at Racebending.com! I am SO EXCITED.