Follow us:
DR. BICKMORE'S YA WEDNESDAY
  • Wed Posts
  • PICKS 2025
  • Con.
  • Mon. Motivators 2025
  • WEEKEND PICKS 2024
  • Weekend Picks 2021
  • Contributors
  • Bickmore's Posts
  • Lesley Roessing's Posts
  • Weekend Picks 2020
  • Weekend Picks 2019
  • Weekend Picks old
  • 2021 UNLV online Summit
  • UNLV online Summit 2020
  • 2019 Summit on Teaching YA
  • 2018 Summit
  • Contact
  • About
  • WEEKEND PICKS 2023
    • WEEKEND PICKS 2023
  • Bickmore Books for Summit 2024

 

Check out our weekly posts!

Stay Current

Queer Shame, Pride, and Joy by Dr. Christian Gregory  (he, him, his)

6/22/2023

 
Picture

​Dr. Christian George Gregory
is an Assistant Professor at Saint Anselm College, teaching courses for preservice teachers in methods, pedagogy, the graphic novel, and Young Adult Literature.  He has written chapters on the history of both YAL and the graphic novel and published in English Journal, English Education, the Journal of LGBTQ Youth, and the  International Journal of Dialogic Pedagogy. His research interests are diversifying the canon, dialogical theory, and queer studies. 
Queer Shame, Pride, and Joy by Dr. Christian Gregory  (he, him, his)
For this YAL Wednesday post during Pride month, I invite you to celebrate Queer and Trans* Young Adult Literature (QT*YAL).  My title marks both the history, present state, and futurity of QT*YAL. As scholars have noted, the history of QT*YAL was marked by the common trope of “bury your gays” and “dead lesbian syndrome” in which characters enter narratives only to be punished for, presumably, the crime of identity (Hulan, 2017; Rofes, 2004). With the advent of gay rights movement came an emergence from shame, with the rallying cry, “Out of the closet and into the streets” (Gregory 2021). From this visibility came YAL narratives of coming out, coming-of-age, and coming to, in fits and starts, pride. 

The proliferation of QT*YAL titles in the past decade testifies the increased interest in queer narratives (Lo, 2011). Yet simultaneous with such progress has come notable pushback and restrictions. Book-banning and other forms of censorship have spread quickly across the nation in a partisan wild-fire. 

For this post, I hope to remind teachers of the value of these stories, knowing that queer and trans* students will find their way to these stories whether teachers elect or not to include them in curriculum. As states, districts, and schools are often their own political eco-systems, I urge instructors to consider the variety of ways to introduce these books to their students: through curricular choices, self-select reads, excepts, or school, public, or personal libraries. Each of these stories I here highlight has immense formative value for queer and trans* youth. There stories are far more than reflective mirrors. They refract the multiplicity of identities like diamonds.

One scholarly note:   For Halberstam (2018), trans* embraces the “unfolding categories of being organized around but not confined to forms of gender variance” and the asterisk refuses “to situated transition in relation to a destination, a final form, a specific shape, or an established configuration of desire and identity” (Halberstam, p.4). I use trans* to the variety of emergent identities and possibilities of more. 
Picture
​Flamer, by Mike Curato (he/him)

Biracial and Catholic, 14-year-old Aiden Navarro spends one week away at Boy scout camp in the summer before his entry into high school. At camp, Aiden confirms his strengths (knot-making or knowing all the campfire songs), and admits his challenges (archery). He also makes new friends, who appreciate his talents and humor, fights back against his bullies, and awakens to his attraction to his long-haired, football-playing friend Elias. Through this, Aiden finds inspiration in the courage and resilience of Christian Saints like St. Sebastian and Marvelverse icons, such as Jane Grey. Aiden’s caring top-knotted scout leader Tom provides an “orientation” lesson on how to find true north with his compass. When Aiden queries why there are two norths, a magnetic and true north, Tom responds, both as scout leader and queer mentor: “There is no ‘right’ north, really. This is all about figuring out how to get where you need to go. It’s not always straightforward” (p.203).

For LGBTQ+ students: Aiden’s complex intersectionality of identity (Filipino-American, Catholic, and gay) provides students the intersectional identities he navigates on a daily basis.  Semi-autobiographical, Flamer depicts both ideations of suicide, its failed attempt, and the crucial message that “when you think the fire is out…you are wrong […] the fire isn’t done burning” (p.352; 358). Queer students have urged their parents to purchase copies, as noted by children’s book author Katey Howes in her tweet to Curato: “my 15 y.o. (proudly bi) daughter read FLAMER in an afternoon and demanded I buy her 3 more copies which she plans to “secretly deliver” to “friends who really need this book” So thank you. Seriously. Massive Thank yous” (Howes, 2020).

For Teachers: Flamer is one of the most contested banned books nationwide; it is a true-to-life queer BIPOC coming-of-age story. As such, it includes hate language, particularly among boys trying to regulate masculinity among themselves (Pascoe, 2007); it also depicts sexual anxiety, romantic fantasy, and a lights-out masturbation session among boys at camp. Nothing is explicit and all seems brutally authentic. This is a work that, even in writing about suicide, values queer life. This is a book that may truly save lives.

Picture
Pet by Akwaeke Emezi (they/them) 

From ogbanje transgender Nigerian writer Akwaeke Emezi comes this allegorical fantasy of monsters and angels and how art may provide imagined strategies to respond to untruths and suppressive forces. Trans* protagonist Jam and her family reside in Lucille, where monsters have been bested by angels. Jam searches for this history, and knowing that anyone can forget what monsters look like, she retreats to a library of books. Meanwhile, her mother, Bitter, has finished a painting of hybrid creature, which, with a drop of Jam’s blood, comes to life as Pet with the single purpose to “hunt” everyday monsters, not yet known or seen. In the end, this indelible allegory concerns hunting sexual predators and unearthing the often hidden, unspoken crimes of child abuse.

For LGBTQ+ students: The details of Jam’s identity formation, her claim of being in the wrong body, her self-advocacy for hormone blockers and trans* health options, her parents loving support of this identity, functions as a timely counternarrative to today’s anti-trans* legislation. Further, the narrative follows the trans*-protagonist on a quest narrative for justice rather than a more common, valuable narratives of gender formation (See Gender Queer). By illustrating trans* lives as heroic, justice-seeking, and protective of children, Emezi engages in a speculative world-building where queer and trans* students can imagine themselves agents, activists, and heroes.

For Teachers: Provides examples of trans*-supportive families, networks, and alternative family structures. Trans*, queer, and non-binary characters populate this speculative town. As such, the fiction both reflects and imagines queer positive family groupings with the BIPOC community. 

​
Picture
All Boys Aren’t Blue, George M. Johnson (they/them)

A memoir at the intersection of Blackness and queerness, Johnson recounts his middle-class upbringing in New Jersey. Their story encompasses a coming-of-age story that tackles various queer phobias (homophobia, femmephobia, transphobia) and how the extended Black family structure, imperfect as it is, finds space for support and acceptance. Johnson’s positionality is that of the queer friend, advocate, mentor, guide, and support. They are best friend, brother, mother, and chosen family, telling tales, citing cautionary facts and figures, and offering queer front-porch advise, seasoned with bon mots, clever comebacks. Johnson’s a hard-won coming-out story, as they write, “We see coming out stories all the time…what we don’t see is what led up to that moment. How many times a person tried to push past that barrier to get to that point” (p.237). 

For LGBTQ+ students: Johnson’s memoir plumbs the depths of intersectionality. Whether it is code-switching between gendered language or between racial identity, Johnson often finds himself double-dutching between two fast ropes of identity: “it was me jumping between personas: the person I wanted to be on the inside versus the person society told me I had to be on the outside” (p.69). 

For Teachers: Johnson’s work reminds educators of the “creativity of children” who may “not met the acceptable standard of gender performance” (p. 59) and who may not conform to strict binary ideas about manner and mannerism. This book addresses Johnson’s double marginalization in ways that other works may not address. They must content with queerness within their familial structure, blackness and queerness within their white, Catholic high school, and queerness within their historically Black university. Notably, a chapter on sexual assault and incest, which likely led to its ban from libraries, is complex, fascinating, and responsibly managed. Knowing that sexual coming-of-age is often delayed for queer folk, a “second adolescence” (p.274) lived later, Johnson provides what they never received: a chapter devoted to sexual education, including narrative, reflection, and data and stats on HIV transmission in Black queer communities.

​
Picture
Gender Queer: A Memoir, Maia Kobabe (pronouns: e/em/eir)

A coming-of-age/coming out graphic novel regarding the complexity of identity. The work begins in shame, an act of masking, with paper and tape, a cartoon book project titled “Gender Queer” and ends, years later in a classroom, as Kobabe, teaching middle schoolers, considers whether and how to share eir pronouns the class. Those last words, “Next time, next time, I will come out” (p.238) illustrates the complexity facing queer and trans* teachers face. The breath of the narrative contains the confusion, elation, and stops and starts of gender queer identity construction. 

For LGBTQ+ students: Most remarkable about this memoir is the authentically cloudy journey sense of self-discovery: of one’s body, sexuality, gender presentation, neurophilosopy, and identity. This work, exploratory, revelatory, provides non-binary and/or trans* students with language and thinking that can clarify the confusion of identity formation. 

For Teachers: Kobabe’s work, one of the most contested in the book bans, is such a mirror into the internal anxieties facing non-binary, gender queer, and trans* people. Chapters, passages, sequences and page spreads may provide a helpful frame for classroom discussion. The constellation of family, friends, and most of all, books (fiction, fantasy, comics, and science theory) reinforce the value in reading and its heuristic effect on identity.

The Paradox of Shame, Pride and Joy

While some works address shame surrounding queer and trans* identities (Curato, 2020; Johnson, 2020; Kobabe, 2020), often the authors write a pathway out toward some self-affirmation. From the shame’s dull pain or confusion’s fog, pride seems to be the destination. Yet pride is not without its complications. As wonderful as pride is, it can be an armature against heteronormative, homophobic, and transphobic structures. One needs pride to combat these counter forces. Pride is a defense, a reclamation, an assertion of one’s value to non-queer folk. Pride is an antidote to shame. 

Queer joy is another affect altogether; it can be an incredibly private expression, though often it expresses itself publicly. Yet public or private, queer joy serves its maker first and those with whom it is shared, second. Further, in its expression and presentation, queer joy, fountain-like, returns to its source. It need not, as pride so often does, combat shame; it often feels the result, at least in the moment, of a shame-free zone. Needless to say, queer joy is often shameless. 

Shame. Pride. Joy. All such affects are embedded into today’s QT*YAL and seem reflective of the specific, paradoxical state in which we reside. Queer youth are experiencing pride, joy, and, shame all at once. Queer students are more visible, and, at the same time, more vulnerable (Paris and Cain Miller, 2023). Teachers and students today reside in pride and joy, while contending with the real toll psychologically from systemic homophobia and trans*phobia.

Queer Joy

Let’s end in joy. In the works mentioned, one might tease out moments of transcendence, of joy: in the mastery of a basket weaving failure and exchange of jokes in summer camp in Flamer; in the trans*-heroic, self-knowing protagonist of Pet, and finding just the right floral pattern of self-presentation in Gender Queer. In All Boy’s Aren’t Blue, Johnson writes hopefully that their queer liberation would come by going away to college; but in truth, it came form the power of identifying with Beyoncé. It’s not that Johnson wanted be Beyoncé; as he writes, “I wanted to be me, in Virginia, and dance to her. I wanted to BE ME dancing to her” (p.231). Her power afforded theirs. Her passion, theirs. Her joy, theirs. 

Johnson’s moment of queer joy came through their immersive experience of Beyoncé, a pleasure analogous to reading. Each reader’s connection to a character’s queer joy forges a parasocial relation – a friend, a mentor, a form of support. And queer youth need support. Sometimes it comes in the form of family. Sometimes friends. But it can also come from stories and characters to reflect and refract their own experience. In reading about another, queer youth find the space to be and to encounter and reflect on all the emotions that come with queer being. The landscape of queer joy is a most crucial part of queer affect. It is a space not visited often enough. 

Picture
Richard Lowe
8/16/2023 08:09:13 am

Are you in need of help to get your ex back and stop your divorce? I urge you not to cry no more for Dr Kala is the solution to your problem. Dr Kala is a powerful love spell caster who helps in getting ex back and stop divorce. He helped me to get my ex husband back after separation. My Husband packed out to live with his mistress and he sent me divorce papers. I tried all I could to get him back but he refused to return home and I suspected the lady used some magic spell on him to hold him down. I got to know about Dr Kala in a youtube comment where i was looking for help to get my husband back and i contacted him and explain my problem to him and he did the work and my husband return back home after 2 days and he apologies for the pains he put me through and we are living happily together for good. Here is Dr Kala contact Email: [email protected] or WhatsApp +2347051705853 if you need his help to get your ex back and stop divorce. I will continue sharing this testimony to every platform so that whoever needs to go get his/her ex back should contact Dr Kala and he will help you to get your ex back.

Anya Molrich
9/2/2023 09:20:03 pm

For people who needs their ex back. I decided to also write a testimony about this spell caster because I met his email [email protected] through a testimony too written by someone who got her ex back through this man. My name is Anya Molrich and the man who got my ex back is Priest Odunga. My ex was Wilfred. I got him back to me after 4 years of separation. This man helped me immediately after 24 hours and I am happy I got Wilfred back. You want your ex back? Contact Priest Odunga at [email protected].

Clara Smith
11/7/2023 01:52:09 am

Contact Dr Ozigidon if you have been trying to conceive, I never thought I'd be writing this message but after 5 years of infertility and nearly lost my marriage due to not being able to have a child after suffering from PCOS and my TUBES ARE TIED, and severe endometriosis and scanning, I was told that IVF was the only option. This was something we could not afford and had almost given up hope of becoming a parent. A friend of mine recommended Dr Ozigidon to me and persuaded me to contact him, I finally contacted him and he made a spiritual breakthrough to get me pregnant with his powerful spell, within 2 weeks I was pregnant (naturally!!!) and my tube was untied as instructed by this powerful sorcerer. Now! I gave birth to healthy twins in February. I am writing this testimony for those women who are facing the same challenges or even more, depressed with no light at the end of the tunnel. Give Dr Ozigidon a try to help you solve your problem, and hopefully you'll have the same success that I have had. His email address ([email protected]) . Call or Whats-App him +2349054750112. I wish you all happiness in your marriages.

Eunice
1/25/2024 07:43:42 am


Thank you DOCTOR ODUNGA for making me fertile after 22 years of marriage. I am a barren woman, in fact now it is, I was a barren woman. I say this testimony in regards to Doctor Odunga who granted my wish after 22 years of marriage. No one in my people and friends or family believed I would ever get pregnant, not to talk of giving birth. Now I am a mother of twins? I am indeed the happiest woman to say this testimony for everyone to read. I am Eunice Stein. I am 54 years of age. This is my first writing on the net about anything this serious, especially as for 22 years I have not been pregnant once since I got married to my husband. Please, do you need help with your fertility problem? CONTACT DOCTOR ODUNGA. Do you need your problem solved such as getting your ex back? CONTACT DOCTOR ODUNGA. He is the solution to all your problems. His online email is [email protected] he will solve all your problems OR Whats-App/Call +2348167159012


Comments are closed.

    Dr. Steve Bickmore
    ​Creator and Curator

    Dr. Bickmore is a Professor of English Education at UNLV. He is a scholar of Young Adult Literature and past editor of The ALAN Review and a past president of ALAN. He is a available for speaking engagements at schools, conferences, book festivals, and parent organizations. More information can be found on the Contact page and the About page.
    Dr. Gretchen Rumohr
    Co-Curator
    Gretchen Rumohr is a professor of English and writing program administrator at Aquinas College, where she teaches writing and language arts methods.   She is also a Co-Director of the UNLV Summit on the Research and Teaching of Young Adult Literature. She lives with her four girls and a five-pound Yorkshire Terrier in west Michigan.

    Bickmore's
    ​Co-Edited Books

    Picture
    Meet
    Evangile Dufitumukiza!
    Evangile is a native of Kigali, Rwanda. He is a college student that Steve meet while working in Rwanda as a missionary. In fact, Evangile was one of the first people who translated his English into Kinyarwanda. 

    Steve recruited him to help promote Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media while Steve is doing his mission work. 

    He helps Dr. Bickmore promote his academic books and sometimes send out emails in his behalf. 

    You will notice that while he speaks fluent English, it often does look like an "American" version of English. That is because it isn't. His English is heavily influence by British English and different versions of Eastern and Central African English that is prominent in his home country of Rwanda.

    Welcome Evangile into the YA Wednesday community as he learns about Young Adult Literature and all of the wild slang of American English vs the slang and language of the English he has mastered in his beautiful country of Rwanda.  

    While in Rwanda, Steve has learned that it is a poor English speaker who can only master one dialect and/or set of idioms in this complicated language.

    Archives

    June 2025
    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    June 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014

    Categories

    All
    Chris-lynch

    Blogs to Follow

    Ethical ELA
    nerdybookclub
    NCTE Blog
    yalsa.ala.org/blog/

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly