Okay, let me
start by saying I’m a lesbian. A big ol’
lesbian. I’m also an avid lover of
books. My mother raised me to believe
that reading is the best way to both entertain and educate yourself. I read hundreds of books as a child. Thousands, probably—everything from biography
to history to gothic, fantasy and science fiction. Never, though, did I ever see such an
important part of myself in a book as when I opened a battered copy of Mercedes
Lackey’s Magic’s Pawn.
“He doesn’t like girls,” giggled an
idiot on page 81. “He likes boys. Lucky boys!"
She snickered the words behind her
hand, whispering like it was something to be ashamed of, despite the beauty of
Tylendel, the boy who was the subject of her speculations. That’s the only way I’d ever seen gay people
depicted in literature. They were a
subject of hushed words and knowing glances, their lives the topic of
scandalous gossip in locker rooms or pointed sermons in churches. Having been raised deep in the American south,
this was familiar ground. This was my
reality.
Twenty pages later, though, the
protagonist—the distinctly male protagonist—and Tylendel were kissing one
another furiously.
I blinked.
I read it again to make sure I’d
gotten it right.
Vanyel was gay.
He was gay, and he was the main
character of a mainstream fantasy novel by a bestselling author. Mercedes Lackey wasn’t speaking in whispers
or giggling behind her hand as she muttered indecencies to girls who got off on
being scandalized. She wasn’t making a
statement against him. His sexuality
wasn’t even the point of the novel. It
was simply a part of his life and a part of his personality, as it is for every
other gay boy out there.
“There is in you a fear, a shame,
placed there by your own doubts and the thoughts of one who knew no better,”
she tells Vanyel through the words of another character. “There is no shame in loving.”
I don’t remember how old I was. Fifteen?
Sixteen? It doesn’t matter. I cried when I read those words. My hands shook, and I lost the ability to
breathe. Never had I read anything that
so echoed what I felt within me.
When I finished the book, I read
every other novel I could find by Mercedes Lackey, and what I discovered was
that almost all of her books included gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender
characters. Why? Because they’re a part of the world, and
literature is about the world. The whole
of it, and not just the parts that so much of society finds savory.
I began finding characters like this
in novels by other authors as well (Tanya Huff’s The Fire’s Stone, for instance, and Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat), and my heart stamped out a lovely
beat.
Mostly what I
found, though, is that books with LGBT main characters aren’t usually filed
under the major genres. They’re
segregated out and slipped into a category specifically titled “gay and lesbian
literature”. I found the same issue with
books centered around protagonists of other minorities—black ones, Hispanic
ones, disabled ones, autistic ones, ones of multiple races or ethnicities. Books about those individuals are largely
filed under “ethic literature” or a similarly titled section of the book
store. They’re also largely
self-published, or published by small presses that specialize in printing
literature for and about minorities.
There were
and are exceptions, of course, but from what I’ve seen, most books, to be
considered part of a mainstream genre, usually require a protagonist who is
both straight and white.
I hate this
with the fiery passion of a thousand burned books.
I hate this
as a lesbian, as a woman, as a human being, and as the mother of a young girl
who is black, white and Cuban, a young girl who may never grow to see herself
reflected back at her from the pages of a book, at least not in a way that
tells her she is a part of something rather than apart from it. I don’t want her to grow up in this world in
which the romance genre is divided into romance, ethnic romance, and LGBT
romance, in which the sci-fi/fantasy shelves, teen fiction and YA fiction
shelves are stocked with straight white protagonists and all novels that don’t
fit into that mold are relegated to the segregated shelves under the heading of
“LGBT Literature” or “African American Literature” regardless of the novel’s
true genre.
I fell in
love with Mercedes Lackey because she is the first author I ever read whose
books defied this particular social norm.
Her books were mainstream. They
were found in the sci-fi/fantasy section of every book store I walked into, not in the gay literature section. They were sitting right there in the middle
of a hundred other fantasy books, like it was a completely normal thing to do.
Which it was,
of course. It still is.
We need
diversity in literature because life is diverse. I don’t read books exclusively about women,
about mothers, about lesbians, about 9-1-1 dispatchers. I am these things, sure, but I read books
about everything because I am also a part of the world, and I want to read
about everything and everyone in it.
Books are about the world, and they should reflect more than just a
single part of it. We need Hispanic
protagonists, Japanese protagonists, gay ones, transgender ones, protagonists
with same sex parents, adoptive parents, single parents. We need protagonists who are adoptive parents. We
need all of these things and so much more, and we need them in supporting roles
as well. We need them in books that are
sitting right smack in the midst of every other book out there, not stuffed
into a corner of the store by themselves, visited only by those people who are
black, are lesbian, are anything that is actually included in those corner
sections. Why? Because these people deserve to see
themselves as a part of the world, and because all people need to be exposed,
both in life and in literature, to that which is not a part of their own
lives.
To put it
simply, a book is LGBT literature when the focus of the book is exploring
issues specifically related to being LGBT.
A book is not LGBT literature
simply because the main character happens to be LGBT. This is something so many people and so many
publishers seem to miss or dismiss, and not just in reference to us big ol’
lesbians. It happens to books and movies
who happen to be about anyone who isn’t straight or white (or even male),
really.
We need more
Mercedes Lackeys in this world, and we need more publishers, more editors (and
more filmmakers) willing to offer these writers their support, their contracts
and their printers.
