For this challenge, there were two categories, one for librarians (which sadly I am not) and one for bloggers and readers. For readers you were challenged to read Young Adult books that either had an LGBT character as a main character or significant side character (protagonists' best friend, love interest, etc.) or were written by a person of color or an LGBT author. One lucky person can win fabulous prizes (click on Reading Challenge at the top to see the rules of the contest)
I personally was more drawn to the LGBT side of the challenge, so that's what I focused my reading on. I read Beauty Queens by Libba Bray where one of the beauty queens is a lesbian, The Bermudez Triangle by Maureen Johnson which is about friendship and sexuality and discovering who you are and how to be that person (one of my all time favorite books), Hex Hall and Demonglass by Rachel Hawkins in which Sophie's roommate is gay, Empress of the World by Sara Ryan about a girl who falls in love with another girl at a summer program, and Bloodhound by Tamora Pierce (which I don't know if it quite works for this challenge since the gay couple aren't exactly main side characters, but I wanted to address it as well).
One of the things that really struck me about these books, especially ones where the LGBT relationship wasn't the main focus (like the Rachel Hawkins books) is that the authors write their characters like it was no big deal that they were gay. They weren't even saying, "Well this character is gay and isn't that wonderful?" They instead were saying, "Yes, this character has brown hair and is gay and has green eyes and is tall. Now moving on with the story." It was simply another character trait.
This is also something my friends (who watch much more BBC than I do) have pointed out about British TV vs American TV. If we have a LGBT character at all on American television there seems to be extra effort exerted to show that this character is just like everyone else. With British TV, they don't put in that effort; they figure everyone knows the character is like everyone else and it's just another facet of their personality.
I also noticed (just from the books I read and maybe this isn't true of all of them) that when the relationship is the focus of the book (like Bermudez Triangle and Empress of the World) the relationship doesn't work out. Why? Can't I have a sweet happy gay or lesbian story that ends well for all involved? Why can't they just end up together? And please, if you know of a book where this happens feel free to leave it in the comments. I'd love to read it.
I do want to talk about Bloodhound and Okha Soyan and Nestor Haryse. I loved how Tamora Pierce wrote this relationship. She didn't try to tell the reader that "Of course this person is gay and isn't it wonderful" and highlight that. But she didn't ignore the fact that some of her readers don't understand people who are transgender or why men can see themselves as women and have relationships with men. One of my favorite quotes in this whole book is Okha explaining to Beka, (and I'm paraphrasing since I can't find the exact quote) "The Trickster god played a cruel trick on me, putting a woman's soul into a man's body." It's a beautiful passage with the perfect explanation (at least in my mind) of what transgender people feel in their hearts.
I really enjoyed taking on this challenge. I enjoyed the books that I read and the ideas it provoked. I really hope that through books more people can learn acceptance. Books are one of the best ways that people can be introduced to ideas other than their own and begin to change their minds toward the better. If you understand how someone thinks, you can better see their side of an argument and understand why they feel what they feel. From there it's not a hard leap to humanity being just a little less cruel.
