Straightwashing

The Guardian UK reports on the previously secretive phenomenon of authors, Young Adult writers in particular, being asked to "straightwash" their characters.

Sherwood Smith and Rachel Manija Brown's co-written YA novel, Stranger, includes the viewpoint of Yuki as one of its five main characters. Yuki is gay and has a boyfriend, with whom he does "nothing more explicit" than kissing. Writing in the US trade magazine Publishers Weekly, the two published authors say they were contacted by an agent from a "major" literary agency, who offered to sign them up "on the condition that we make the gay character straight, or else remove his viewpoint and all references to his sexual orientation".

The two authors believe that "forcing all major characters in YA novels into a straight white mould is a widespread, systemic problem which requires long-term, consistent action". They suggest that both editors and agents who are open to novels with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender protagonists make this explicit, that readers vote with their pockets and that writers speak out about similar experiences. "How many published novels with a straight white heroine and a lesbian or black or disabled best friend once had those roles reversed, before an agent demanded a change? This does not make for better novels. Nor does it make for a better world. Let's make a better world," they say.

Author Jessica Verday experienced a similar problem.

Author Scott Tracey discusses this issue on his blog.

I had agents who said there wasn’t a market for a paranormal with a gay character who had a romance. I had editors suggest they would reconsider the book if Braden and Trey became Brenda and Trey. Or if I removed the romance and made it a straight girl/gay guy buddy comedy.

Now, at the end of the day, my book wound up exactly where it was meant to: at a publishing house that loved the story, and an editor who was super supportive right from the beginning.

And his most important statement: "If you want more books with LGBT content, buy the ones that are already out there. Show publishers that there’s profit to be made by investing in these books."

See Me, Read Me

Here's a new book that tackles a different disability; blindness.

Dorothy's Closet has an interview with author Belo Miguel Cipriani, whose book Blind: A Memoir tells of his harrowing experience in being violently attacked, and his recovery, while becoming blind.

I struggled with the idea of recovery from disabling injuries in my own book. Is the reader supposed to anticipate or hope for a character's full recovery? Is his love interest supposed to? should anyone?

I was quite amused by the Cipriani's response to a reader:

"A guy approached me at a bar and told me that my book had left him unfulfilled; it didn't feel like a good ending to him because I did not get my vision back. I mentioned to him that my book is a memoir and that not everyone in life gets justice. The man continued to tell me he had hoped for a happy ending – to which I replied, 'You should go to a massage parlor for that.'”

Check out Dorothy's Closet for more LGBT books reviews.

Oniony

Just. Too. Awful (and funny).

Nation Afraid To Admit 9-Year-Old Disabled Poet Really Bad

The good intentions of Luke's poetry, coupled with his heartbreaking illness, make it difficult for Americans to recognize and acknowledge the poor quality of his work. The poems are fraught with saccharine sentimentality, slapdash mixed metaphors, and endless clichés involving rivers and the sun.

One example from "What's Most Important," a poem in his most recent book, Offering Of Hopeweavings:

The things that are important in life / Are not wealth and fame / But the sun peering through the clouds / Its light shining on flower petals / And warming a kitten's nose / Making everything beautiful / Because that is what God wants / For us to be happy.

Today I'm going through another round of re-re-rewrites on the manuscript. A dear friend has been checking it for what I call "Cliché Alerts." Originally, I set out to make Reid's narrative voice a bit precocious, like that of a smart yet perhaps overwrought teen whose voice was a bit wordy and florid.

After several friends have read it in-progress, it became clear that some of it was just plain bad! This has all been an interesting experiment, a very different process than my others works. I just hope that in its final version, it doesn't -like the poems of this fictional child author- suck!

Parks & Rec

At the risk of being a bit future-anachronistic, here's an "It Gets Better" video released by the Department of the Interior. I'd like to think that in some kind of fiction-real future projection, an older Reid would be one of these speakers.