Love & LiteraTea Opportunity for LGBTQ+ High School Students

This week we’re pleased to share the Love & LiteraTea online book group. Love and LiteraTea is “a safe and affirming place for LGBTQ+ youth to connect through books and pop culture”.

Every academic year, students and facilitators will read and discuss LGBTQ+ young adult books along with supplementary literature and media. The books chosen as the foundational texts for this year center on authors and characters who identify as LGBTQ+ and Black, Indigenous, People of Color. The list of books can be found at the end of our blog.

This Fall will be their first year. Their mission is to empower, uplift, and provide community for LGBTQ+ youth by reading and discussing the work of LGBTQ+ writers and artists. Founded by queer teachers, shea martin and Dr. Cody Miller, Love & LiteraTea is a virtual community that aims to create connections in a space rooted in radical love, truth, and pride. 

This group is not a class, and there are no grades. Love and LiteraTea is a space to read, discuss, and amplify LGBTQ+ stories. “This space is by and for LGBTQ people who love reading, sharing, and discussing books!”

Love & Literatea is run by Dr. Henry “Cody” Miller and shea martin.                                 

                                 Dr. Henry “Cody” Miller (he/him/his)        shea martin (they/them/theirs)

Any members of the LGBTQ+ community who are in high school are welcome to join. The application process can be found here (https://www.loveliteratea.com/apply) and applications are due at 11:59PM on October 5, 2020.

Please share this information with anyone who may be interested.

Love & Literatea is free to join, and books will be provided to readers pending funding. (Group members can also buy their own books). Dr. Miller and shea martin will meet bi-weekly (and virtually) with exact dates TBD.

Here are the books Love & LiteraTea will be discussing this year:

“Anger is a Gift” by Mark Oshiro        “The Black Flamingo” by Dean Atta

   

“Felix Ever After” by Kacen Callender   "Juliet Takes a Breath” by Gabby Rivera    

              

“Like a Love Story” by Abdi Nazemian "Cemetery Boys” by Aiden Thomas

For those who are not able to join but would still love to contribute, here is the GoFundMe to find more information and donate: https://www.gofundme.com/f/loveliteratea?utm_source=customer&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet&utm_medium=copy_link_all

In addition, here is their Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/loveliteratea

The first $1000 raised will go towards supplying a copy of their first book to each participant, digital resources accompanying the book, and a safe, password protected space for participants and facilitators to meet.

In addition, check out shea martin (https://twitter.com/sheathescholar) and Cody Miller (https://twitter.com/codymillerela) on Twitter to get to know them!

Here is their website to get more information: https://www.loveliteratea.com/

The NCSCL is so happy to hear about this fantastic opportunity for LGBTQ+ youth. Please share this with anyone who may be interested!

-(SS)

Dr. Naomi Hamer's Talk "Enter Through the Gift Shop"

Hello scholars!

We are so excited to invite you to Dr. Naomi Hamer’s talk, “Enter through the Gift Shop: Transmedia Storytelling and the Picture Book from Mobile Apps to Museums”.  Dr. Hamer’s talk will be February 19, 2020 4:00 to 5:30pm in Love Library 430. We are always so grateful for such insightful talks, and we know this one will be no different!

Dr. Naomi Hamer is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Ryerson University. Her current research and publications examine the cross-media adaptation of children's literature with a focus on picture books, mobile apps, and children’s museums. She is the co-editor of More Words About Pictures: Current Research on Picture Books and Visual/Verbal Texts for Young People (eds. Hamer, Nodelman and Reimer, 2017), and The Routledge Companion of Fairy-tale Cultures and Media (eds. Greenhill, Rudy, Hamer, and Bosc, 2018). Her current research project (Curating the Story Museum) has been awarded a SSHRC Insight Development Grant.

This lecture presents highlights from her ongoing research on the adaptation, remediation, and commodification of picture books. This work focuses on how transmedia storytelling offers opportunities for counterpoint and disruptive narratives by authors and readers of picture books while also addressing the limitations of interactive and mobile technologies. Framed by cross-disciplinary work on transmedia storytelling and digital cultures, cross-media case studies of canonical picture books reveal the absences and omissions in the texts chosen by publishing houses, entertainment companies, and children's museums for adaptations and exhibitions focused on picture books. The lives and experiences of Indigenous youth, 2SLGBTQIA+ communities, and young people of color (and their families) are only recently featured as central to picture books, and tend to be less likely the focus for dominant cross-media franchises. This lecture particularly explores the development of the Pism Finds her Miskanow story app (2019) as well as select examples from picture book exhibitions as venues for dialogue and play with picture book narratives.

Leading up to the talk you can find Dr. Hamer on Twitter @naomihamertime to get to know her!

We look forward to seeing you there!

-(SS)

It's Time to "Take the Mic"

Sometimes I feel helpless. Or rather, I can’t help anyone.

I can’t help the people who were told to go back to their country. I couldn’t help the young black man fatally shot for wearing a hoodie. I don’t know how to help children kept in cages. Sometimes I don’t know if it is possible to make a difference just by myself.   

Really, how can we do anything? How can we help those who are wronged by our country?

Take the Mic: Fictional Stories of Everyday Resistance edited by Bethany C. Morrow shows everyone, from children to adults, how to take a stand in the real world and make a difference.

The Helpers by L.D. Lewis is a particularly striking story, surrounding a young girl, Allie, during a sudden city-wide blackout. Unable to find her older sister, a medic named Sasha, Allie leaves her house and goes around the city to find her sister and giving help along the way. She first does seemingly small acts, like providing clean water to help clean a cut, then finds a collapsed building. She begins to help dig people from the building, putting aside her personal goal of finding her sister.

Allie must step into the role of a medic and helps her neighbors hands-on. She runs into a cast of characters, including a white man and a brown man fighting, and the brown man shouting, “I know you did this!” and later says “Nah, his [the white man’s] people came out here and blew all this shit up trying to Make America Great” (44), a reminder that tragedies aren’t just tragedies, they’re political, and they need to be discussed.

This isn’t the only time the current American president is alluded to. In Yamile Saied Méndez’s Aurora Rising, Aurora, an Argentian-American, encounters many instances of racism while staying at her friend Sadie’s house, these instances sounding all too familiar. Sadie’s father comments on Aurora’s cleaning, saying “I guess it’s in the blood, right?” (86). Later, he misidentifies her as Spanish: “Spanish?...But your English’s perfect!” (87).

When things can’t seem to get worse, after ruining her shirt, Aurora is handed a shirt with the words “Clean Up America”, an echo of current misconceptions of immigration. Aurora struggles, thinking: “wearing [the shirt] would be going against my family values…it would be sending a big F-You to my parents’ sacrifices as immigrants in America” (90). She later realizes “any crumb of friendship I’d had with Sadie had died too” (99). In this eerily familiar story, we are reminded of those ridiculed, hurt, and ostracized in our current political climate.

Although we can never go back in time and help those unjustly treated, these two stories served as important reminders: While The Helpers reminds us that we can help others even in small ways, Aurora Rising reminds us of why we need to help others. We not only can be involved in helping a community tragedy, but perhaps as importantly we can try to use our voices for those who may be silenced.

But how can we help right now?

We can educate ourselves on our current political and social climate and learn how we can get involved. Be involved by voting or participating in community marches. Just as important, we can learn to listen to and support others who are faced with injustice. Take the Mic reminds us we need to open both our ears and our hearts to others.

Maybe we can stop another life from being taken of another voice from being silenced, by either taking the mic, or passing it to others who can’t quite reach it.

We can do something. We can make a difference. We are not helpless, as long as we hold out a hand, a heart, a mic to others. 

Take the Mic will be published October 1, 2019.

Thanks to Arthur A. Levine Books for sending this great book to us.

-SS

Julián is a Mermaid

Jessica Love’s Julián is a Mermaid is an elegant picture book about a young Afro-Latinx boy, Julián, who loves mermaids. In soft colors and gentle edges, Love creates a dream-like story tugging our heart strings. He dreams of letting his hair free and swimming in the ocean, as shown in dreamy, paint-like illustrations. Upon seeing three beautiful women on the subway dressed as mermaids, Julián reports to his abuela, “I am also a mermaid” (Love, 2018). After seeing these women, he arranges leaves and flowers to resemble long, flowing hair, dons a popping purple pout, and ties a curtain around his waist like a lacy mermaid’s tail. Julián's abuela enters, and the reader’s breath is bound to catch as Julián is discovered dressed in false hair and a tail-like wrap. His abuela, instead of shaming or shushing him, offers him a pearl necklace, and takes him to see a parade of mermaids, saying, “Like you, mijo. Let’s join them.” In this tender moment, his abuela’s complete acceptance and encouragement makes some of us smile, but apparently, not everyone. 

Love was inspired by this book upon hearing about her trans friend’s experience of transition to be a man late in his life, alongside episodes of RuPaul’s Drag Race. She tossed around ideas of the young boy encountering drag queens until she stumbled upon the symbolism of a mermaid within the trans community. Love has been drawn to mermaids, and says, “there’s something about mermaids. Who knows if that’s because they’re magical creatures who can live between two realities or because they don’t have any genitals, or because they’re f***ing great” (Pink News 2019). Mermaids became symbolic in the trans community due to having nothing but a tail, and the Disney film The Little Mermaid gained more significance: it portrays a main character desiring to discard her tails for legs to change her form an entire half of her body. Such symbolism seemed to ring true in Julián's narrative. 

While Love’s story can be read as a portrayal of the transgender experience, it can also simply read as a boy expressing his curiosity or love for mermaids, bringing a wide audience of readers-children and adult alike. 

Although this charming book has been winning hearts and awards alike, awards such as the 2019 Stonewall Book Award, many were upset with the depiction of the transgender experience. A blogger known as “The Book Toss”, states “by creating this almost immediate acceptance, Jessica Love negated the real struggle so many Latinx LGBTQ people must go through. Is that is [sic] the message the author is trying to send? Probably. But, it lands flat to me. For me, this comes from a place of privilege that would rather a mermaid trope carry the message and ignore the very real issues at work” (Blog, 2018). 

Despite the potential controversy, we immediately fell for young Julián and his desire to become a mermaid. With messages of tolerance and love, his imagination calls the reader to think outside their prescribed norms to show us that perhaps anyone can be a mermaid. We invite you to open this book and your mind to Love’s beautiful picture book. 

(SS)

Works Cited:

Jackman, Josh. “ Trans Kids’ Book ‘Julián Is a Mermaid’ Is Winning Hearts and Awards .” PinkNews, 17 Feb. 2019, www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/02/17/trans-kids-book-julian-is-a-mermaid-awards/.

Love, Jessica. Julián Is a Mermaid. Candlewick, 2018.

“Trans People Aren't Mythical Creatures.” BookToss, 24 Sept. 2018, booktoss.blog/2018/09/24/trans-people-arent-mythical-creatures/.

Following up on Dr. Angel Daniel Matos's Talk

On Wednesday November 7th 2018, Linda Salem organized an introductory lecture for the recently curated Juvenile Collection display on queer young adult (YA) literature. This talk, entitled "LGBTQ+ Representation in Young Adult Literature, Then and Now" was given by Dr. Angel Daniel Matos who presented a historicized understanding of how queer themes and characters appeared within adolescent literature and the recent developments occurring within the field. Dr. Matos focused on highlighting the complex affective implications that are present within the genre of queer YA literature, but how incorporating positive interventions and critiques can generate more productive discourses surrounding these novels.

Dr. Matos began his talk with explaining how optimism and hope operate as critical points of focus within YA literature, but this positive affect was complicated upon the introduction of queer narratives into the genre. Because queerness worked against heteronormative societal structures, discussing queerness with positive affect was deemed as incongruent with the realities possible for audiences. Moreover, queerness within the genre was often posited in opposition to the optimism and positivity that was possible for heterosexual people, thus making it an unreachable possibility for early queer characters. 

When queerness challenged these societal structure, it often led to the death and demise of queer characters in early YA novels. These deaths, as Matos argued, often only worked to challenge and develop the characterization of straight characters in novels, which further confirmed that happiness and future-oriented thinking was not accessible for queer people. This sense of unhappiness, nonetheless, became a political act that more contemporary works challenge and expand upon.

Matos argues that thinking optimistically in a negative world, especially when regarding young audiences, can help foster potentialities of happiness and futurity. He highlighted contemporary queer YA novels that present adolescent characters within positive ideologies that still works towards embracing aspects of futurity for young readers. He advocated for the need to foster connectivity, kinship, and diverse representation within the genre in order to better represent queerness and further develop the field of queer YA literature.

***

Dr. Matos shared several novels that revolutionized the genre starting with John Donovan's 1969 novel I'll Get There, It Better Be Worth The Trip--the first YA novel to appear that grappled with homosexuality for its protagonists. He also discussed Nancy Garden's Annie on My Mind, which is the first novel to have a positive depiction of lesbian characters for young adult audiences. For a contemporary example, Matos shred David Levithan's Boy Meets Boy, a novel that works to present queerness within a utopic setting that normalizes diverse expressions of gender and sexuality.  

If you'd like to know more about Dr. Matos's suggestions or ideas just follow him on Twitter to see his syllabi and other projects (@ProfAngelMatos). Thank you to all that attended and to Dr. Matos for providing so much information. A special thank you to Linda Salem for organizing this event and working closely with the NCSCL.

-A. Elliott

Read With Pride: Queer Young Adult Literature Mini-Talk

If you find yourself around SDSU on Wednesday, November 7th be sure to stop by Love Library's Juvenile Collection on the 4th floor. Our very own Dr. Angel Daniel Matos will be giving a short talk that will highlight the growing LGBTQ+ young adult literature collection at our library. This collection has been organized by Linda Salem by working closely with the NCSCL and The Pride Center of SDSU. In explaining her goal with curating this collection Linda Salem states, "I want to raise students' awareness of The Pride Center on campus and that they have books at the center and that the library's collection also has an up-to-date collection of rainbow literature for readers of all ages." Some of these books will be put on display at the library for everyone to see, but many more are to be found both in and out of the library. This event will work towards expanding the awareness of anyone who is curious about learning more about LGBTQ+ narratives!

Looking at queer young adult literature, specifically, enables many opportunities for learning and understanding. For this reason, it is important to understand where this genre of literature has grown from and the power that it holds today. Dr. Matos explains the value in reading these books by stating, "Queer young adult literature pushes us to envision outcomes and futures that are sometimes different from our current realities. Many of these novels push us to imagine a future that is bearable and livable for all people." Being reminded that these novels depict the difficulties that many LGBTQ+ people face, but also provide a hopeful and more positive outlook can help readers in their own lives. To encounter these narratives, as Dr. Matos explains, then allows for readers to imagine possibilities for everyone to live as a happy collective, regardless of how difficult reality may be.

After asking Dr. Matos what his talk would be about, he responded, " I aim to provide some historical context for the queer young adult genre, in which I provide an overview of how LGBTQ+ young adult literature has developed over the decades, the state of these novels today, and where I think the genre is heading." So, to learn a little more history of how this genre emerged and bloomed into mainstream society today, come by and hear what Dr. Matos has to say. There will be time dedicated for questions after his lecture for anyone who is curious to learn more about the matter.

If you are interested in studying this genre more closely, Dr. Matos will be teaching two courses in Spring 2019 that are centered on queer young adult novels. First, he will be offering English 502: Adolescence in Literature - LGBTQ+ Young Adult Literature and ENGL 727: Theorizing Queer Young Adult Literature. In these classes, Dr. Matos highlights how "queer young adult literature provides readers and critics with opportunities to see how queer content possesses the capacity to deeply affect the structure, form, and narrativization of young adult texts." Because of the complexity that Dr. Matos mentions,  we can understand that young adult literature is not only important for general audiences, but also serves as a great source of analysis within academic contexts. Check out previous classes that Dr. Matos has taught and the work he has written on this subject by clicking here and follow him on Twitter @ProfAngelMatos!


If you are someone who is already familiar with the genre, or even if you have a curiosity to learn more about it, be sure to stop by on the 7th. Do not forget to bring your questions to Dr. Matos or any one of us present at the event. We hope you see you all there!

-A. Elliott

Event details:

Wednesday, November 7th at 2:30 pm

Juvenile Collection (located on Love Library's 4th floor)

Talk by Dr. Angel Daniel Matos

Free and open to the public