The Globe and Mail - 22.02.2020

SATURDAY,FEBRUARY22,2020 | THE GLOBE AND MAIL O R11

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ARTS & BOOKS |

O

n the night after the messy Iowa caucuses, tidy,
self-possessed U.S. presidential candidate Pete
Buttigieg addressed his supporters. “Looking out
at you,” he said. “[I’m] remembering how it felt to
be an Indiana teenager, wondering if he could ever belong
in this world. Wondering if something deep inside him
meant he would forever be an outsider.”
It’s unclear, at present, how Buttigieg will fare in the
hurly-burly of the coming campaign, but that evening, with
indications that he’d won more support than many had
predicted, he looked like a one-man embodiment of the “It
Gets Better” campaign of a few years ago. When he was
growing up, there were relatively few books and movies
pointing the way for children who worried their sexuality
would take them outside life’s pale.
The cultural landscape has changed since then. A slew of
recent young-adult releases presents role models for LGBTQ
teens (and others), with one fictional youngster engaging
with the Anglo-Irish writer Oscar Wilde, another worship-
ping at the altar of British pop star David Bowie’s androgy-
nous persona Ziggy Stardust and a third attending writing
workshops named for award-winning African-American,
lesbian sci-fi writer Octavia Butler.
At the outset of Marvel Comics writer Gabby Rivera’s
rollicking, strong debut novelJuliet Takes a Breath(Pen-
guin Random House, 320 pages, 14-17), the title character, a
young Puerto Rican woman from the Bronx, comes out as a
lesbian to her skeptical family, and her mother assures her
it’s a phase – she just hasn’t met the right boy. In addition to
participating in the workshop named for Butler, Juliet
interns for a white, feminist author in a hilariously woo-
woo Portland, full of lesbian drama. She learns some stuff,
but mainly realizes that she’s a charity project for the au-
thor. Juliet finds more comfort and guidance from the au-
thor’s Black girlfriend, a race, gender and sexuality activist.
She embarks on a fling with a motorcycle-riding librarian –
when in Portland – and gets a life-changing haircut at a
dance party for queer and trans people of colour. That she
manages to stand up to her loving but angry family as well
as her misguided patroness is a tribute to this character’s
precocious smarts and resourcefulness. She has more to
teach her elders than to learn from them, although she
could find worse role models than her tough, fast-driving
cop aunt, Titi Wepa.
Author-playwright R. Zamora Linmark splits his time be-
tween his birth city, Manila, and the one where he went to
school, Honolulu, and has made up a Pacific island, Kristol,
as as setting for his bookThe Importance of Being Wilde at
Heart(Delacorte, 352 pages, 12-
17). He has his haiku- and list-
writing young hero, Ken Z,
speaking with Wilde, seeking his
counsel on his developing affair
with another Wilde-loving boy
from the other side of the parti-
tioned island. The course of Ken
Z’s first love doesn’t run true –
whenever does it? – and he finds
himself questioning Wilde’s ro-
mantic advice, given that, by Ken
Z’s reading, the Irishman
sacrificed his own fame and for-
tune for a selfish and imperious
young nobleman, Lord Alfred
Douglas. The imaginary setting is
a bust, an overcomplicated block
to the story, but the invented exchanges between the young
man and the dead author are gold, as is its sweet depiction
of the up-and-down (and up-and-down again) ride of a first
love.
Inspiration for San Francisco actor-author James Bran-
don’s first book,Ziggy, Stardust & Me(G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Books for Young Readers, 368 pages, 12 and up), came from
a radio show about the December, 1973, decision by the
American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality
from its list of mental disorders. The book starts earlier that
year, in the author’s native St. Louis, Mo., with its Bowie-
loving teen Jonathan enduring electric shock-therapy treat-
ments to help him get past his same-sex affections. But a
handsome, sensitive Native boy comes to town, fresh from
the American Indian Movement’s occupation of Wounded
Knee, S.D., and jeopardizes Jonathan’s intentions to tamp
down that part of himself. The book positively bathes in the
heady 1970s, with Watergate playing on TV; Bowie, Carole
King and Roberta Flack on the turntable; and Vietnam
body-counts coming in. We watch the boy try to come to
grips with his widowed, drunkard father’s hatred of this
part of his son. Jonathan’s psychiatrist senses what she’s
doing to the boy is wrong, but carries out the treatments
nonetheless.
Nigerian-born author Akwaeke Emezi’s extraordinary YA
debutPet(Make Me a World, 208 pages, 12 and up) is set in
a postrevolutionary future where progressives have slaugh-
tered monsters of the past: sexism, racism, homophobia
and transphobia.
In the Utopian society of Lucille, people have non-gen-
dered names, and the child at the centre of this story, Jam,
transitions from boy to girl. But all is not well in Lucille, and
Jam, without meaning to, conjures up a monstrous crea-
ture, the Pet of the title, who promises to rampage through
Lucille, in search of, well, what? The book mines the vein
opened by fantasy writer Madeleine L’Engle, where a child
finds herself in the midst of a cosmic struggle between good
and evil.
For boys at least, the sleuths in YA mysteries have tended
to be he-men in training. The reluctant detective in Ottawa-
author Tom Ryan’s latest,Keep This to Yourself(AW Teen,
320 pages, 12 and up) is gay and if the book’s setting, a
pretty coastal town with mysterious caves, is very Hardy
Boys, 18-year-old Mac Bell decidedly is not. The crime is also
not one that you’d find in an old-school YA thriller: A serial
killer has, apparently, murdered several locals, including
Bell’s best friend. The plotting is deft, but, as important, the
reader watches Mac fall for another boy who lost someone
in the killing spree and gets a real sense of the town’s
characters and ethos.
French-Irish writer Moira Fowley-Doyle also conjures up
an ethos in the thrillerAll the Bad Apples(Kathy Dawson
Books, 320 pages, 14 and up), exploring the Irish side of her
heritage, specifically, that Catholic island nation’s treatment
of female sexuality. At the book’s outset, Dubliner Deena
turns 17 and comes out as a lesbian to her family. Her much
older sister has disappeared and is presumed dead,
although Deena doesn’t believe it. She and her gay best
friend end up on a quest through the countryside to under-
stand and end the curse put on the family’s “bad apples” –
hence the title – and to figure out what happened to her
free-spirited sister.

Special to The Globe and Mail

AnewgenerationofLGBTQcharactersforyoungadults

AslewofrecentYAreleasespresents

diverserolemodelstoyouth,withmany

drawinginspirationfromartisticicons

suchasDavidBowieandOctaviaButler

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Nigerian-bornauthor

AkwaekeEmezi’s

extraordinaryYA
debutPet...issetin

apostrevolutionary

futurewhere

progressiveshave

slaughtered

monstersofthepast:

sexism,racism,

homophobiaand
transphobia.