5 Essential Reads for Gay Boys Wrestling with Coming Out
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Things as it turns out don’t just get better.
In 2010, LGBT people and their allies all over the world uttered three words that would give rise to a global movement — it gets better. A wildly successful social media campaign was born, with more than 70,000 people sharing their stories to provide hope and encouragement to young LGBT people.
It has in fact gotten worse for many, especially if your Black, poor, live in the south or more specifically Florida, or all of the above.
It’s in that vein I’ve picked five books that can help you weather the storm.
All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson To call Johnson’s recent tome a revelation is a disservice to miracles.
Journalist and activist George M. Johnson’s new memoir is an unvarnished look at growing up black and queer in New Jersey and later Virginia. Johnson draws readers into his own experiences with clear, confiding essays — from childhood encounters with bullies to sexual experiences good and bad, to finding unexpected brotherhood in a college fraternity, all of it grounded in the love and support of his family.
It’s aimed at a young adult audience — but it’s a book many readers may wish they’d had access to growing up. In an email interview, Johnson tells me he was inspired by Toni Morrison’s famous saying, “If there’s a book you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it,” which he has tattooed on his right arm.
“I look at it often to remind myself of why I am writing these stories and the importance of centering black stories from the black perspective,” Johnson says. “I didn’t have stories like these growing up and honestly I don’t have many now so I knew I needed to do my part to make sure the next generation of black queer children had something they could relate to and connect with. There are days I look at TV and film and still don’t see myself represented. So, my ultimate goal was providing the story I didn’t have but always needed and to be the vessel so that so many can feel seen and heard.
What I found surprising was that this book read kind of like a textbook in places — a textbook for the human sexuality class I wish I’d had as a kid. Was that your intention? Absolutely. If we aren’t going to teach about heterosexual sex in the classrooms with some nuance, then queer people don’t stand a chance at learning themselves. We have to take it upon ourselves to create that information elsewhere. So as important as it was for me to be very detailed about my sexual experiences from childhood to young adulthood, I knew some parts needed to be a road map. I can’t let another generation continue to be shamed and placed at risk for potential harm simply because a society refuses to teach one of the most basic understandings that humans are sexual beings. The notion that keeping vital information from people who will then learn through trial and error is a disservice to young adults everywhere. If knowledge is power, then give them the damn information. And if folks won’t do it, then I will.
Below: In the past year, half of all LGBTQ youth of color, including 67% of Black respondents, reported facing discrimination based on their race or ethnicity. George M. Johnson, a journalist, activist and the author of All Boys Aren’t Blue, joined CBSN to discuss their memoir exploring growing up while being both Black and queer.
The Great American Whatever by Tim Federle Federle, whose Better Nate Than Ever is coming to Disney+ in April knocked it out of the park with Whatever.
Sixteen-year-old Quinn Roberts is officially hiding from the world.
Six months after the death of his beloved sister, Annabeth, Quinn’s house remains preserved as a shrine to the father who walked out on his family voluntarily and the daughter whose exit was anything but. “Without the vision and silent encouragement of [his] sister,” Quinn is ready to renounce his dreams of writing screenplays, yet he cannot help but view the world cinematically. The juxtaposition of Quinn’s scripted version of events with what actually occurs enables readers to experience the flawed goofiness of the real world while enjoying Quinn’s ideal of how it should be. In his first novel for teens, Federle (Better Nate Than Ever, 2013, etc.) crafts a poignant and thoroughly convincing portrait of a teenager who is acerbic and self-deprecating, astute enough to write piercing observations about his own life yet too self-involved to discern obvious truths about those closest to him. Quinn’s supporting cast of characters, both minor and major, are wonderfully flawed and nuanced, from Amir, the college boy upon whom Quinn has a crush, to Mrs. Roberts, who cannot bear to throw away her deceased daughter’s favorite junk food. Quinn’s epiphanies about his sister and himself are distinctively less cinematic than he would like them to be. The journey he takes to arrive at them, however, is hauntingly authentic and consummately page-turning.
A Holden Caulfield for a new generation.
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Federle with the boys from Better Nate Than Ever:
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Two Boys Kissing David Levithan “There are more than two boys kissing in this book, and every one of them will reach your heart. You have to read this.”
said Rainbow Rowell, author of Eleanor & Park.
The Wall Street Journal Speakeasy:
“Two Boys Kissing’ couldn’t have arrived at a more timely moment, just months after the Supreme Court decision on gay marriage. The shift in society’s attitudes towards the LGBT community has long been embraced by many in the young adult crowd. Levithan seems to intuitively understand this generation—and his new book allows him to bring their particular struggles and joys to life.”
Camp L.C. Rosen Set in a summer camp, this sweet and sharp screwball comedy set in a summer camp for queer teens examines the nature of toxic masculinity and self-acceptance.
Out author Lev “L.C.” Rosen became a household name in LGBTQ Young Adult fiction with Jack of Hearts (and other parts), his 2018 novel from Little, Brown Young Readers billed as “Riverdale meets Love, Simon.” Now, he’s following up with Camp, his forthcoming YA novel about gay teen Randy “Del” Kapplehoffand and his adventures at Camp Outland, a summer camp for LGBTQ youth.
“To me, Camp is about the idea of the ’special gay’—that gay man that straight people point to and say, ’He’s the right way to be gay,’ and how we gay men (especially when we’re young) can really internalize that,” Rosen tells NewNowNext. “This is particularly true when it comes from family, which makes us try to perform this ’special gay’ role instead of being ourselves. If we spend all our time performing this identity that other people have chosen for us, we don’t get to try on identities and find ourselves the way that straight teens do. I wanted to play with the idea of what it would be like to take on that role as an actual performance, knowing it’s not who you are… and I wanted to write a queer YA contemporary version of a ’60s Doris Day-Rock Hudson-type sex comedy.”
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Black Boy Out of Time Hari Ziyad #GayNrd: Who can really protect Black children in an anti-Black world? That is a question that Hari Ziyad reflects on as they begin writing about their experiences of growing up Black and queer in America. Ziyad, who uses they/them pronouns, is a seasoned writer and editor and in their memoir, Black Boy Out of Time, Ziyad offers an intimate examination of how policing and prison-based ideologies affect interpersonal relationships and the fight for Black liberation.
Ziyad, a powerful and necessary voice on the rise, a social and cultural critic, a screenwriter, and the editor-in-chief of RaceBaitr, takes readers on a journey of their formative years and in doing so investigates how policing and prison-based ideologies affect interpersonal relationships and the fight for Black liberation
“Ziyad, who grew up in a large, mixed-faith family, gets very personal with themself, their family and the carceral state. A large part of this reckoning has to do with medical racism and the demonization and adultification of Black children under carceral logics. This is a book to move us forward, within and beyond the pandemic. There is going to be an after. If we want it to be better than the before, ideas and stories like Ziyad’s are crucial.”
As one of nineteen children in a blended family, Ziyad was raised by a Hindu Hare Kṛṣṇa mother and a Muslim father in Cleveland, Ohio and eventually navigated the equally complex path toward finding their true self in New York City. Along the way Ziyad examines childhood, gender, race, prison abolition, and the trust that is built, broken, and repaired through generations. Exploring what it means to live beyond the limited narratives Black children are given, Ziyad challenges the irreconcilable binaries that restrict them.
Heartwarming and heart-wrenching, radical and reflective, Black Boy Out of Time, is for the outcast, the unheard, the unborn, and the dead. Ziyad offers us a new way to think about survival and the necessary disruption of social norms. They look back in tenderness as well as justified rage, force us to address where we are now, and, born out of hope, illuminate the possibilities for the future. As Ziyad writes to their younger self, “I know that there is still a long, long journey left to truly heal from all of this, but I also know that the destination is where you came from. I know that it is not a destination at all in the colonial sense of the word…You did not come from an unchanging world of capture. I know that the end is out of time as I thought I knew it, and into time as my ancestors do. Some parts of these relationships will never be mended in this life—but I can, and I will.”
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Photo by Tim Marshall on Unsplash
