As a poor, depressed, terrified homosexual child in a small city, it was there that I discovered a duplicate of David Levithan’s “Boy Meets Boy” after its title caught my eye with its implied queerness. My household was too poor to purchase books, and there’s no likelihood anybody in my life would have purchased me a e book with such a suggestive title; in my small-town Catholic neighborhood, being homosexual was a sin different folks dedicated.
In that dusty (and protected and fairly quiet) library, I learn what I hadn’t recognized may exist: A younger grownup novel about completely satisfied queer folks in a small city. The characters and plot specifics have pale, however the takeaway for pre-teen me was that homosexual and completely satisfied was a factor somebody may very well be.
When “Boy Meets Boy” got here out in 2003, I used to be 13. It’s been 20 years, and I’m about to publish a novel of my very own. My e book is for adults; I by no means imagined it on the partitions of a college library. However conservative anti-queer pointers may maintain my homosexual e book ― and different books by and about marginalized folks ― off the general public bookshelves fully.
Along with being a library loyalist and a novelist, I’m additionally a journalist who covers e book bans, which have been on the rise since 2021, when greater than 700 challenges towards 1,276 books broke information. In 2022, information broke once more, with greater than 1,200 challenges towards greater than 2,500 titles.
Whereas 2023 isn’t over but, literacy and free expression nonprofit PEN America reports greater than 1,500 e book bans in faculties already, together with texts by greater than 800 authors. Greater than 40% of those books are about folks of coloration, and one-third are about LGBTQ+ folks.
Simply weeks earlier than the 2023 Banned E book week, in Seminole County, Florida, members of the far-right group Mothers for Liberty spent hours of a public college assembly studying excerpts from books that allegedly contained inappropriate specific and sexual content material. This included components of a scene from “Push” by Sapphire (the origin textual content for the 2009 movie “Treasured”), which they decried as pornography when it’s really depicting rape.
In 2022, in accordance with the American Library Affiliation (ALA), the most challenged books have been George M. Johnson’s “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” and Maia Kobabe’s comedian memoir “Gender Queer”—two books by and about queer folks of coloration, and one about gender identification and puberty.
By the tip of highschool, I returned to that very same library (and others within the space, as I moved usually) to use for school and monetary support and print Mapquest instructions. The primary iPhone got here out in 2007, and it felt like maturity got here in tangible and costly methods for my buddies; they received automobiles and telephones, they usually utilized for school as a matter in fact. The library was my solely portal to that world of expertise and growth.
It was additionally a portal to queerness. There have been no rainbow flags or indicators for a queer-friendly part in my native library, however I embraced books about younger women in neighborhood with one another, just like the “Babysitter’s Membership” books, and as soon as the anger of adolescence absolutely took root, Francesca Lia Block’s “Violet & Claire,” a younger grownup novel about girlhood.
I liked the anonymity of the web and savored the hours I “checked out” a desktop on the library to scroll blogs and discover new-to-me music and reveals. A lot was queer (or queer-coded, as was extra the norm within the aughts), however loads was simply totally different, and I wanted to know totally different may very well be factor to be.
I even felt emboldened to Ask Jeeves for stills of Rachel Weisz in a moist nightgown from “The Mummy” and Kate Beckinsale in a bra from “Pearl Harbor,” photographs I wouldn’t have checked out in my own residence, afraid to verify homophobic members of the family’ suspicions that one thing was flawed with me.
In highschool, just a few folks I knew have been courageous sufficient to be brazenly queer. Folks have been out, I quickly found, on-line. They have been writing about their lives on nameless websites like LiveJournal and speaking about homosexual stuff, homosexual folks, the sort of books they learn, the music they favored, and the locations they lived (San Francisco, New York, the Pacific Northwest). And just like the characters in “Boy Meets Boy,” they have been seemingly completely satisfied. Or a minimum of happier than me.
Possibly being homosexual ― one thing I’d all the time, on some degree, recognized about myself ― wasn’t as flawed, dangerous and shameful as I’d been taught at house.
Picture Courtesy Of Marissa Higgins
Homosexual, Lesbian and Straight Training Community (GLSEN), an training group that often surveys youth in U.S. faculties, reports in its most up-to-date Nationwide College Local weather Survey that entry to LGBTQ+ books and classroom supplies reached an all-time excessive in 2019. College students reported having a minimum of one supportive trainer at the next price than any earlier yr. However with public faculties and libraries reopening post-COVID-19 closures, conservatives are attacking queer supplies (and other people) with a vengeance.
Nearly 60% of LGBTQ+ youth say they’ve skilled a minimum of one discriminatory coverage whereas at college, together with obstacles to the toilet (28%) and locker rooms (27%) and using a reputation or pronoun (22%) that matches their gender identification. Queer college students of coloration report experiencing victimization primarily based on their orientation, race and ethnicity. Stripping already weak college students of the chance to see themselves mirrored in books feels to me cartoonishly evil.
Libraries, overburdened and understaffed in one of the best of occasions, are additionally below assault relating to funding. In Jamestown, Michigan, its library is expected to close in 2024 after native voters rejected renewal funding to maintain “Gender Queer” out. In Llano County, Texas, conservative lawmakers considered closing the general public libraries fully as an alternative of returning banned books to the cabinets.
Along with being a possible protected haven for younger folks, libraries are additionally a lifeline for unhoused of us who’ve restricted free locations to securely exist. Libraries function neighborhood assets, corresponding to distributing college lunches amid the pandemic. Libraries additionally present free programming, like SAT prep and digital literacy courses. Some conservatives are keen to steal assets from everybody to make sure the general public can’t entry books they don’t need them to learn.
I’ve plenty of autonomy and privilege; I’m white and cisgender, able-bodied. I’m additionally an grownup with the assets and expertise to guard myself, and these assaults by extremists make me really feel uneasy. How do queer minors really feel? How does anybody who’s totally different really feel amid these conservative assaults?
I really feel a renewed tenderness to my highschool self, the one who walked to and from the library to message my crush on AIM and skim “The L Phrase” fanfiction (with out having seen the present, as I used to be satisfied watching it might seal the deal on me being homosexual).
I’ve been fortunate to reside in queer hubs as an grownup; Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Seattle. Right now, I really feel protected being homosexual, studying clearly homosexual books, and mentioning my spouse in passing. However as a homosexual novelist, I fear my e book won’t ever make it to the cabinets that helped make me, me. And that’s precisely the aim of those anti-queer e book bans and legislative efforts.
Libraries didn’t actually make me homosexual, however they did save my life by main me to the books, films and tradition that helped me notice I used to be already homosexual, that I all the time had been. These books and the time to search out myself have been free to me. They need to be free and protected for everybody.
Marissa Higgins (she/her/hers) is a lesbian journalist. Her debut novel, “A GOOD HAPPY GIRL,” is out with Catapult in April 2024.
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