Celebrating GLBT Literature – Part Two

We’ll be continuing our series of celebrating the GLBT genre on Friday posts until all of the wonderful submissions we’ve gotten are shared. Some weeks we’ll offer more than one answer.  This series has sparked a lot of interest and some great discussion already. Last week reader Tam offered insight into m/m romance and this week we have an author to share their thoughts in the dual role of reader and writer in this genre.

What do you love about GLBT literature?

Well, I AM GLBT.  Ahaha, and yeah, I’m pretty much all the letters in that acronym.  It’s a long explanation.  At any rate, it’s my family, my home.  It’s the same thing I love about reading a story set in a town I’ve lived in—the little cues of familiarity, the feeling of being more connected with the story because you know what they’re talking about.  I love when there’s a book that really connects to that experience, that minimizes the exotic, eroticized freak show aspect in favor of not only depth of character but depth of experience.  Being gay isn’t all pride parades and dodging haters with baseball bats (although where I’m from, there’s plenty of that too), so I’m always extra happy when there’s an author who takes the time to really get inside the nuances of what it’s like.  I tend to gush about them when it happens.

What would you like to see more of?

Unfortunately, somehow “GLBT literature” is seemingly becoming synonymous with (primarily m/m) “romance,” and I feel like there’s a lot more that could be written about the experience of being GLBT without involving romance as the central plot device, as much as I enjoy the romance novels.  So I would like to see more books—even within the romance genre, but particularly in more varied genres—exploring more parts of being gay than just, you know, sex.  Authors who identify as GLBT themselves tend to do this more than authors who don’t (obviously, since they understand the experience more intimately by having lived it), but I have faith that straight authors can be nuanced in their exploration of the GLBT identity as well.

Between the Lines - Transgender Comic

Also, I would really love to see more focus on Transgender characters.  That is the part of my identity that I feel most strongly about, and the T’s often get thrown under the bus in relation to the gay rights movement.  It makes me so incredibly happy when there are Transgender characters in a book, especially when they’re the main character.  I know it gets confusing for people who are into m/m for the “two guys together is hot” thing, trying to figure out if it counts as a “real guy” or not (which… please don’t say that aloud to anyone transgender. Please), but there is already plenty of cisgendered m/m out there for those folks.

IN ADDITION, I would love to see more characters of color.  I hear white authors talk about how they don’t know enough about what it’s like to be a person of color to write these characters, but I remind them: Many of them are straight women writing gay men.  And while they do have the whole “part of the anatomy I like to have sex with” thing in common, they don’t know what it’s like to be a gay man any more than they know what it’s like to be a person of color.  A little research will help out just fine.  Also, I’d like for some of the characters of color to be in relationships with other characters of color, not always the white/of-color interracial pairing.  I could go into a long explanation of why, but then I’d have to charge you for the sociology courses I’ve taken.   The short version is this: There is a sad pattern of racism within the gay community that views a white partner as “the most desirable” partner, and I’d like to see some of our fiction start setting that right.

And other additions: People who aren’t gorgeous, people who aren’t necessarily young, people who are in the working class or poor (without being reduced to a fetish), people who have physical, mental, and emotional disabilities…

So I guess basically, “More diversity.”  I’d like fiction that explores the full experience of being GLBT and fitting into more than one category, and that does it with respect and attention to detail.

M. Jules Aedin @
http://www.twitter.com/mjaedin – on Twitter
http://mjules.net –  website
http://mjaedin.livejournal.com -  professional blog

We got back several responses and some we’re still waiting on. However we didn’t have email addresses for everyone so if you’d like to participate – which we’d love to be able to share different opinions from all kinds of readers, including authors who are readers too – please feel free to write up your own answers and contact us at threedollarbillreviews@gmail.com.