"That's Gay!" Literature

I do love plays on words. I was skimming HuffPo this morning, and couldn't help but notice a post on books for LGBTQ teens. They listed thirteen great books for teens and specifically gay, lesbian, bi, transgender, and questioning/queer (depending on the circle you use) teens. To my dismay, I've only read The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky, but I fully intend to get a DC library card and borrow the rest of these. I'd use my school one, but we're having some difficulties with communication.

The list offered by HuffPo is as follows:

• The Arizona Kid, Ron Koertege
• Boy Meets Boy, David Levithan
• Deliver Us from Evie, M.E. Kerr
• From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun, Jacqueine Woodson
• The God Box, Alex Sanchez
• Jack, A.M. Homes
• The Misfits, James Howe
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky
• Rainbow Boys, Alex Sanchez
• The Bermudez Triangle, Maureen Johnson
• Absolutely, Positively Not, David LaRochelle
• Annie on my Mind, Nancy Garden
• Kissing Kate, Lauren Myracle

It is important that these books are becoming part of popular culture especially with the advent of Twilight and other reactionary fiction depicting hetero-normative lifestyles and a disturbing amount of gender based violence at least in this specific example, but Twilight will be for another day. After reading the brief descriptions of these books I'm sold on reading almost all of them. Perhaps my end of summer reading list. They're all young adult books so should read fairly quick.

I remember reading Perks of Being a Wallflower for the first time. It was a pretty huge experience, and still sits on my bookshelf. Sometimes I forget some how some books are banned and for these ridiculous reasons such as homosexuality is obscene and offensive. Still the increasing in readership is huge and hopefully will get these books off banned book lists, and maybe even into middle school reading lists.