This guest post is part of the LGBT Teen Novels Week, hosted here.For more information about the week, please head over here.
Hello,
Please welcome James Dawson, author of Hollow Pike, who will talk to us today about queer characters in YA books.
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UKYALGBTOMGWTF!
I recently had the best email from abookseller who had just finished Hollow Pike, my debut novel. she was thankingme for the inclusion of the three queer characters in the book. She said thatwhen she was at school there weren’t any characters like her to relate to inbooks, and it was fantastic that today’s young adults were being represented infiction.If I may, allow me to introduce you to thecharacters she means. Hollow Pike sees a young Welsh girl called Lis arrive inthe mysterious town of Hollow Pike where she is spellbound by the schooloutcasts Kitty, Delilah and Jack. Kitty and Delilah are a couple while Jackclearly hasn’t made his mind up whether he likes boys or girls yet.
The characters were vaguely based on peopleI knew at school, so their sexuality was a no-brainer. At my very ordinaryschool in West Yorkshire, a lot of young people were figuring it out. Those areexperimental years. Some of us ended up gay, some ended up straight, a lotended up somewhere in the middle, winding up in relationships with men andwomen – but then, as sixteen year olds, we were finding our way.
It makes sense to me, therefore, that a lot of young people are still findingtheir way and should be able to see themselves in the books they are reading.Something that I found hard back then was that LGBTQ relationships weren’treally presented as an option. You were straight or ‘wrong’. It would have beencool if there had been young gay or bi role models in films and TV shows andbooks for me to go, ‘ah he likes boys, so it’s probably OK that I do too.’ Ihave always been gay, but I mighthave figured it out sooner with more visible role models.
The main goal when writing Hollow Pike wasto tell a cracking scary story, but I was determined that Kitty, Jack andDelilah would retain this element of ‘figuring it out’. These were never meantto be books about ‘coming out’. Issues books have their place, but I didn’twant it to be a sad, sad story about how hard it is to be young and queer. It is difficult, but being a teenager isalways hard. In Hollow Pike, frankly, the characters have bigger things toworry about! What’s more, issues books often become ‘gay books’. I was gay andI wouldn’t have read a ‘gay book’ out of fear of having the shit kicked out ofme. The hope is, that young readers will see Kitty, Jack and Delilah goingabout their business and simply think –‘ they’re OK, I’m OK too’.
But for this to really work, it needs to beon a much bigger scale than my lone book can achieve. We need more books, TVshows and films with queer characters front and centre. Not in a token,box-ticking way (no more sassy gay sidekicks, I implore you), but in presentingcharacters who are more than their sexuality.
Ican’t wait for you to get your hands on Book Two – Book One has only begun toscratch the surface of these complex characters! Writers shouldn’t be scared toreflect diversity – we live in diverse times so all we’re doing is painting anaccurate picture. If it seems that young queer people are in a minority it’sprobably because they aren’t empowered to be more visible in schools. We canhelp overcome that. I’m so thrilled that both Attitude and Diva magazines havechosen to review Hollow Pike alongside Bliss and SFX, this is recognition thata very mainstream release from a major publisher can feature queer characterswithout becoming niche gay fiction.
I’ve said this before, but it bearsrepeating – presenting young gay characters in the media is the best way tomake being young and gay normal. Becauseit is.
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Thank you James for this fantastic post - I can't agree more on the media needing to include the diversity which exists in real life!
Hollow Pike is already out in the UK
Find James on:His websiteFacebookTwitter
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