On July 1 of that same year at the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference in Detroit, MI, the “Task Force on Gay Liberation” met for the first time. In 1992, the Task Force sponsored its first ALA pre-conference program, a half-day session titled “When Sex is the Question, Who Answers?” Task Force members marching in the San Francisco Pride Parade were featured on the front cover of the July/August issue of American Libraries. In 1995, the Task Force changed its name to the “Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Task Force” and on June 30, 1999, it was promoted to round table status and became the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Round Table. In 2019, it was renamed to the Rainbow Round Table.

According to the LOC, the purpose to the commemorative Pride month is to “recognize the impact that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals have had on history locally, nationally, and internationally.” June Pride celebrations at libraries include a variety of programs for all ages, all aimed at educating the community about LGBTQIA+ topics and interests and inviting everyone in the community to participate. Many libraries provide special LGBTQIA+ displays, events, and programs in June in honor of the history of Pride. There are also physical signs of welcome and support such as banners and flags. Many libraries keep these flags up year-round. Since Drag Queen Story Hour burst on the scene in 2015 in San Francisco and then New York, many library systems have also added the popular programs to their Pride offerings.

Anne Arundel County PRIDE Celebration
Skip Auld, CEO of Anne Arundel County Public Library (AACPL) in Maryland shared that although there have been complaints and protests, AACPL has stood firm in their commitment to Pride programming and providing materials that are valuable to the LGBTQIA+ community. “Our libraries have presented LGBTQIA+ programs for many years, and of course we provide books and other materials related to Pride themes. I’m especially proud myself that we carry copies of Gender Queer, the most challenged book of the past few years. Community focus on our LGBTQIA+ programming intensified in 2018 and 2019 when we presented our first drag queen Storytimes. In general, our community rallied around their library system. This support led to a transformed Board of Trustees and expansion of programs and other resources.  Those years also saw the founding of Annapolis Pride and One Pasadena, whose motto is “Building a Safe and Inclusive Community.” We’ve had presence at all the Pride parades and festivals ever since.”

Pride offerings continue to expand every year. This June, AACPL will offer Rainbow Storytimes at many locations; Pride Art Nights; a Library Lock –in, Pride Edition; Pride BinGLOW; LGBTQ+ Trivia nights; and some educational programming including “From Twilight to Sunshine: LGBTQ+ History in Maryland” and “The First Pride Was a Riot: The Enduring Legacy of Stonewall.”

The partnership with Annapolis Pride, established in 2018, was solidified when the organization advocated for AACPL during a public controversy regarding Drag Queen Storytime. The group rallied support from the LGBTQIA+ community to testify at library board meetings and publicly support the library. Many who testified shared how meaningful it was to see themselves reflected in books or attend programs celebrating the queer community.

“We are proud to partner with Anne Arundel County Public Library and appreciate their commitment to serving everyone in our community,” said Annapolis Pride Board Chair Joe Toolan. “They recognize that Pride is a year-round celebration, and they continue provide materials and programs that recognize the diverse stories of the LGBTQIA+ community.” Auld was honored to be selected as the Grand Marshal of the Annapolis Pride parade in 2020 to publicly acknowledge the partnership with the library.

More Public Library PRIDE Celebrations
Joslyn Dixon, interim director of New Rochelle Public Library in New York shared that one of their main Pride events will be featuring a Tween Book Club with local author Phil Stamper. Since the program is for young teens, they will alert the caregivers about the content a week before the program. They are also hosting a Drag Queen Story Hour in mid-June. The event has received complaints and attracted protestors in the past, so they will have administration and board members in attendance.

At Virginia Beach Public Library in Virginia, Director Kimberly Bray Knight said they will offer a variety of Pride programming, booklists and displays throughout June. Program topics vary with examples including STEM programming like Cubetto Pride Parade, Love Makes a Family Storytime, and art-based programming like Glowing with Pride. They are also holding two large scale Pride events in August this year, a time when there are fewer programs for the LGBTQIA+ community. These events are LGBTQIA + Family Pride Day and Teen Pride Night and will be designed to provide support for kids going back to school.

Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Maryland, has a statement on their website that says, “Authenticity/Love/Inclusion/Respect. That’s what PRIDE means to the Pratt.” They also state that “PRIDE is a time we set aside to collectively honor our LGBTQ+ community’s past, to celebrate our shared humanity, and to reflect on our country’s movements to advance equal rights for all.”

Pratt and most major urban library systems offer an extensive array of Pride programs. New York Public Library has an extensive collection of over 100,000 LGBTQ books, magazines, newspapers, and archival materials They also provide booklists such as “New Books for Kids to Celebrate Pride” and “Stand Against Book Banning: LGBTQ+ Titles Targeted for Censorship.”

Although June is a focus of Pride celebrations, many libraries also promote LGBTQ interest books and provide programs to celebrate LGBTQIA+ History Month and Coming Out Day in October and Transgender Day of Visibility Day on March 31.  Of course, LGBTQIA+ collections, programs, and services are not limited to June, but provided throughout the year as part of regular operations.

It’s clear that the movement to celebrate Pride has swept libraries across the country, however every library representative I spoke with about Pride and LGBTQIA+ offerings also mentioned complaints, protests, and even threats. Smaller, more conservative communities have not embraced Pride activities to the same extent, especially as many are also fighting book challenges. The battle for equal representation and free expression continues.

Libraries are committed to providing a safe space for everyone. This is even more true in June when Pride flags can be seen adorning libraries across the country. The activists from 1970 would be so very proud but would recognize they still have more battles to fight!

The post Public Libraries Celebrate Pride first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

I really loved reading this book, yet I found I had a hard time describing it when friends asked me about it. How do you describe the book?

I think that makes sense that you maybe had some trouble, because I think the book has a sort of unusual form. The way that I describe it, I like the words “relationship multiverse.” I think of it as a relationship multiverse in which each chapter offers an alternate outcome to this queer relationship between Myriam and Allison. The earlier article chapters reflect the dreamier or optimistic state of being in a relationship. As you get to know the characters, things get a bit more complicated and a little less rose-tinted.

Each chapter shows us a different perspective on Allison and Myriam’s personalities and causes us to rethink certain things that we thought we knew about them. How did you go about tracing the arc of this relationship going from, as you say, the optimistic stages of an early relationship to the end of a relationship?

I think the answer is a bit less writerly and a bit more real-worldly. Some of the earlier hypotheticals that I wrote when I was actually in the beginning of a relationship, they were these small microfictions. It was my first queer relationship, I was really in love, and so I came up with all these dreamy scenarios. As the relationship didn’t go quite how I had expected, I came back to those dreamy hypotheticals and added on new ones. Eventually, the relationship started disintegrating. So in real time, through each hypothetical, I was analyzing what was going on or what had been going on in the relationship and trying to make sense of it. The relationship had a natural arc, so that made the arc the book.

This might be an obvious question, but was a relationship you had the genesis of the book?

Yeah, I would say it was the genesis. Anyone who reads the book can clearly tell that it’s fiction. Also, there was definitely some emotional truth propelling me to write it and some kind of existential questions about love. But also I am a writer. I was trying to write a good book and trying to develop my craft. I really was not focusing on making it true.

The book is so exciting to read because you really have the sense that anything can happen. Some of the chapters play with different genres. I was curious about who were the writers that were meaningful to you as you were growing up, but then also in your writing career?

An early influence when I was a teenager was Leonard Cohen, but specifically his fiction, which definitely gets pretty weird and surreal sometimes, and poetic and dark. Beautiful Losers was one of the first books that I read that really floored me when I was in high school. Similarly, at that time, I read Katherine Dunne’s Geek Love, which was also surreal, horrifying, hilarious and so beautifully written and unlike anything that I had read. Later in life, in my twenties, I felt this literary revolution when I discovered the works of people writing surreal stuff that was hilarious and kind of out there. I’m thinking of Helen Oyemi, George Saunders, and Miranda July. I shouldn’t say “surreal” as a blanket statement for all of those writers, but people who were taking risks. I ended up actually studying with George Saunders. I just love the way that he does these kind of weird things with such a high level of craft and this unwavering vulnerability.

I love that you also referenced Leonard Cohen, because I think there’s a real playfulness with language that you have, specifically your figurative language. Can you talk about your approach to playing with phrases or language?

I think the Leonard Cohen comparison fits because in his fiction, he’s such a poet. I grew up writing mostly poetry. I think having the perfect metaphor, simile, or sound to a phrase was the ultimate exciting thing for me and what brought me to writing in the first place. I was doing that in high school and in my early twenties, and then I realized that I wanted more in some ways. I would write these things that had cool sounds and cool images, and that was kind of it for me. I’m not dissing poetry, because people take it to the next level. But for me, taking it to the next level was starting to write fiction and being like, “Wow, I have no idea how to do this. This is so hard!” (laughs) That gave me a challenge that was stimulating and made me really push myself.

The whole idea of pushing yourself as a writer seems to really come through with this book. I’m thinking in terms of how you’re almost relentless in how you examine Allison and Myriam. A big moment for me was the first time a chapter was told from Allison’s point of view and we saw how Allison viewed Myriam. What was it like for you to switch perspectives throughout the novel and be able to examine a character in a different way than we had maybe seen her before?

I think it was both extremely fun and extremely difficult. For me, one of the perks of writing autofiction and writing a character with my own name is I have such permission to be mean to that character or make fun of her as much as I want. Usually with fiction you have to be really compassionate to all of your characters, but if it’s you, you can kind of get away with anything. (laughs) That was the part where I had fun, because I could be so hyperbolic in making fun of Myriam. If people read the book, they’ll see things go pretty awry with her and it’s kind of a big farce. So that was the fun part. The difficult part and the necessary part was examining other people’s perceptions of me—or maybe the way that I felt perceived by other people—especially in a relationship that really shook my sense of self in a way that was hard to recover from. I feel like I had to go through all the ways that I thought I might be bad or culpable. I had to examine the things that were brought up for me in this difficult relationship really closely to make sense of them. It made sense to use the Allison perspective to do that. And I don’t literally think that my ex was thinking all these horrible things about me. I think she actually loved me, but I think it was something that I needed to explore.

As a reader I always felt very taken care of, in terms of how you were maintaining the emotional truth of these characters while still taking the reader to all these different, wild worlds. Could you talk about how you approached the tone of the novel?

I had “reader perception” at the front of my consciousness the whole time. If I’m honest, I don’t think I would have gone quite so far in certain places if it wasn’t for entertainment’s sake, you know? I worked really hard on this book. And if I worked really hard, it’s not necessarily because I had things that I absolutely needed to process on the page, because I have therapy for that. I worked really hard on the book because I love literature and I love reading. I always wanted to make it as enjoyable as possible for people to read in terms of setting the stakes really high and making people turn pages really fast. I have examined every single sentence a million times to make sure that it was completely evocative and fluid. In literature, I really like when people are bold and pushing boundaries. I felt like I was doing that for readers, too. In some ways, it was difficult to have the emotional truth in there. Even though a lot of people are reading this book [thinking], “It’s so fun and hilarious. It’s a wild ride,” the layers underneath were very difficult experiences for me. But as a reader that’s why I read. It’s for that vulnerability and human connection, and so I think I was doing those hard things for readers.

The book is so compact, about 215 pages, yet still feels very dense in terms of how much ground you’re able to cover in such a brief span of time. How did you decide what length this book should be?

If it isn’t clear, the book is a novel because it has a greater arc and it follows the same characters. It’s a multiverse, but each chapter also stands on its own because I was a young writer and I came into writing through the short story. I think if I write a more traditional novel next, I wonder if it will be that same kind of very compact, dense experience. With the short story form, it’s so important that every single sentence moves the story [forward] and escalates. I think I did fit a lot of lyricism in there, but there’s not as many moments to ponder, as in a more traditional novel.

That seems to be of a piece with your background as a poet too, in terms of every line being so crucial to the greater work.

I think it’s also wonderful when people take a whole chapter to reflect or something like that. I love when writers do that too, and I might experiment with a slightly slower pace in the future. But also because it’s my first book, I think you need to need to earn readers’ trust if you’re going to go a little slower. I just wanted to be like, “Okay, I’m going to write this thing and I’m not going to let anyone put it down  for one second.”

Another really delightful thing about this book is how Myriam, Alison, and other characters express themselves creatively in different ways. We see them as musicians, self-help authors, and even amateur wrestlers at one point. What was appealing to you about exploring these two characters through all their different creative exploits in the different multiverses?

I’m not saying it wasn’t totally intentional, but it wasn’t fully intentional in the sense that’s just kind of my life, you know? It was also a part of that relationship that I was in at the time, this kind of fixation with different kinds of creative expression. Sometimes I wonder if it’s a little bit too common to have a writer in the piece of art, because I feel like writers are always writing everything, right?  So you watch a movie and oh, there just happens to be a writer, because the writer’s just projecting themself in that [character].  But I think also if you’re making art it creates this opportunity for meta-analysis to have an artist in there.

Some of those parts I feel like I should give credit to my community, which is pretty much the Vancouver queer community. There’s just so much incredible art, especially performance art, going on here. Vancouver was a very groundbreaking scene for drag. Having seen it evolve over the past decade or so, it has just turned into some of the wildest performance art that I’ve seen. Definitely a lot of the performance that I wrote in the book was inspired by all the great art around me.

You’re French Canadian and you write in English. I was wondering if you could talk about if your French Canadian identity has any impact on your writing?

I think in some ways—I don’t want to be a snobby French person—but I think the lyricism and poetry of my writing might come from that. I’m also a translator between English and French, so I feel like I can speak on this with some authority, but when you translate something from French to English, the English is often so much shorter, because French is just so dense. It has so many layers of meaning that have to be explicit in the sentence, and things that you can just skip over completely in English, if that makes sense. I think that love of really rich, multi-layered language has impacted my writing. Also, I’m French Canadian. We do have a very specific culture that’s a little bit less restrained, say, than in North American Anglophone culture. We’re very direct and there’s definitely a crude sense of humor that’s very common, and I think that my sense of humor is fairly cultural.

You created Out-Front, an LGBTQIA+ writing group. Can you talk about how that group came to be?

As far as Out-Front goes, that’s defunct for the moment unfortunately. Out-Front was a queer writing group that I started when I was at school at Syracuse, and its goal was more or less to question the role that we were being given as queer writers and explore all the different possible things that we can write. I think partly it came from being in an MFA program and being in an environment that felt very unfamiliar to me. The Syracuse University MFA program is very hard to get into, so once I got in, it felt more competitive and honestly more ambitious than I was used to being, if that makes sense. There were a lot of people from Ivy League [universities] with important connections, and I had just been writing in this way that was completely disconnected from any academic environment or any famous writers. I was completely shocked when I got into that MFA program, because I just didn’t see myself as that kind of person. I wanted to be in it and I believed in what I was doing, but it was definitely a different environment for me.  I think I just wanted a little piece of home. For me, that meant making this queer community that was there to just mess around and be really supportive of each other and clap really loud when anyone did anything. That felt more nourishing and important to my art practice than the more intense MFA thing.

And finally, what role has the public library played in your life?

I have very early formative memories of the library. One of the more telling anecdotes kind of explains how I did not become a YA writer. When I was in elementary school, we would go to the library once a month and we were allowed to get comic books instead of traditional books. It was so controversial that I passed on that option. Everyone [else] would be in the kids and YA section and, being a little weirdo, I would go hide with old, dusty books and read things that were completely outside of my comprehension level. (laughs) I also had my first writers talk in a library when I was in elementary school. I was eight-years-old and I still remember it perfectly. It made such an impact on me, I was on the edge of my chair. Going throughout my whole writing career, libraries have been important, but that’s maybe my origin story.

The post Myriam Lacroix On Her Spectacular Debut Novel first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

The book is such a funny and deeply satisfying romantic comedy. What were the romantic comedies or romance novels that were important to you as a reader?

I’m a huge Nora Ephron fan—one of the first movies I can remember seeing in the theater was You’ve Got Mail—so her entire body of work has always been a huge inspiration for me. I also absolutely adored 10 Things I Hate About You, Notting Hill, and 13 Going on 30 when I was younger, and I still have a soft spot for classics like Roman Holiday. I have to confess that I didn’t spend my formative reading a lot of romance—I was always more into genre fiction and picking out pairings I liked from within those works—but as I’ve grown as a writer and found my niche, I’ve had a blast catching myself up with romances by authors like Taylor Jenkins Reid, Alyssa Cole, Helen Hoang, Heather Cocks, and Jessica Morgan.

One of the real pleasures of the book is how fleshed out the supporting players are. Even if we only meet them for a few sentences, we get a full sense of their life. What is your process for creating characters?

I probably spend way too much time crafting my characters instead of drafting in the early days of a project, but I just love doing it too much. I usually start with a basic idea of what the character’s personality is going to be—maybe inspired by someone I know or know of, maybe just completely made up—and assign them some basic shorthand character trait categories: zodiac sign, MBTI, Hogwarts house, et cetera. Then I sort of work backwards from there. What made them that way? Where are they from? How did they get from there to here? What part of humanity that I love do I want them to embody? What kind of jokes would they make? What tropes can I infuse into them? And the answers to those questions start to make a character.

The book gives us such a detailed view of the behind the scenes worlds of The White House and Buckingham Palace. What was your research process like?

A lot of Googling! I read some dry nonfiction about the first family and the royal family through history, and then spent a lot of time perusing an unofficial White House museum website that contains detailed maps of every floor and history of each room (shout out WhiteHouseMuseum.org). I pored through the Royal Collection’s online database, took many virtual tours of the V&A, referred back to my own memories of Kensington from the time I spent in London in college, so much more. It was a lot of jotting down anything that interested me or felt like it might be useful for the plot, and then hodge-podging it all together into something that worked. The goal was to make this incredibly inaccessible world feel lived in and easy to imagine.

When Alex and Henry e-mail each other, they frequently quote from the love letters of famous queer people. How did that detail find its way into their story?

When I decided to write a queer story that would have major international ramifications and change the history of the world it’s set in, I knew I couldn’t do it in a vacuum. As a queer person and a history nerd, I wanted this story to feel rooted in queer history, for both of my leads to be totally aware of what their relationship meant in the bigger picture of the world, to dig into the millions of people like them who were erased from their own histories and their own narratives. So the letters evolved out of that—I always knew I wanted Henry to be this great writer of love letters, and it sort of naturally followed that he would be a scholar of them and share that with Alex. Using the excerpts was my way of framing them as a bigger piece of an ongoing history.

The book takes place in an alternate 2019 where we have a totally different First Family in the U.S. and Royal Family in Great Britain. How did you balance including which real life things were still in this world (like Senator McConnell, for example) versus the characters you totally created?

An early reviewer of my book described it as being a quarter turn away from reality, and ever since, I’ve always liked to picture that as what this reality is. I wanted this to be a book full of hope and optimism and escapism that also didn’t pretend that the things that led us to 2016 would magically be fixed if a different person was in the White House. So we still have a long history of institutional oppression, we still have terrible politicians and Fox News, but we also had just enough things go differently (it’s subtle, but in the book there’s a mention of Democrats maintaining control of the Senate after Obama’s election) for us to have some different outcomes. It was all about drawing a line that could make this world still real and relatable, but also make it believably hopeful.

You just finished your book tour for the novel. What was that experience like?

Incredible! Everyone I met on tour was so incredibly kind and generous and supportive and really carried me through all the emotional highs and lows that come with debuting a book. My tour schedule brought me to three different Prides in three of the biggest cities in the country—Los Angeles, Denver, and Houston—and it was amazing to get to be a queer person promoting a queer book surrounded by other queer people celebrating and rebelling and standing up for what’s right. I’m so very, very thankful for the summer I’ve had and for the love people have shown me in every city I’ve hit. That energy is going to power me through the rest of the year.

What role have libraries played in your life?

I can’t remember a time when libraries weren’t a part of my life. I remember being a kid racking up late fees and spending days at summer programs at the public library by my house, skipping recess to stay inside my elementary school library, spending hours and hours camped out in my college library getting distracted from my exam outlines to work on my own stories. They’ve always represented endless possibilities to me, and they’ve always been this sort of goal on the horizon—I always wanted to have a book in one, one day. When I had my first big call with my agent and now editor to discuss a potential deal for my first book, I took a lunch break and drove out to my childhood library and sat in my car in the parking lot to have the conversation, just to feel that full circle moment. So, yeah, libraries have been everything to me. I think they’re one of the great symbols of communities being, at heart, generous and good.

The post Casey McQuiston on Nora Ephron, History Nerds, and Full Circle Moments at her Library first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Public Libraries Online: Throughout the book, Pen seeks to define herself on her own terms, and consistently runs up against problems with how other people perceive her. What were the challenges of tackling such a profound issue while still staying true to the book’s very funny tone?

M-E Girard: I find that the act of witnessing someone else’s hardships and pain through hearing their story will sometimes give the outsider this sense of devastation that’s exaggerated. Someone might read Pen’s story and think, This poor thing—this is awful—how can life be this way for a teenager? It’s so unfair! Like, yeah, it’s pretty unfair and awful what Pen has to deal with—and the point of the story is to make the reader aware of it—but to her, it’s just life. She knows it sucks, and she’s tired of it, but she’s been doing her thing despite it all. She’s resilient, and she’s adapted, so there was no question that throughout all the handling of unique difficulties, she was just going to be some regular kid with her own qualities, flaws, and interests. So I never had any conscious thought about balancing the heavy issues and the funny, lighthearted moments because I just felt like I was writing Pen’s life, the way she experiences it, and Pen is naïve, and funny, and a bit insensitive, and playful—so that stuff was just going to be there in the words.

PLO: Pen and her girlfriend Blake are gamers and both use video games as a means of self-expression. How did you decide to make gaming such a significant component of the novel?

MG: My girlfriend and I are pretty big gamers, so I was definitely going to pull on my knowledge and experience of gaming for something! But besides that, gaming fit so well for this story and for Pen’s characterization—she’s just a little geek-culture dude in general. Gaming—well, a lot of geek culture stuff, really—is something we’ve traditionally seen as belonging to boys, so that was a great way to strengthen the gender norms theme of the story—and also a great way to put more gamer girls out there in the world! Gaming figures in almost all the relationships Pen has: the idea of the different gaming styles between Pen and Blake (how they mirror their ways of handling life in general), the way her brother has her back in co-op mode, the competitive nature of gaming with Colby—there’s so much. It’s like, once I opened the door to gaming, it was everywhere.

PLO: Pen struggles with the concepts of respect and loyalty throughout the novel, especially with her male friends and her Portuguese family. How did these concepts come into play during the creation of the story?

MG: These things came out through revision. At first, I was just concerned with telling this story about how difficult these boxes and rules are to deal with when you don’t quite fit and others are expecting you to bend and conform. Then, as I revised, more specific things—things that were really particular to this character—came out. It’s kind of the same way I handled gaming. Once I sat back and examined what I had, I was able to pick out the important seeds that had been planted into the story without my full awareness. Then I could really water the crap out of them and watch them spread across the whole narrative. So respect and loyalty became much more important during revision, when they suddenly guided the way scenes played out. Revision is so where it’s at, in terms of writing!

PLO: On your blog, you write about the many rounds of revisions that Girl Mans Up underwent before its publication. What was helpful to you about such an extensive revision process?

MG: Speaking of revision! The first couple drafts were me getting to know the characters, trying to say certain things but not executing it very well. I’m a new writer, and I did a lot of learning with Girl Mans Up. Like I talked about in the previous question, revision allowed me to find the little things I had inserted in there, bring them out, and thread them through the narrative. I’m hoping I’ve done enough learning so that the next book won’t require quite so many rounds—ha!

PLO: Besides writing novels, you also work as a pediatric nurse. Has your medical career had any influence on your writing career or writing style?

MG: When I turned 27, I had this moment when I was like, Wait—am I going to do nothing but be a nurse for the rest of my life? I’m grateful to have the nursing career I have, but I’ve always had a creative side, and I’d never really done anything with it. The nature of my job—one-on-one night-shift community care—meant that I had some time at work to read or write (depending on how stable my clients were), so that was one of the reasons I decided to try getting serious about writing. The company I work for is also very supportive of my writing endeavors, and they’ve been incredibly accommodating with my schedule which allowed me to attend writing events, retreats, and, more recently, plan a variety of book tour events. So in that way, my medical career has completely influenced my writing career by making it possible!

PLO: You’ve twice participated in the Lambda Literary’s Writer’s Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices. What have those experiences been like for you?

MG: I don’t think Girl Mans Up would be what it is—and where it is—today without the Lambda retreat. I applied seeking exactly what the retreat was established for: to fill a void in the development of LGBTQ writers. Until Lambda 2013, I’d had trouble getting specific feedback and critique of my work because I didn’t know any queer writers who could critique what I was doing. I had a narrow view of the world, and of queerness—I mean, I had no awareness of privilege and oppression! I also met Malinda Lo at the 2013 retreat (she was my workshop facilitator) and having her input was such an amazing opportunity. The retreat delivered on what it offered: having my manuscript workshopped, attending presentations, meeting other queer writers. But it paid off long after the week was over. It sent me home with awareness, and words and concepts to research. I did so much learning the six months after returning from the retreat, and I ended up revising Girl Mans Up into the version that hooked my editor. There was so much to gain from attending the retreat, and I am so glad I took a chance and applied.

The post M-E Girard On Gaming, Rewriting, And Creating Her Multifaceted Main Character first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Last month, Kelly Jensen from BOOKRIOT published an article titled Queer Phobia and the Public Library. In her article, Jensen describes the challenges libraries face in providing material and programming (or lack thereof) for queer patrons. Challenges mostly center on whether a queer book should be obtained by the library; then, if a library decides to obtain such an item, where to place that item in the collection, and whether the item should have special requirements placed upon it (such as being placed in an isolated area or marked with a special identifying mark).

For instance, Jensen, reporting on an article from The Oklahoman, describes the Metropolitan Library System’s (Oklahoma City, OK) practice of separating queer children’s books from non-queer children’s books. MLS accomplishes this by grouping queer children’s books with books on such topics as divorce and drug use, in an elevated section so that children may not access the books without parental supervision. Jensen identifies such a practice as a microagression on LGBTQIA patrons. She points out that the library is making a statement by separating queer children’s books from non-queer books, implying that the books are not normal.

Behaviors such as this marginalize LGBTQIA patrons, and can make them feel like they are separated from the community in which the library resides. Consider for a moment, a queer family (two dads/two moms & their child/ren) who visit the library seeking LGBTQIA children’s books. Imagine a library staff person walking them to the area where they are kept. Picture the hurt and confusion when they discover that the books they are looking for are mixed with those on depression, sexual abuse, death, and alcohol abuse.

Some libraries are stepping up and embracing their queer patrons. The Ames Public Library (IA) just hosted a teen drag show on November 12, open to anyone between the ages of 14 and 20 (including performers and audience members). The library served refreshments and freely welcomed teens in the community who wanted to participate or to just view the show. Events like this can help generate dialogue between those who identify as LGBTQIA and other members of the community.

Ask yourself what you can do to make your library a more positive place for queer patrons. Assess if there are areas of improvement or current policies that can be changed, such as separating queer books from the main collection. Finally, consider contacting a local LGBTQIA advocacy group in your community to collaborate with the library, and to help with hosting LGBTQIA events.

The post Making the Library a Positive Place for LGBTQIA Patrons first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

On the following Friday, the New York Public Library hosted its annual anti-prom for LGBTQ students, an informal, fun time for students ages twelve to eighteen in the New York City area. “Anti-Prom provides an alternative, safe space for all teens who may not feel welcome at official school programs or dances because of their sexuality, gender presentation, the way they dress, or any other reason.”^[1] The library has been hosting this event since 2004, and the number of attendees has been steadily growing since its debuted attendance of a hundred. Admission is always free, and a DJ provides music. By the end of the night, non-gender-specific King and Queen of the anti-prom are chosen. Some of the guest masters of ceremony over the years has been Simon Doonan, Creative Ambassador-at-Large of the New York City-based clothing store Barneys, and Jimmy Van Bramer, an openly gay councilman from Queens.

The theme this year is based on The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Some of the themes from the past were:

• Fairy Tale (2015)
• Punk Rock (2014)
• Masquarade [sic] (2013)
• Monster (2012)
• Super Hero (2011)

Clearly, this year had a different tone to it based on the Orlando shootings that occurred five days prior. Some people felt the need to show up simply to show solidarity in the face of this horrific occurrence. Others penned “love letters” to their counterparts at the Orlando Public Library. The letter writing was a way for the students—many of which identify as LGBTQ—to cope with what had ensued. The letters were sent to the teen center down at the Orlando library in Florida. A total of fifty-one letters were sent, many of which used the rainbow colors the Pride Flag to show solidarity. Orlando Youth Programs Coordinator Erin Topolesky said she began to tear up moments after opening the letters: “She looked forward to sharing the letters with her teens and was looking for the right time to touch on such a sensitive subject.”^[2] Topolesky plans on having the letters archived across the street from the library, at the Orange County Regional History Center, in addition to many other items of sympathy and condolence that have been sent to the city since tragedy struck.^[3]

References

[1] “Anti-Prom 2016: Secret Garden Prom,” New York Public Library, June 17, 2016.

[2] Erin Topolesky, “New York Teens Send ‘Love Letters’ to their Orlando Counterparts” by Arielle Landau, New York Public Library, July 05, 2016.

[3] Ibid.

The post Anti-Prom Held at New York Public Library first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

As we strive to serve every member of the community, especially our YA patrons, public librarians may be looking to learn a bit more about a particularly marginalized group, transgender youth. Transgender youth, defined as those who do not conform to prevalent gender norms, can be an overlooked segment of the LGBT community. As society becomes more accepting of LGBT issues, transgender youth are also increasingly more  comfortable being open about who they are. However, despite recent societal inroads, trans youth are at increased risk for being ostracized, as well as physical, verbal, and sexual abuse. Currently, 41 percent of trans people attempt suicide, according to the University of California Los Angeles, School of Law’s Williams Institute.¹

As these kids are increasingly claiming their right to define and express themselves in new ways, they may seek resources including—but not limited to—hormone treatment, gender reassignment surgery, name change, and cross-living. Whether they are seeking resources, or just a bathroom to change in, public libraries can be an excellent support network for this sidelined group. And though it might sound complicated, it’s as easy as learning about and understanding any other group within your community.

In an effort to shed a little light on the lives of trans young adults, I talked to Jennifer Leininger at the Gender & Sex Development Program at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. Leininger’s extensive knowledge of the subject and experience in providing inclusivity training to local Chicago-area schools can help us make decisions when considering programming, collection development, and overall service to this YA
group.

Public Libraries (PL): Tell us a little bit about the Gender & Sex Development Program at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and what you do there.

Jennifer Leininger (JL): We are a multidisciplinary clinic. I’m the only non-clinician on the team. We have a mental health team with two psychologists and a psychiatrist as well as a medical team, endocrinologist, and pediatricians specializing in adolescent medicine. Of course everyone on the medical and mental health teams also specialize in supporting gender work. I manage the gender program and I do a lot of the community outreach, advocacy, and education, making sure that the folks in our program are supported not just from a medical and mental health perspective but also in their social settings and communities. We all work together to help foster a holistic approach, recognizing that just like every human is different, every person navigating their gender is also different and needs different things. So we accommodate that idea and provide the necessary support unique to their needs.

PL: Before we move ahead, let’s talk about terms. What are some of the terms, definitions, and concepts that readers should become familiar with?

JL: So, language is really powerful. Young people in particular, really tune into when language is used to be supportive and when language is used in a harmful way. So often what happens is folks aren’t familiar with what to say, and they may say something that seems unsupportive, and that can be really tricky to navigate.

I think it is important to distinguish between all of these things that make up who we are as unique individuals. So, as far as terms and concepts there is:

• Sex Assigned at Birth. So that’s body parts, internal and external genitalia, and chromosomes. It determines the birth-assigned sex and what gender we think someone might be.
• Gender Identity. Gender identity is someone’s deeply felt sense of self, which is not always the same as someone’s sex assigned at birth. Everyone has a gender identity of being male, female, something other, something in-between, but that again can be different from sex assigned at birth.
• Gender Expression. Then there is gender expression, which is individual characteristics of what we do that is perceived as more masculine or feminine. So that can be everything from clothing, appearance, play preference for younger kids, speech patterns, all kind of things. So that’s a little bit more like socially perceived as being male or female, masculine or feminine.
• Gender Nonconforming. Gender nonconforming is a term that I will probably use in the course of this interview. Related expressions include gender variant, gender expansive, and gender creative. Those all fall into the category of gender expressions that fall outside of society’s expectations of someone’s sex assigned at birth. And this is a little confusing as it may or may not impact someone’s gender identity. So it could be someone who is male sex-assigned at birth and identifies as male, but likes to express his femininity, so he identifies as a boy but likes to express his femininity. It could also be someone who is sex-assigned at birth as male but identifies as female and likes to express her femininity, so I think that is where it can be a little tricky. As far as gender nonconforming, it is a long-standing occurrence, so six months or more, [so] not someone who is a little boy who identifies as a boy but puts on a dress from the kindergarten dress-up day and wears it around all day. That’s adorable but not necessarily gender nonconforming. So someone—you know I don’t love the term “tomboy”—but that is the term that most people are familiar with and that would be a female who identifies as female but is expressing her masculinity, so that is a nonconforming female.
• Sexual Orientation. Sexual orientation is really different from gender identity. Sexual orientation is the gender to which folks are sexually and romantically attracted, so that really is external in terms of the other person, [rather] than gender identity, which is internal and how you feel. Part of talking about inclusion means having diverse representation of sexual orientation. Sexual orientation is definitely different from gender identity, and that is so important for folks to understand. You know when we are talking about gender, we are not talking about sex, we are actually just talking about how someone feels and is.
• Cisgender. Cisgender is a term used to describe folks whose gender identity is congruent or the same as their sex assigned at birth. So someone, who is born with a penis and identifies as male is a cisgender guy. Related, there is this wonderful team of lawyers that I work with on some policy work and one of them asked me, “Why do we need to include this term cisgender in the list of key terms?” My response is that it really helps us avoid saying things like non-transgender students or even on The Morning Shift [WBEZ Chicago, NPR Affiliate, a radio show Leininger recently appeared on²], the caller, I think, didn’t quite know what to say so she said “traditional” students. I’ve heard other folks say “normal students.” So instead of saying those things, the right term is cisgender, so now we are all empowered with that information.
• Transgender. And then transgender is an umbrella term, so basically it is a number of different gender identities that fall under the trans umbrella, but as individuals whose gender identity is different than sex assigned at birth. Trans means across, right? The big thing to remember is that it applies to identity so it does not really have anything to do with how someone looks or how someone behaves. And it certainly doesn’t have anything to do with someone’s body parts; I think that there is sort of a fixation with transgender people’s bodies, in a way that is really unsupportive. How do you know if someone is transgender? They tell you. It is not pathological, it can’t be diagnosed. I think that is also important for parents to know. It is not something that you can go to a therapist and they can say, “Oh your kid is transgender.” The other thing that is helpful to know is that transgender is an adjective, so it is not a noun or a verb. So, “she is a transgender” is incorrect. It is incorrect as a verb, so “that person is transgendered,” or saying a transgendered person is also incorrect. Correct would be saying something like a trans male, a transgender student, a trans person—any of those is certainly the right way to use it.

I think with any of these terms it is just important to remember to let people self-identify. But this is a helpful shared language to understand the experiences of the people we serve in libraries and in the community.

PL: On The Morning Shift program you talked about training that you are doing for Chicago-area schools on making the schools more inclusive for transgender youth. How did this come about and what is the goal of the training?

JL: We’ve been doing the training as part of the program for the past few years. Actually there has been a huge increase in requests for training, which is exciting, as folks are seeing this as an emerging diversity issue.

Basically I work with staff members to provide an understanding of gender diversity within a school framework, and to discuss best practices that support all students around gender diversity including but not limited to those who are transgender and gender nonconforming.

Depending on how much time we have [for training] we can really delve into scenarios. Language is certainly a part of that. I definitely take the opportunity to talk about why it is important to support gender diverse students and include gender diversity in language and curriculum just like with everything else, kind of try to thread it into the framework of the education process. So, that is sort of the goal.

PL: I believe this training was required in the schools after a touchy locker room issue?

JL: Locker rooms and bathrooms are definitely the issue that has been most contentious at this point, but certainly not the only issues that trans young people are navigating. Some trans young people have trouble getting a teacher to call them by a name that feels good and honors their gender identity. Some young people do not have their preferred name and pronoun in the student information system, so a substitute teacher might out them. That happens a lot.

They face bullying and harassment in locker rooms and bathrooms but certainly not only in those spaces. So part of the training is also understanding how this is not just about access to facilities. This does not begin and end with where we change and where we go to the bathroom.

It is about creating a space that reflects and celebrates gender identity and gender diversity, in the school culture, in the language we use, and in the ways that we interact with all students, including those who are trans and nonconforming. Recently, a colleague mentioned how violent it can feel for trans young people to feel that they are not reflected in any way in the curriculum or the language and I think that can be pretty devastating.

Something I always try to say at the beginning of trainings is that this is not a political training. The goal is not necessarily to get folks to change their beliefs because sometimes there are certain beliefs tied to gender and how folks feel people should identify, but these students are at increased risk for a number of different factors including dropout rates. So the goal is to make sure that all of the students get educated and at the end of the day here is what you need to do to make sure that happens and make sure that students feel supported. Regardless of how someone feels. So the goal isn’t necessarily to change hearts and minds but if that happens I’m fine with it.

PL: Transgender people face systemic exclusion and are often targets of misunderstanding and violence from individuals as well as institutions. How can public libraries and public library staff members best become allies to transgender youth?

JL: Well this is my favorite question, of course. So similar to schools, there is a lack of gender diversity representation in school curriculums and in libraries so a big part of combatting that is by having inclusive programming and books. Having books that feature gender diversity, LGB and T characters, and having them not just sit on the shelves but also [represented] in the activities.

Put it on a booklist, put it on a display that you are creating, because that is really demonstrating that the libraries and librarians are being proactive. So LGBT history month, the transgender day of remembrance, we can use that as we would any racial minority or religious minority group. Create a display around gender minority folks.

The more included they feel, the more engaged young people will be. Similar to schools, the goals is to keep folks engaged. That is a big part of libraries, too. If a transgender teen comes in and sees the book Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out, that really shows them that… “Hey, this is a place for me, too.”

Including books and characters that are interrupting gender stereotypes is a big thing and that is liberating for everyone. It shows that there is not just one way to be male, female, or anything else. And showing different genders, different sexual orientations, different families, is important.

The other thing I did want to bring up—the bathroom issue is actually really significant at libraries. I knew that it was significant in all public spaces, but because libraries are such a commonly used public space, a lot of transgender teenagers will come into the library and maybe they are not supported at home. Someone who identifies as female but who has to have a masculine expression at home might come into the library to change. They might use the facility to change or they may be seeking resources. We don’t ask cisgender people to look a certain way when they use a bathroom so just remember that it is not very supportive to ask transgender people to look a certain way either.

I understand that there are safety issues that folks are concerned about, but we need to recognize that trans young people deserve to feel like the library is a space where they can feel supported and making sure that the bathrooms are a place where they can change or go to the bathroom just like everyone else, without fear of harassment or bullying. And it could sometimes be bullying by a staff member. Actually bullying by security guards, in this respect, is a big issue.

PL: This is a relatively new phenomenon and some persons may not yet have overcome their biases in regards to the transgendered. What are some resources for further information and how can a person who is uncomfortable with the idea of transgender best serve transgender youth?

JL: While society is more open to transgender people now, it is not really a new phenomenon. There are transgender people in history. There is a kids’ book about one of the fastest carriage drivers in the West, who was actually a transgender male, so his sex assigned at birth was female but no one knew that until he died. But lately there has been much more of a cultural awareness, which is really so exciting.

It is OK to feel uncomfortable. But recognize that everyone deserves to use the library and feel safe and supported in those spaces regardless of people’s own personal beliefs and biases. Sometimes it is a matter of looking internally and asking yourself, “How do I feel about this?” and “How will what I am thinking or doing be negatively reflected back to the patron?” It is just customer service, making sure that everyone is treated fairly and equitably in the public space, regardless of how you might feel about their gender identity or expression.

If you are not sure of someone’s pronoun, you can always ask. You can ask in a supportive way, like “Hey my name is ___ , I’m the librarian on duty today, I prefer she and her pronouns. Is there a name and pronoun that you would like me to use while we are working together today?” That can be a way to lead in without feeling uncomfortable.

Just like anything else, folks are entitled to feel whatever belief or bias they have, but part of their job is to create a space where everyone feels welcome and supported. So just remembering that. And I do think that knowledge is power. If there is something that makes you uncomfortable, maybe doing a little bit of digging and looking at some of these resources will help you understand better—regardless of how you might feel—
and also, it is important to make sure folks do not feel ostracized. You know they are already a marginalized population at risk for violence and harassment in schools and in any other public space, so how can we combat that regardless of how we feel? No one deserves to feel that kind of violence.

PL: Learning about transgender lives can break stereotypes and put a human face on issues that persons may not have encountered personally. Is there media available that can help put a human face on these issues?

JL: I Am Jazz is a reality show that follows a transgender teen. Transparent is a little bit more adult but might be a good opportunity to understand trans folks. There are also a lot of clips available online—some of them are good, some of them are not so good—but I think hearing directly from folks navigating these spaces as a transgender person can be really helpful. So it is not just hearing that two thirds of these people have faced violence and harassment for the first time in school; that is scary, but doesn’t mean anything really unless you put a face to it.

As far as Transparent, I work with children more than adults but obviously some folks have to wait to come out as their authentic gender until they are done with their careers, until a parent dies, or a child is out of the house, or for whatever reason.

If you are not sure of someone’s gender, one question also might be, “Do I need to know in order to help this person?” For example, if you are just directing them to where Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is, gender expression or identity doesn’t really matter. A smile goes a long way. Both children and older folks can tell when someone is uncomfortable around them. This group has been marginalized so they have to be hyper-aware for their safety, so when they are working with someone—a librarian or an educator, whoever they may be—and that person is demonstrating discomfort, that really sends the wrong message.

PL: Transgender youth may be struggling with a number of issues, from health to safety. What are some situations that may arise (or have arisen in the person’s life) and what is the best method for navigating or helping the transgendered person in those situations?

JL: There is a term, transphobia, and it basically is discrimination toward gender minorities. Gender is really deeply entrenched in our society, so folks that don’t conform to traditional binary ideas can face severe harassment and there are increased risks for violence and harassment. That can be everything from isolation, teasing, bullying, and gossip. I think there are few ways to approach those issues. Be proactive, show that the library is a safe and supportive environment through systemic work, make sure there is a diversity statement including gender identity, through policy work around bathrooms, and having those systems in place.

Be proactive and also be reactive. Recognize what transphobic language sounds like. Hearing things like transphobic slurs, or hearing someone who is being misgendered, can be hard if you do not have a relationship with the young person and don’t know their gender pronoun. Being misgendered [using a name and pronoun that doesn’t align with a person’s preferred gender identity] is a really common way that transphobia manifests itself.
So, again, I think being proactive systemically and reactive by stepping in if you hear someone using transphobic language. Interrupt gender stereotypes.

For example, there is no one way to be male, female, or any other gender so there is no such thing as a boy’s haircut or a girl’s haircut, clothes are clothes, shoes are shoes. Trying to interrupt that kind of language can be really helpful, but also educating staff, especially security guard staff and other support staff. This can make a really big impact on creating an inclusive and supportive environment for transgender folks.

PL: Pronouns seems like they might be an issue on occasion. What is the best way to salvage a situation in which an incorrect pronoun is used? Can you explain the idea of letting persons self-identify?

JL: This is an awesome, awesome question, because humans make mistakes. So if you use someone’s name or pronoun and it is not the one they prefer, like if you know someone as Katie and then they let you know that they prefer Mark and male pronouns. What I would not say is, “I always knew you as Katie and it is hard for me because you still look like Katie.” Because it is not supportive. It is putting it on the person and it is your mistake so make sure you own it.

So if you call someone sir and they actually prefer madam, say, “I’m so sorry, I did not mean to disrespect you and I will absolutely call you miss/she/her moving forward; we want to make sure you feel supported here.

The person might still be offended but just make sure you still own the mistake.

So if you accidentally call Mark Katie, say, “I know you prefer Mark. I’m so sorry that was my mistake. I’m going to do everything I can to remember to call you Mark in the future.” So, making sure you own it and that you don’t put it on the person. As far as letting folks self-identify, listen to the language that they are using and use neutral language. So if you’re talking to someone saying, “Where is the child’s dad?” You could say, “Where is
the child’s parent?” And maybe you don’t need to use gendered language. You can always use “they” and “them”—that is something that folks are becoming more comfortable with over time.

The Washington Post just came out with some guidelines around the use of they and them as single use pronouns.³ The American Dialect Society named “singular they” as the word of the year a few weeks ago, and there are some people who do identify as nonbinary and prefer “they” and “them” as their pronouns.⁴ Listening to the language that folks are using to describe themselves is a way that they can self-identify. We don’t always need to ask. If you think maybe a young person is transgender or gay, part of that is recognizing is this me being curious or do I need to know this information?

PL: What have you learned from your school-trainings?

JL: Most people, regardless of how they feel in terms of their comfort level, want students to feel safe and they want young people to feel supported. So regardless of how someone feels—and it is a huge range in districts that I’ve worked with—everyone wants students and young people to succeed. And that is a takeaway that, for me, has been really positive—giving folks the tools and the knowledge to support students and their success regardless
of how someone feels personally about transgender identity. I think that’s the big positive takeaway for me and not to get too cliché, but knowledge really is power.

PL: What might public libraries do to become more inclusive?

JL: Reflect gender identities and diverse families in materials and programming for sure—in addition to ensuring policies and systemic structures are in place and training. It is so great that folks are reading this interview, and this is a good nugget to introduce the idea of gender diversity to librarians, some of whom may not know that it existed or hadn’t thought too much about it.

Try to do training that is part of being proactive. You don’t know until you know, but once you know you can’t not know, if that makes sense. You can’t plead ignorance once you have this information and no one is teaching it as far as I know in any graduate programs. Whether it is education or library sciences, this is just a subject that is getting missed.

And so, doing some of your own research around trans folks and gender diversity and diversity in general will be very helpful, but also including that as part of staff trainings both for librarians and support staff. Because young people will be coming into contact with everyone.

References

1. The Williams Institute, “Suicide Attempts among Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Adults,” accessed Feb. 10, 2016.
2. National Public Radio, WBEZ Chicago, The Morning Shift, Jan. 21, 2016, accessed Feb. 10, 2016.
3. Bill Walsh, “The Post Drops the ‘Mike’—and the Hyphen in ‘E-mail,’” Washington Post, Dec. 4, 2015, accessed Feb. 10, 2016.
4. American Dialect Society, “2015 Word of the Year Is Singular ‘They,’” Jan. 8, 2016, accessed Feb. 10, 2016.

Resources

41 Transgender-Friendly Books for Young Kids

PFLAG Illinois Book & Movie Recommendations 2015

Growing Up Trans (Frontline/PBS)

I Am Jazz (TLC)

Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, Gender & Sex Development Program

Welcoming Schools, Actions You Can Take as a Librarian

Welcoming Schools, Books to Engage Students: Bibliographies

The post Knowledge Is Power: Serving Gender Diverse Youth in the Library first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

There are lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer children and families in every service community in the country. While libraries all across the country serve queer people in various ways, most likely still rely on heterosexuality and cisgender as defaults. That is, the norms that govern straight people, normal families, and people whose gender expression matches their birth sex.

There are excellent resources for librarians who want to improve their services to LGBTQ patrons, and the American Library Association’s (ALA) Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Round Table (GLBTRT) collects, creates, and promotes professional resources, and, importantly, administers the Stonewall Book Awards and yearly booklists that share the most current materials. See those, and more, at ala.org/glbtrt. It is worth noting that the GLBTRT started as the Gay Task Force of ALA, and was the first gay or lesbian professional organization in the United States. I have also met many queer library workers—from library school to my current job; we really are everywhere. But in the fine tradition of providing neutral information, the ways even queer library workers interact with the public, in my experience, remain governed by heteronormative defaults. While our job is to find and present authoritative sources from multiple perspectives, I urge us to feel out the by-definition limits of operating within a larger system of authority that treats gender in a strict binary and defaults to homonormativity. For a deeper analysis of this from a cataloging perspective, see Emily Drabinski, K.R. Roberto, and Amber Billey’s “What’s Gender Got to Do With It? A Critique of RDA Rule 9.7” in Cataloging and Classification Quarterly from April 2014.

It is useful to start with the terminology itself. For me, queer is serving as an umbrella term for gay, lesbian, bisexual, or trans. It could also include other sexual minorities, such as asexuals or other people who are gender variant. But I’m also using it as a political term that embodies political resistance to heterosexist assumptions. This also means feminist, anti-racist, anti-classist, and so on.

Gender is social and cultural norms that govern our lives about masculinity and femininity, about what is masculine and feminine, about what is appropriate for men and women and girls and boys. And gendered, as I will use it here, means assigning gender characteristics to things like toys, books, themes, appearance, and behavior.

Sex means biological sex, referring to sex organs or chromosomes, and cis refers to someone who presents a gender identity that matches their birth/biological (or assigned) sex, i.e., not trans. Trans is short for transgender, which is someone who presents a gender identify that might not match their birth/biological sex, i.e., not cis. The term “transsexual” is now obsolete and any delineation between transsexual and transgender or transgendered is not worth distinction in this forum. Transgender or trans serves as a pretty good umbrella term.

Genderqueer is a complex term, better defined in this passage from the website GenderQueerId to offer the specificity needed:

both man and woman (example: androgyne); neither man nor woman (agender, neutrois, non-gendered); moving between two or more genders (gender fluid); third gendered or other-gendered (includes those who prefer “genderqueer” or “non-binary” to describe their gender without labeling it otherwise); = those who “queer” gender, in presentation or otherwise, who may or may not see themselves as non-binary or having a gender that is queer.¹

Genderqueer, as a term and as a method, allows librarians to consciously understand and act within our expertise and experience serving children and families. It also offers ameliorative solutions to the harm-gendered assumptions about reading, literacy, and library services. Children who are trans or gender variant are particular objects of bullying and discrimination, including many recent cases about the right of trans students to use the appropriate bathrooms and locker rooms. In a blog post called “Mama, Ella has a Penis,” Marlo Mack lists some bullet points that are useful for talking to kids about gender identity, including, “Some people feel like boys but they really like ‘girl stuff’” and “some people feel like girls but they really like ‘boy stuff.’”² This advice also includes obvious messages such as, no one needs to know or ask about your private parts. I recommend that people working with children read the post in its entirety for practical and hands-on language you can use with children and families. Trans people and trans kids falsely and reprehensibly remain a threat in the eyes of communities all over and have become targeted by what a congressional forum described as an “epidemic of violence.”³

If we are in this epidemic, and the high-profile suicides of young people like Tyler Clementi⁴ suggest that anti-queer bullying demonstrates serious harm, there is more that public libraries and librarians can do than have materials and resources available. They should be approaching a level of public service constructed to serve all patrons with dignity and respect, and one way to step up that game is for queer people is to start using queerness as a default mode. This can be a challenge for librarians who rely so much on authoritative structures of knowledge. As Marvin Taylor eloquently articulated in 1993, queerness represents a disruption of authority and is a deliberate confusion of the neat categories we use to understand the world.⁵ And genderqueerness is an additional dimension of ambiguity and plays in this disruption.

There are concrete steps any public library can take to minimize the confusing or distressing aspects of these ambiguities, while improving services to all patrons and visitors at the same time. One is making sure that their data collection instruments, especially library card applications, are designed in ways that erase barriers for people whose government-issued IDs might not match their physical characteristics or preferred names. In thinking about applying “queerness” as a default for library card registrations, it is possible to build in stronger bridges to access for formerly incarcerated people who might not have an ID, for homeless people who might not have an address, or for libraries where family accounts are linked—loosening up and broadening the constellation of relationships that a library considers family.

Another important part of the library card application is whether or not you ask for a form of address/salutation (Mr., Ms., Mx., etc.) at all, and if you do whether it is important to include options like Mrs. that designate a woman is married, or options like Mx. that are not gender marked. Could it be enough to have people write in their own, or do away with them altogether and always address library communications with “DEAR FIRSTNAME LASTNAME” in a mail merge? I think so. Many applications also ask for gender or sex. If yours does, you should add a preferred pronoun field, so staff can see if a patron has checked off “he, she, they, ze” or written in another option.

How does your library use this gender data? Do you plan outreach and marketing campaigns for men if women borrow more materials at a given branch? If 75 percent of your children’s circulation is from girls, do you double down and only buy “girl” materials to serve this community need, or is that an indication to buy “boy” materials? Would your collection development policy reflect which materials are appropriate for boys and which for girls? I propose that they would not and that most librarians selecting books would not limit themselves and their collections in these ways. I would argue, then, that there are not meaningful ways of using data that assigns gender categories, and offering only male and female as options can alienate and exclude queer and trans people.

It is worth mentioning that there is a library and educational industry around boys as reluctant readers, so there might be books in your collection such as Deborah B. Ford’s Scary, Gross, and Enlightening: Books for Boys Grades 3–12 (Libraries Unlimited, 2010), or you might swear by Jon Sciezska’s Guys Read website and campaign. These efforts presume that some boys are not achieving well in school because teachers and librarians (who are mostly women) are offering them books that are not interesting to them (because they are boys). I find this premise illogical and impracticable, in particular because I am queer: the things that were supposed to interest boys did not necessarily interest me, and the things that were supposed to interest girls sometimes did. Additionally, after years of working in children’s departments, I found over and over again that lots of different things interested lots of different kids. In my experience, it was the parents that sometimes asked for “boy books” or “girl books.” The premise that boys need special “boy” topics shortchanges librarians and the children themselves, and can alienate kids who are queer or genderqueer. See Scott’s “Deconstructing the ‘Books for Boys’ Discourse” for a scholarly analysis of this topic.⁶

Matching kids and books in a gender neutral way is a way to serve everyone better, as a default. Many of the children you serve might be trans or queer. Some of them could realize it already and perhaps even be ready to come out, and very likely many more are somewhere in a long process of self-identification, understanding, and acceptance. And even children who will end up being straight deserve a gender-neutral approach; some little boys are going to grow up and have long hair and paint their fingernails (and be straight!). Actively seeking out books with illustrations, stories, and themes that celebrate individuality and dignity in diversity, including books that do not rely on rigid gender roles, primes librarians to improve their services to kids of different sizes, abilities, ethnicities, classes, and other groups who are not defined by our culture’s version of “normal.” You probably already have these three titles in your collection that do just that: Helen Lester’s Tacky the Penguin, Leo Lionni’s A Color of His Own, and Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. These improved services will also positively affect the adults in their lives.

Another place children’s librarians can take action is during songs, rhymes, and games in storytime. Change the pronouns in familiar songs (Old McDonald had a farm, and on her farm or and on their farm; Five little monkeys jumping on the bed . . . their parent called the doctor and the doctor said, or if “their parent” sounds too awkward, you can commit to constantly switching it up: momma and papa and daddy and baba and grandma and
mommy and auntie, etc.). Avoid asking children to divide (or dividing them) into groups of boys and girls, just as you might avoid asking them to divide into groups of fat and thin or tall and short.

Consider using “they” as an alternate pronoun to he or she. It is a way to neutralize the way you refer to someone whose gender you do not know or do
not recognize, which might help avoid misgendering someone. If someone tells you what their preferred name or preferred pronoun is, please use it. Do not assume that a child is there with their mommy, even if kids usually are. These suggestions are meant to be little, but impactful shifts that will make people feel more welcome and comfortable engaging at their library. A common theme of the narratives of trans people in the book Trans/Portraits: Voices from Transgender Communities is that they are constantly explaining themselves, and being asked or forced to explain their very existence.⁷ Imagine fielding questions and comments such as, “Why doesn’t your appearance match your photo ID?” “Why did you used to have a different name?” “You are in the wrong bathroom!” “You really look like a boy,” and so on every single day. Even if some of these comments are offered with good intentions, it is probably exhausting. So imagine the impact a library worker could have on someone’s day by assuming that that individual is normal or even default.

New buildings and renovated spaces should add family or gender-neutral bathrooms. Sandburg’s 2014 pamphlet available to download from the GLBTRT of ALA is a valuable resource in planning for gender neutral bathrooms, and for revising existing restroom policy to accommodate gender neutral bathrooms.⁸ There should be diaper changing tables in or available to every restroom, particularly the ones in and near the children’s area.

Libraries and librarians will experience pushback when they explicitly welcome trans and genderqueer people using these strategies. Laws in several states do or would prevent trans patrons from using their bathrooms of choice.⁹ Be ready with policies—both personnel policies and public policies—that explicitly let trans and genderqueer people use the restroom facilities they find most appropriate, in the same way you might use a
collection development policy to answer a complaint about a book. Many of the techniques outlined in this article will help you negotiate the stickier and more complicated aspects of serving all library users in a genderqueer or queer way. I encourage you to practice these techniques, practice the new language and words you might use to talk about these issues, and be honest about the ways in which they might make you, your public,
or your coworkers uncomfortable. But I challenge you to engage those feelings in a productive way, and to change those attitudes rather than relying on automatic discomfort or disgust to hide them away. We (and our siblings, children, parents, and friends) are everywhere, and we are relying on you to make sure we are welcomed and exceptionally served by public libraries.

References

1. Genderqueer Identities, “What is Genderqueer?” accessed Feb. 16, 2016.
2. Marlo Mack, “Mama, Ella Has a Penis,” blog post on Mutha Magazine, Jan. 2014, accessed Feb. 16, 2016.
3. Dawn Ennis, “Congressional Forum to Investigate ‘Epidemic of Violence’ Against Trans People,” Advocate.com, Nov. 13, 2015, accessed Feb. 16, 2016.
4. Kate Zernike, “Son’s Suicide Leads to Aid for Students,” New York Times, Feb. 1, 2013, accessed Feb. 16, 2016.
5. Marvin J. Taylor, “Queer Things from Old Closets: Libraries—Gay and Lesbian Studies—Queer Theory,” Rare Books & Manuscripts Librarianship 8, no. 1 (March 20, 1993): 19–34.
6. Denise Scott, “Deconstructing the ‘Books for Boys’ Discourse,” Progressive Librarian no.42 (Summer 2014).
7. Jackson Wright Shultz, Trans/Portraits: Voices from Transgender Communities (Hanover, N.H.: Dartmouth College Pr., 2015).
8. Jane Sandberg, “Gender-neutral Bathrooms in Libraries,” GLBTRT Resources Committee, Oct. 16, 2014, accessed Feb. 16, 2016.
9. Indianapolis Business Journal, “Indiana Bill Targets Transgender Bathroom Use,” Dec. 26, 2015, accessed Feb. 16, 2016; Katy Steinmetz, “States Battle Over Bathroom Access for Transgender People,” Time, Mar. 6, 2015, accessed Feb. 16, 2016; Cleis Abeni, “Mo. Trans Student’s Bathroom Struggle Is History Repeating Itself,” Advocate .com, Sept. 2, 2015, accessed Feb. 16, 2016.

The post FEATURE|Serving All Library Families in a Queer and Genderqueer Way first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

The teenage years are not easy for anyone, but for many LGBT teens, the struggle to understand themselves and find acceptance from their peers and community can be even more difficult. The public library can be a wonderful resource for LGBT teens looking for answers or for those just needing a safe, welcoming space to gather with friends. If you want to begin to make a connection with your LGBT teen patrons, there are a few easy steps you can take to get started improving service to this often underserved community.

One of the easiest ways that librarians can help improve their service to LGBT teens is by becoming familiar with some basic terminology. People often mistakenly use inappropriate or out­dated words that can offend or hurt, even when it is unintentional. Suzanne Walker, Professional Development Office Supervisor at the Indiana State Library, offers a training session on serving LGBT youth for librarians throughout the state. She says that it is especially important for librarians to understand the difference between gender identity and sexual orientation and recommends the terminology guide from UCLA to help clarify words that you are unclear about. She states that “There are an endless number of ways for a human to be a human and it’s important for librarians to remember that we serve all of them.”

Another way libraries can help reach the LGBT patrons is by having a collection that includes both informational and recreational materials that represent the diversity of the community. The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (GLBT) Round Table of the American Library Association is a great place to get some guidance on how to help build a balanced collection.

The GLBT Round table creates the Rainbow List and also sponsors the Stonewall Book Awards, which honor books for youth that have exceptional merit relating to the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender experience.

However, the best way to find out what your LGBT teens need from your library is to ask them! If you are not sure who the LGBT teens are in your library, this might mean going outside of your library walls for help. Many high schools and most colleges have a Gay Straight Alliance group that can help answer questions you may have about serving LGBT youth.

There may be occasions where a LGBT teen comes to you in a crisis situation. LGBT teens are more likely to experience violence than their heterosexual and cisgender peers and have higher rates of suicide and homelessness. Many also lack a good support network. “It’s important for librarians to remember that we don’t have to have the answer for every question that crosses our desks, but we do have to know where to find that answer. Make sure your librarians know what resources are available to your teens and tell them about those resources through signs in the restrooms, programs, word­of­mouth, or brochures.” explains Walker. If your library isn’t already, consider becoming a registered Safe Place, a national youth outreach and prevention program that helps connect teens with the resources that they need in their communities.

Finally, it is also important not only to have the knowledge and resources but to also celebrate the LGBT community. Many libraries have LGBT resources but shy away from putting them on display or highlighting them on the library’s website. If you have LGBT resources available but they are difficult to find, think about what message this is sending to your LGBT teens. Not sure where to begin? Why not try something for Teen Read Week, October 18-­24!

References

1. http://www.ala.org/PrinterTemplate.cfm?Section=Available_PIO_Materials&Template=/ContentManagement/HTMLDisplay.cfm&ContentID=11968. Accessed 9/18/15.

The post Serving Your LGBT Teen Patrons first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

We Need Diverse Book logo

According to their website at weneeddiversebooks.org, the organization defines diversity as recognizing “all diverse experiences, including (but not limited to) LGBTQIApartn, people of color, gender diversity, people with disabilities, and ethnic, cultural, and religious minorities.”

In the last year, the WNDB campaign has established itself as a tax-exempt public charity, partnered with School Library Journal and the Children’s Book Council in promoting their cause, established the Walter Dean Meyers book award, and among other things, created the popular #WNDB. Diversity panels have popped up at conferences everywhere from School Library Journal’s Day of Dialogue to the American Library Association to the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI).

Part of what spurred Oh and Lo to take action was the all-white panel scheduled at last year’s Book Expo America (BEA) BookCon event. This year, BookCon and WNDB partnered for a panel entitled, “We Need Diverse Books: In Our World and Beyond.” Authors Sherman Alexie and Jacqueline Woodson were scheduled to be part of the event, but WNDB did point out that no authors of color were to be featured at the annual BEA children’s breakfast.

It seems the call for diverse books would begin with authors. In a recent interview, middle school teacher and first-time novelist Cindy Rodriguez talked about diversity in her new YA book, When Reason Breaks. While in the revision process, she took the time to add diversity to her novel.

Said Rodriguez, “Emily Delgado is Puerto Rican, Tommy Bowles is half-Mexican, Ms. Diaz is Latina, Kevin has two dads, and Sarah is black. The story, however, is not about being Latino or gay or black. It’s about teen depression, attempted suicide, and Emily Dickinson. When we talk about diversity in children’s literature, we often think about it in terms of books with an almost all minority cast of characters dealing with issues linked to race, culture, etc. I’ve read lots of those books, and I think we need more of them, for sure, but we also need more books with diverse characters tackling other issues. The characters’ culture, race, sexual orientation, etc. may play a part in the narrative because it’s important to who they are, but it shouldn’t always be the “problem.”

What’s next for WNDB? They recently developed an internship to help “diversify publishing from the inside out”, and will host the first Children’s Literature Diversity Festival in Washington D.C. in 2016.

Wondering what you as librarians can do at your libraries? Some advocates suggest not just buying books with diverse characters simply for that fact. They want you to buy books with diverse characters because they are good. For more tips, check out Marybeth Zeman’s two-part series on “Can Children See Themselves in the Books on Your Shelves?” here:

https://publiclibrariesonline.org/2014/07/can-children-see-themselves-in-the-books-on-your-shelves-part-i/

References:

https://publiclibrariesonline.org/2014/07/can-children-see-themselves-in-the-books-on-your-shelves-part-i/

http://weneeddiversebooks.org

http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2015/03/people/movers-shakers-2015/we-need-diverse-books-movers-shakers-2015-change-agents/#_

The post “We Need Diverse Books” Campaign Gaining Momentum first appeared on Public Libraries Online.