Proud
CONTENTS
- TITLE PAGE
- A NOTE ON THE STORIES
- FOREWORD
Juno Dawson - INTRODUCTION
- DIVE BAR
Caroline Bird
Art by Saffa Khan - PENGUINS
Simon James Green
Art by Alice Osema - ON THE RUN
Kay Staples
Art by Alex Bertie - THE PHOENIX’S FAULT
Cynthia So
Art by Priyanka Meenakshi - AS THE PHILADELPHIA QUEER YOUTH CHOIR SINGS KATY PERRY’S ‘FIREWORK’…
David Levithan
Art by Steve Antony - ALMOST CERTAIN
Tanya Byrne
Art by Frank Duffy - THE OTHER TEAM
Michael Lee Richardson
Art by David Roberts - I HATE DARCY PEMBERLEY
Karen Lawler
Art by Kameron White - THE COURAGE OF DRAGONS
Fox Benwell
Art by Kristen Van Dam - THE INSTRUCTOR
Jess Vallance
Art by Kate Alizadeh - LOVE POEMS TO THE CITY
Moïra Fowley-Doyle
Art by Fatti Burke - HOW TO COME OUT AS GAY
Dean Atta
Art by Leo Greenfield - ABOUT THE AUTHORS AND ARTISTS
- RESOURCES
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- COPYRIGHT
A NOTE ON THE STORIES
The stories in this anthology deal with the struggles faced by the LGBTQ+ community. On page 350, we have included a list of resources to help you if you are affected by any of the issues raised in this book or would like to find out more.
FOREWORD
When I was a little girl, I didn’t know I was a little girl.
Or rather, as soon as I knew there was any sort of a difference between boys and girls I knew, without hesitation, that I would definitely prefer to be a girl. What I wasn’t aware of was that parents who are told they got a baby boy, might actually have a baby girl. I didn’t know that a whole bunch of these babies grow up and decide to do something about the gender they were assigned at birth. I certainly didn’t know the term ‘transgender’.
My ignorance existed for several reasons. The first, I guess, was the education of my parents. They, like the vast majority of parents at the time, had never heard of transgender people. Although I continually asked my parents when I was going to metamorphose into a girl, they didn’t know that was a ‘thing’ any more than I did. I can’t, and have never, blamed them.
The second reason is worse because it was so cruel. I was born during the political reign of a woman called Margaret Thatcher. Here we need some historical context. Against the background of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which was inaccurately attributed to gay and bisexual men, public attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people were at an all-time low in Britain, with the British Social Attitudes Survey reporting that seventy-five per cent of the population felt homosexuality was ‘always or mostly wrong’.
In the middle of this negativity came a children’s book. It was called Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin. You guessed it, it’s about a little girl who has two dads. When the Daily Mail newspaper got wind that this book was being stocked in a school library, they splashed it across the front pages, causing a moral panic which eventually led Thatcher’s Conservative government to introduce a piece of legislation called Section 28.
This clause in the Local Government Act 1988 stated that local authorities (thus including schools and libraries): ‘shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality’ or ‘promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship’. Wow. Yeah, that was a thing that happened.
The ‘acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship’? Fucking hell.
This of course meant that teachers and librarians were terrified that if they helped or supported young LGBTQ+ people in any way, they would be persecuted. A culture of clanging silence fell over schools, libraries and youth clubs. For twelve long years, teenagers went to school unable to ask their teachers, counsellors, mentors and librarians questions on burgeoning feelings about themselves, their bodies, their minds, their desires.
I was one of those teenagers. Being a gender nonconforming queer youth was WELL FUN in the nineties, let me tell you. I remember one time an entire football team scooped up handfuls of wet mud off the pitch and hurled them at me, shouting ‘DOLLY DAWSON’. My poor PE teacher, himself a gay man, could only stand at arm’s length and ask, “Who did this?”
“All of them,” I replied, in tears. And he couldn’t do a thing to help. There were no measures in place for homophobic, transphobic or biphobic bullying. How could there be? That might be seen to ‘promote’ homosexuality.
The government of the era made my life worse. I am still covered in scars – real and metaphorical – because of that piece of legislation. It was eventually scrapped by the Labour government in 2000.
Sorry, did that come across as political? Welcome to being LGBTQ+. Your life is inherently political. Politicians, all the world over, are still discussing whether or not you should have the same fundamental human rights as straight or cisgender people.
The final reason I didn’t start my transition until I was twenty-eight was the media. Ooh, the media is a powerful, powerful thing. I have mixed feelings about being a very small cog in that thundering, polluting social engine. As discussed, banning a book was instrumental in the introduction of Section 28. The Mail announced in 1985: ‘Britain Threatened by Gay Virus Plague’. The Sun said ‘Blood from Gay Donor Puts 41 at AIDS Risk’. Fast-forward to 2017 and The Times declared ‘Children Sacrificed to Appease Trans Lobby’. The Mail: ‘NHS Pressured Our Kids to Change Sex’.
Almost thirty years have passed, but we have the same moral panic. Gay people, trans people, bi people, queer people: the media wants everyone to think we are a risk. A risk to your health, a risk to your children. Utter, unrepentant, unreserved bigotry and prejudice.
But with Section 28 gone, media attitudes towards (cisgender) gay and lesbian people improved over the course of the late nineties. Will & Grace and Queer as Folk appeared on Channel 4; Ellen DeGeneres came out; Graham Norton got his own chat show; Dana International won Eurovision; Doctor Who had a bi companion (Jack Harkness) and then a lesbian one (Bill Potts); Big Brother heralded the dawn of Reality TV and with it, household names Brian Dowling, Anna Nolan, Rylan Clark-Neal, Will Young, Nadia Almada. Which came first? Media representation or the shift in attitudes? Chicken or egg?
YA fiction has always pushed boundaries. In Judy Blume’s Forever (1974), ‘theatrical’ Artie tries to kill himself after questioning his sexuality. Almost thirty years later in David Levithan’s Boy Meets Boy (2003), Paul and Noah attend a high school so inclusive, their sexuality is the least of their worries. Levithan dared to dream of a world free of intolerance and hatred. Sadly, we’re still dreaming.
Our books are widely ‘challenged’ or banned. My own This Book Is Gay (2014) was removed from Alaskan libraries in 2015 after parental complaints. Luckily, the librarians fought back and the book is still in the Wasilla library, albeit in a different section.
We fight on. We, as LGBTQ+ authors, know how important it is to see ourselves in stories. If we live in stories, it means we live in the real world too. We are claiming our space, claiming our oxygen. Since the dawn of time, we have been told in a litany of ways that we are ‘less-than’, ‘out of the ordinary’, ‘abnormal’, ‘subnormal’, or plain ‘different’. We are none of those things. We are gloriously ourselves, and we show the world our glory during Pride.
That is why Pride is both party and protest. It’s noisy, it’s colourful, it’s glittery and it’s very, very visible. It’s a statement to the whole wide world that we are here; we celebrate our varied and diverse culture; our history; our struggles.
Bringing me to this very book. All the wonderful writers and illustrators featured are LGBTQ+. We’ve all got here despite the barriers and struggles we’ve experienced. Oh, and I’m sure we have. I bet every last one of us has, at some point, felt like a misfit, an outsider, a prisoner in our own body. And yet here we are, spinning that straw into gold! We are proud of ourselves because I know that I often felt like I wouldn’t succeed because of my gender or sexuality, but I did.
I am SHOOK at the talent I persuaded to write for us. Pretty much everyone included in these pages said yes within about ten minutes. What a day that was! I am a fangirl for every last established writer and illustrator in this collection, and I can’t tell you what a rush it was to help choose the four previously unpublished authors we’ve unearthed. They’re all going to be stars.
The only shame was that I couldn’t call upon ALL the LGBTQ+ YA talent I love so much. When you’ve finished this anthology and bought all our books (if you love LGBTQ+ authors, buy LGBTQ+ authors or ask your library to get them in for you) also check out YA superstars Patrick Ness, Cat Clarke, Liz Kessler, Susie Day, Andrew McMillan, Adam Silvera, Nina LaCour, Will Walton, Josh Martin, Robin Talley, Alex Gino and Marieke Nijkamp … and those are just the ones I can recall without googling. VERY sorry if I forgot you.
See all those names? We’re not successful because we’re gay, or trans, or bi, or queer. We’re successful because we’re good. We are all skilled and talented. The best thing we can do to influence change is what we do best. We tell stories: stories about ourselves and stories about people like us. These stories are that (potentially fictional) brick that was first thrown at the Stonewall riots, the inception of Pride marches. We are hurling our messages of love, of kindness, of hope, out into the world. Enjoy! And share them. That’s what you can do. Tell everyone you know about this book.
Whether you picked up this book because you identify as LGBTQ+, or because you’re having a think about your identity, or because you’re one of the millions of friendly allies we absolutely rely on to coexist in a very heteronormative, cisgender society, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I really hope you enjoy these stories, poems and pictures.
I’m proud of you.
Juno Dawson
August 2018
INTRODUCTION
The theme of pride is all encompassing – whether it’s pride in an achievement or pride in who you are. Every teen has something to be proud of. Each writer in this collection has interpreted the theme in their own way, and the resulting work ranges from advice on ‘How to Come Out as Gay’ by poet Dean Atta, to two girls in a graffiti-strewn Dublin in ‘Love Poem to the City’ by Moïra Fowley-Doyle, to a celebration of diverse voices working together in David Levithan’s ‘As the Philadelphia Queer Youth Choir Sings Katy Perry’s ‘Firework’…’, surely a metaphor for this anthology itself?
The stories are funny – see Cameron attempting to come out to his parents in Simon James Green’s ‘Penguins’ – and moving: Tanya Byrne’s character Orla, in ‘Almost Certain’, struggles with anxiety. They are thought-provoking, for instance ‘The Instructor’ by Jess Vallance, and engender a sense of camaraderie, as in ‘The Courage of Dragons’ by Fox Benwell. And all show – as Caroline Bird’s poem ‘Dive Bar’ captures perfectly – that pride is an incredibly important and deeply personal feeling.
Once more, we have commissioned four debut voices. Each story is fabulously individual. From a lesbian retelling of Pride and Prejudice (Karen Lawler’s ‘I Hate Darcy Pemberley’) to a ragtag football team supporting their trans star player (Michael Lee Richardson’s ‘The Other Team’); from a couple escaping their background in a Travelodge (Kay Staples’ ‘On the Run’), to a world where a Chinese lantern-maker has to choose between the Emperor and her friend (Cynthia So’s ‘The Phoenix’s Fault’), they all resonate with pride.
We hope you enjoy these stories and the accompanying art. It has been a joy to work on this anthology.
Rachel Boden
Acting Editorial Director, Stripes Publishing
There is a true wealth of creative talent in the LGBTQ+ community, which made putting together a longlist of artists for this anthology a real joy. Reducing our longlist to just twelve was a little trickier.
Some pairings presented themselves quite quickly – the vibrancy of Kameron White’s work finds harmony with Karen’s Lawler’s bold storytelling, and the closeness and south-coast tones of Tanya Byrne’s and Frank Duffy’s work felt a natural fit. Other combinations were maybe less obvious, like David Roberts turning his hand to Michael Lee Richardson’s footballers, or Priyanka Meenakshi’s dramatic accompaniment to the quiet colour of Cynthia So’s world.
The range of art styles in the anthology is intended as a small reflection of the diversity of the LGBTQ+ community, but beyond that our artists were encouraged to respond to the stories in a way that illustrates their personal readings. All of their responses to the stories have made the experience a richer one for us, and, I hope, for you, the reader.
Paul Coomey
Art Director, Stripes Publishing
Through a red door down a steep flight
of stairs into a windowless cellar
with sweating walls
an ingénue in a smoking jacket
sits atop a piano
as a host of swaying women
sing ‘Your Secret’s Safe with Me’
and one invites you
into the privacy of a kiss – all these
dark clandestine places – and you find
yourself imagining a very tiny
woman walking straight
into her mouth
through a red door down a steep flight
of throat into a windowless cell
with breathing walls
an ingénue in a smoke-jacket
sits astride a piano
as a host of swallowed women
sing ‘Your Secret’s in a Safe’,
the barmaid shakes a custom
cocktail she calls ‘A Private Kiss’ – all these
dark half-eaten faces – and you find
yourself imagining a tiny tiny
woman walking straight
into her mouth
through a red breath down a dark
thought into a swallowed sense
with shrinking walls
an innuendo in stomach acid
slops upon a piano
as a host of silent passions
mouth ‘Your Secret Is Yourself’
inside the belly of the world – all these
dark dissolving spaces – and you find
yourself imagining a windowless
woman breaking
walls down in herself, sprinting
up the shrinking
halls and up contracting
corridors and up the choking
fits of hard stares through dark
thoughts and dead
laws through the red door
as it swallows shut behind you
now you’re spat out
on the pavement with the
sun just
coming out.
“Parents! My name is Zorg, Commander of the Realm of Ziatron, and I bring news of your son’s sexuality.”
I stare at my pathetic reflection in the mirror and remove the colander from my head and Mum’s shimmery pashmina from around my shoulders. This is what it’s become. This is what it’s become because I cannot think of the goddamn words! And the more I practise, the more every single option sounds wrong.
“Mum, Dad, I think I might be gay.” (What’s with the ‘think’? There is no ‘think’, you are.)
“Hey, just to let you know – I don’t fancy girls. But I do fancy –” pause for dramatic effect – “sheep! Ha! Joking. It’s boys. I fancy boys.” (Is this really the time for jokes? And I’m pretty sure this one wouldn’t sit well with Mum’s RSPCA donations.)
“Um, you know how I’ve got posters of Hamilton, Wicked and Dear Evan Hansen up in my bedroom? Well, it’s a sign. A stereotypical one, but a sign nonetheless.”
I hear their car pull up on the drive and strike a pose, pointing at my reflection in the mirror. “You’ve got this, gay chops!”
Gay chops?! And anyway, I so haven’t. ‘Got this’, I mean, I’ve no idea if my chops are gay or not, but the rest of me is, so I guess they are too.