Speaking Out: LGBTQ Youth Stand Up

by Steve Berman

Overview

Speaking Out features stories for and about LGBT and Q teens by fresh voices and noted authors in the field of young adult literature. These are inspiring stories of overcoming adversity (against intolerance and homophobia) and experiencing life after "coming out." Queer teens need tales of what might happen next in their lives, and editor Steve Berman showcases a diversity of events, challenges, and, especially, triumphs.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781602825666
Publisher:	Bold Strokes Books
Publication date:	09/20/2011
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	8.30(w) x 5.50(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	13 - 17 Years

About the Author

Steve Berman sold his first short story at the age of seventeen, so he's always considered himself a young adult author. His novel, Vintage, was a finalist for the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy as well as named to the GLBT Round Table of the American Library Association's Rainbow Project Book List, which is recommended reading of queer books for children and teens. He has edited the young adult fantasy anthology, Magic in the Mirrorstone (a Parade Magazine Pick), as well as Lambda Literary Award finalists Charmed Lives (co-edited with Toby Johnson) and Wilde Stories. He regularly writes queer spec fic short stories for teens--his most recent being a lesbian retelling of the Swan Lake story for The Beastly Bride (Viking Children's, ed. by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling) and a gay vampire tale for the April release Teeth (HarperCollins, also ed. by Datlow and Windling). He has spoken about queer and young adult fiction at numerous conferences around the nation but always returns to New Jersey, as his cat Daulton demands it so.

Editorial Reviews

Gr 8 Up—In this collection of short stories, the authors are as diverse as the selections, and the narratives are often inspired by interactions or personal experiences. The topic is an important one, and books about it deserve a place on library shelves, but the quality of writing in these stories is uneven. Some are excellent, but some are quite weak. For teenagers with a voracious appetite for Queer-themed literature, this book will satisfy; otherwise, it is strictly additional.—Sharon Senser McKellar, Oakland Public Library, CA

School Library Journal

A mixed bag of stories about LGBTQ teens with a few serious omissions and misrepresentations.

Ambitiously, the editor believes this book will stop LGBTQ teens from feeling alone, and in the anthology's short introduction, he encourages queer teens to speak out and straight teens to listen. To this end, most of the stories in the collection show LGBTQ teens who are proud of their gender or sexual orientation and stand up for themselves or for something they believe in. In Alex Jeffers' standout "Captain of the World," a gay, Turkish Muslim goalie fights back against both racial and sexual harassment on the soccer field. In Berman's fantastical "Only Lost Boys Are Found," an unnamed hero quests his way through a half-cartoon, half-dream sequence to rescue the boy he loves. Other stories, however, fall flatter, including the well-intentioned but poorly executed "All Gender U," whose trans protagonist (the only one in the collection) reads more as a hodgepodge of outsider assumptions about trans people than as a person in her own right. While some diversity is represented among the stories—hometowns small and large, a variety of faiths—the majority of protagonists are still white and male.

LGBTQ teens do need to see themselves represented positively; it's a shame more of them won't here. (Short stories. 12 & up)

Kirkus Reviews