Growing up as a queer kid in the U.K. in the ’90s, I found refuge in books, preferring their company to the harsh realities of the outside world. My imagination was immense, colorful and greedy, and I was always on the hunt for something to satisfy my voracious literary appetite.
English was my favorite subject at school — so much so that I would write and illustrate stories for my English teacher on a weekly basis; tales of murderous werewolves were a fave. Reading about and crafting worlds that were so different from my own served as the escape I needed from reality. And the library was crucial to facilitating this escape.
I loved reading about bloodthirsty supernatural creatures as an 8-year-old. But the older I got and the more confused I became about my queerness, the more I craved reading material that was a bit more, well, relatable. But books about and for young queer people didn’t really exist 30 years ago, in any part of the world.
Fortunately, there are more now than ever before — and for free at your local library. Queer kids today have a wealth of options, like Meredith Russo’s joyful transgender romance “If I Was Your Girl” and Juno Dawson’s fun yet incredibly informative “This Book Is Gay.” If books like these were available when I was processing my queerness, it would have made me feel less alone and I’d need a lot less therapy now.
Despite being all grown-up (kind of) and more comfortable with my identity, I still want to read books like these, books that discuss our authentic selves. Living in the U.K., I can access them easily. But unfortunately, this is not the case in other parts of the world deemed equally as “progressive.”
The current bans on queer books in the U.S. are mostly orchestrated by parent-led groups and far-right activists who believe that conversations about queerness should not exist in schools. Incidentally, Russo’s and Dawson’s books have been banned in multiple school libraries in America.
Fortunately, librarians all over the U.S. are fighting back, with many viewing their job as inherently political. They’re doing everything they can to protect and advocate for queer people, even if it costs them their jobs and mental health.
“I had threatening emails and phone calls, one of which mentioned my wife by name,” Gavin Downing, a former librarian at Cedar Heights Middle School in Covington, Washington, tells me. After adding some queer books to his library’s shelves in early 2022, three…
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