In a study done in 2015, scholar Laura Jiménez catalogued the amount of lesbian and gay characters in award winning YA books published between the years 2000-2013. While a new study is due, I think her conclusion probably still rings true. “Although the number of books with LGBTQ characters has quadrupled over the last five years, the number of lesbian characters remains startlingly low, prompting the question: Where are all the lesbians in the LGBTQ YA literature”? My question is, of course, “Where are all the bisexuals?”. The push for more queer characters has been moderately successful, especially in YA literature. However, in a surprise to no woman, an “unintentional consequence” is that the norm is gay males, “excluding lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and queer identities” (Jiménez).
The Lambda Literary Awards, or “Lammys”, began in 1989 as a literary award devoted to LGBTQ storytelling. While they now have bisexual and transgender categories, those are relatively new. It should also be noted that there are no delineations for the children’s book category; it is just listed as LGBTQ Children’s/Middle Grade. However, these awards are a great starting point for finding queer YA books to either read yourself, or gift to a young person in your life.
Malinda Lo, award winning YA author, is basically my hero. She has an incredible website dedicated to her own books, as well as pie charts she has created over the years that calculate LGBTQ+ representation in young adult books. She is quick to point out that the while she has done the work crunching the numbers, she has not been able to read every single book, let alone rate their quality.
