There are many books that have led up to this book—not just books I’ve written myself, but books that came before mine that made my books possible. I would like to acknowledge many of them here.
The first openly queer book by an openly queer author for kids or teens that I knew about was Nancy Garden’s Annie on My Mind. I was lucky to meet her and hang out with her early in my career, and am grateful that I got to thank her and, hopefully, prove myself worthy of the path she created. This book is dedicated to her.
Many of the other authors who came before me are acknowledged by the names of characters in this book. Donovan is named after John Donovan, author of I’ll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip, a YA novel that came out in 1969, the same year as Stonewall, and is widely considered the first openly queer YA novel. Mr. Howe is named after my friend James Howe, whose book Totally Joe was the first joyful, unabashedly gay middle-grade novel I ever read. (It’s still one of my all-time favorites.) Principal Woodson is named after Jacqueline Woodson, who still inspires me with every book she writes. (My grade school years would have been so much cooler if she’d been my principal.) Ms. Guy is named after Rosa Guy, the author of Ruby, considered the first openly queer Black YA novel. Other writers whose names you’ll find within the book include Sandra Scoppettone, Michael Cart, Francesca Lia Block, M. E. Kerr, and Jenny Pausacker, all of whom have done mighty work in building the LGBTQIA+ canon for kids and teens. This is by no means an exhaustive list of the authors who were published before my first book, Boy Meets Boy, in 2003. But it’s a good place to start.
I also want to thank all of my LGBTQIA+ author peers, and all of the authors who debuted after I did—I delight in the fact that there are far too many of them for me to name here. I want to give a special shout-out to Alex Gino, whose middle-grade novels are a joy to me as an editor and an inspiration to me as an author. As I’m writing this in 2021, Alex has been at the top of the American Library Association’s annual list of the ten most challenged books for three years in a row. In 2018, their book was joined by seven other LGBTQIA+ titles, including my own Two Boys Kissing. This past year, it was joined by Stamped, Jason Reynolds’s YA version of Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning, and a number of other antiracist books, as well as Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, for their honest portrayals of abuse. This only shows that the fight against censorship continues on many fronts.
When people attack books, they think the books will not be able to defend themselves. Luckily, there are many, many people who step in to defend not just the books but the people in the community whom the books are about. Authors, myself included, are emboldened to write freely because we know there are such fierce defenders of the right to read. Thank you to the National Coalition Against Censorship (ncac.org), the Freedom to Read Foundation (ftrf.org), and the American Library Association and its Office for Intellectual Freedom (ala.org), which are among the many fantastic organizations on the front lines helping students, teachers, librarians, parents, publishers, and authors defend the right to read.
I don’t want to give the people who attack LGBTQIA+ literature and identities too much space, because the truth of the matter is that our stories should never be defined by the people who don’t want us to tell them. Instead, they should be defined by the millions of readers of all ages who take them to heart. Like a first Pride parade, or the first time you make a friend who identifies the same way you do, the first time you find yourself in a book is a powerful moment—and many of us have taken the power we’ve experienced as readers and used it to create our own stories. This path can be as wide as we make it, and as long as we want it to be.
Be a part of what comes next.