Nora Coon is a YA author with three nonfiction books published, a novel in progress, and a caffeine addiction. You can find her via her blog or Twitter.
Parents in YA literature tend to fall into one of two categories – absent or obstacle. If they’re absent, they may be dead or simply unaware; if they’re obstacles, they actively interfere with the protagonist’s attempts to achieve his or her goals.
YA lit with gay characters takes this tradition to a new extreme. Parents are either fearsome zealots or bigots who reject their children at the first sign that they’re not ruler-straight, or they’re well-meaning but ultimately out-of-touch smotherers who get so wrapped up in the cause of gay rights that they end up ignoring whatever personal struggles their child experiences. It’s hardly surprising that books about gay teens would feature parents who don’t understand, whether out of close-mindedness or simple lack of awareness, but that’s not the universal experience.
Where, in YA books, are the parents who’ve had their own struggles with identity? Where are the gay and lesbian couples raising kids, the transgender parents, the bisexual mom or dad who could understand and sympathize with how their teenagers feel? Parents are rarely the focus of YA books, and only infrequently are they allowed to be fully realized characters with emotional depth. They can lend such dimension to books, though, that it’s a shame they don’t get more development.
Certainly, in many parts of the world, including the United States, teenagers who come out face rejection by their parents. But there’s a whole host of responses in between “get out of my house this instant” and “I’m going to start a PFLAG chapter!” and it would be lovely to see that range better represented in YA fiction. What about the parents who love their kid no matter what, but worry that they’ll be bullied at school for coming out? Where are the parents who are uncomfortable with homosexuality but work to shift their worldview? Why don’t we get to see the fights between a concerned parent who doesn’t want their kid to be sexually active, no matter who he or she is with, and a teenager who asserts that it’s vital to developing his or her identity?
The religious family narrative can still be relevant, but let’s see something more complex than a knee-jerk anti-gay reaction. Why can’t one parent be supportive, and another uncomfortable? How about a religious parent determined to find biblical justification for gay or lesbian relationships? A church or temple where being LGBTQ is perfectly acceptable? Times are changing – fictional families should change with them.
What’s the most realistic depiction of a gay teen’s family that you’ve read?
Great post .I’d love to see more familial interaction in all types of YA since it’s become far too common for the genre to succumb to absent parent syndrome. There are a lot of stories out there that just aren’t being told in YA, especially those with LGBTQ characters and their families.
It would definitely be cool to have characters (YA and otherwise) who just happen to be queer without it being an issue with anyone. It would be nice if the dramatic arc for queer characters wasn’t always predicated on that status. But I don’t think that queer characters who experience no conflict at all with regard to their gender or sexuality are going to be percieved as realistic (and therefore compelling) by most YA readers.
Conflict at home and school is a huge part, if not the sum total, of what drama an average teen in the Western world experiences, and queer teens especially. Those who are seeking solace and representation in fictional versions of themselves probably would find drama-free home lives to be a bit implausible, at best, and would write off such portrayals as sugar-coated fairy tales. I’m sure some readers might be attracted to fictional worlds in which their queer status simply isn’t an issue, but it’s going to be percieved as pure fantasy if so, and they’re going to need some other outsider-type conflict to make up for it.
It should be no surprise, really, that most of the most popular YA (whether reality-based or fantasy) stars protagonists who are outsiders of some sort, struggling against a world that doesn’t understand them. It’s an analogue for what the readers experiencing in their own lives. Not just queer teens, but anyone who isn’t one of the popular elite is going to be seeking out misfit characters who face challenges in their personal lives. They read these stories because they want to see someone they identify with who faces similar challenges and finds a way to triumph over them. Removing those challenges would remove the reason why they’re reading those stories.
Additionally, there’s the other aspect of what teens are going through, which is separation and individuation. Fictional absent parents or ones that provide conflict (especially on issues of independence and identity) are symbolic for teens who are preparing to leave their homes and strike out on their own. Teens aren’t going to be interested in a character whose parents are constantly yet benignly “there” in the story. They want gangs of their friends around them, not mom. They’re also seeking mentors, too, but they’re seeking ones outside their families.
The gist of what I’m getting at is this: Yes, it may be true that reality for queer teens is changing, and there are a lot more supportive families and communities than there ever were before. But the people who are experiencing such comfortable lives aren’t the ones who are going to be seeking out representational fiction. Happy teens don’t need fictional avatars, and fiction about such happy teens would be, to be perfectly honest, boring. Conflict drives drama, and if one is aiming that drama at a young audience, one may as well use the kinds of conflict that those readers are going to be the most familiar with: family and community.
Tal– I agree with you, but I what I gathered from the post is that in gay YA, most of the parent-based conflict is at the two extreme ends of the spectrum. Either both parents are angered/disappointed/etc. when learning of their teen’s homosexuality or go overboard in the other direction; there’s rarely a third option. It’s not arguing that there should only be stories about awesome parents who are super supportive of their LGBTQ teen; it’s more saying that there must be more ways to generate conflict and create drama than having the story be about a teen thrown out of his/her house, or a teen whose parents are conservative and very religious.
Is that really true, though? Is it true that every story about a young queer person solely has parents on those extremes? Not in my experience. And not even in books that came out decades ago (which makes me wonder how many of them Ms. Coon has really read.)
The suggestion that more YA stories should focus on complex parents is kind of silly, IMHO. And were it not for Ms. Coon’s young age, I’d assume that such an opinion came from a parent who wanted more representation in her child’s books, because she herself can’t accept the idea that her child is growing up and away from her.
Again, family drama is the key component of a teen’s life, whether they’re queer or not. A story that waters down that drama by focusing too much on a complex parent character isn’t something a teen reader is going to be interested in. No, parent characters shouldn’t be cliche or caricatures, but the kinds of stories Ms. Coon suggests tread way too much into turning the parents into POV characters, which isn’t going to attract teen readers.
Well, yes, of course it’s exaggeration; I would have to have read every single published book in order to determine it! I freely admit that I am going off my own personal experience, and I would be genuinely interested to hear about some LGBTQ books where parents aren’t pantomime villains to be Proven Wrong or flat characters.
I think the issue is probably this paragraph:
“Parents are rarely the focus of YA books, and only infrequently are they allowed to be fully realized characters with emotional depth. They can lend such dimension to books, though, that it’s a shame they don’t get more development.”
I don’t think, despite the use of the word “focus,” that the post is arguing “where are the parents that are main characters in YA?” for the simple reason that a YA book about parents is not actually YA. I think it’s more arguing that it would be nice to see parents in YA who actually act like real people, and not like plot contrivances. You don’t have to make a parent the focus of a story in order to make them interesting, any more than you have to make all your secondary characters less interesting so that everyone cares about your MC by comparison.
“Between Mom and Jo” by Julie Anne Peters is a YA novel about a straight teen boy with lesbian parents. I haven’t read it in several years but I seem to recall it filling quite nicely the gap in publication discussed here. True, the protagonist isn’t gay, but it is a story where the parents are fully-developed characters. I think, when well done, that YA stories with complex parent characters are something that does interest some teens and I’d like to see more of this in non-queer YA too.
Definitely a fantastic point brought up. Just in my life I’ve met and/or known some people that didn’t face any resistance when they came out. But, it’s so few and far between when that actually happens, it’s not surprising there are no YA books featuring it.
And more importantly. I feel like, it ought to be that way. Because I am a product of the knee-jerk religious reaction, and so many others are as well. I feel like a happy accepting book would be amazing. But ultimately detrimental to a young person in that type of situation.
Because if that’s the first thing they read and don’t properly reason it out comparing it to their parents. OR like you said the ones in the book could be religious AND accepting. Should that not occur in their situation it could be very dangerous. If they are in fact expecting that type of open acceptance.