SIGNAL BOOST: SAY YES TO GAY YA

[perevision]

Originally posted by darkspirited1 at SIGNAL BOOST: SAY YES TO GAY YA

This comes from an article by rachelmanija entitled, Say Yes to Gay YA.
(click the link for the full article)

Our novel Stranger has five viewpoint characters; one, Yuki Nakamura, is
gay and has a boyfriend. Yuki's romance, like the heterosexual ones in
the novel, involves nothing more explicit than kissing.

An agent from a major agency, one which represents a bestselling YA novel in the same genre as ours, called us.

The agent offered to sign us on the condition that we make the gay
character straight, or else remove his viewpoint and all references to
his sexual orientation.

This isn't about that specific agent; we'd gotten other rewrite requests before this one. Previous agents had also offered to take a second look if we did rewrites… including cutting the viewpoint of Yuki, the gay character.

It's time to stand up and demand change. Spread the word everywhere if you are just as angry and outraged by this.

Just to add: two of the best-written, brilliant, most affecting YA books I've ever read had overtly gay characters and still managed to keep a PG rating: E. E. Konigsburg's indescribable masterpiece The Heroic Edge of the Mysterious World and Steve Kluger's hysterically funny and deeply poignant My Most Excellent Year. And dude. KONIGSBURG. So these agents are being massive idiots as well as bigots.

And yes, those were recs. Buy them and prove these people wrong, please.