Band of Thebes

Jacqueline Woodson Selected for Hans Christian Andersen Shortlist

Yesterday, out lesbian Jacqueline Woodson, who lives with her partner and kids in Brooklyn, added to her huge list of prizes -- among them, two National Book Awards, three Newbery Awards, three Coretta Scott King Honors, and two major lifetime achievement awards -- a finalist of the Hans Christian Andersen Awards. Chosen from a longlist of fifty-eight writers from thirty-three countries, the six on the shortlist are:

·       Ted van Lieshout from the Netherlands. Lieshout uses a dialogue of words and images. With his original and visual writing style he observes the world with a different perspective every time. He is always looking for new styles and techniques to shape both words and pictures.

·      Houshang Moradi Kermani from Iran. Kermani has been writing creative humanistic works for children and adults for over four decades. Nature, village, family, and poverty together with self-respect, peace and mutual understanding are the most frequent subjects of his work.

·      Mirjam Pressler from Germany. “Without books the world remains a confining place and limits what we can imagine and consider doing,” says Pressler. “We need many different books. Books provide us with perspectives. A certain book can acquire an important, world-changing meaning.”

·       Nahoko Uehashi from Japan. Uehashi tells stories that are replete with imagination, culture and the beauty of a sophisticated process and form. Her literary subjects are based on ancient Japanese mythology and science-fiction fantasy that are deeply rooted in human reality. 

·       Renate Welsh from Austria. Welsh focuses on children’s social reality therefore enabling them to cope with their own lives. Family crisis and social injustice, illnesses, social exclusion, violence at home and at school, isolation and identity conflicts are depicted with remarkable honesty.

·       Jacqueline Woodson from the USA. Woodson often features African-American characters in her books because she feels strongly that children need to see themselves reflected in books. Each book she writes is a new experience, a way to learn something new or engage with a different subject that matters to her.

Andrew Solomon Wins Green Carnation Prize for Far from the Tree

A National Book Award winner and Pulitzer finalist for his depression book The Noonday Demon [Kindle], Andrew Solomon's follow-up about variant children, Far From the Tree, has won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and now the Green Carnation Prize for the best book by an lgbt author.

I was hoping the judges might declare a tie between that amazing book and Neil McKenna's wonderful, less trumpeted Fanny and Stella, a biography of two London men who dressed as women in 1870.

Said Solomon: "I am profoundly honored and utterly thrilled to have won this prize.  When I was born, it was a crime, a sin, and a mental illness to be gay; now it is an identity, and a much celebrated one at that, as the very existence of this prize clearly demonstrates.  My book is about how we can use that shift, of which gay people today are the fortunate beneficiaries, as a model for helping others with stigmatized differences to find dignity in them.  I believe with all my heart in a prize that celebrates the particular contributions of gay literature, and that recognizes that human diversity, like species diversity, is necessary to sustain the world as we know and love it.  I am delighted to play any part in putting forward that idea, and I thank the judges with all my heart."

Raising My Rainbow

This year's Oddly Normal -- a great book in which a surprised parent copes with and fully supports a queer son -- comes with an introduction by Neil Patrick Harris, a blurb from Andy Cohen, and a starred PW review which calls Raising My Rainbow: Adventures in Raising a Fabulous, Gender Creative Son [Kindle] "an optimistic and delightful memoir of her family's process of understanding, supporting, and celebrating their gender-creative son, C.J., who prefers Barbies to trucks and princesses to pirates. The story of the phenomenal growth that this mother exhibits as she tries to do what she thinks is best—steering C.J. toward gender-neutral toys, navigating ever-changing rules about what is okay for him to wear in public—is humorous and light, even when the issues involved are heavy. Duron employs a range of resources as she tries to understand her son and how best to parent him, including speaking to her gay brother and his transgendered friend, finding LGBTQ resources on the Internet, and discovering peers when she begins publishing a blog about C.J. In Duron's story, parents will find support for a love them, not change them style of parenting, optimism about the outcomes for their gender-creative children, sympathy for the difficulties of parenting, and an affirmation of the appropriateness and necessity for fierce advocacy. Duron's call for compassion should be heeded by educators, caregivers, and neighbors—an open heart, a desire to listen and learn, and a willingness to accommodate go a long way in doing well by someone who differs from your expectations."

HBO & Oprah Developing Richard Kramer's "These Things Happen"

Deadline reports that now you really must read this wonderful gay novel: "HBO has put in development These Things Happen [Kindle], a half-hour comedy based on the first novel by TV writer-producer Richard Kramer (Thirtysomething, My So-Called Life). The pay cable network has optioned the book, published last fall, for the comedy project, which will be produced by Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Prods. under the company’s deal at HBO. Kramer will write the script and executive produce. These Things Happen is set in present day Manhattan and focuses on two couples – one gay, one straight. They share a 15-year-old son, who lives on the upper East Side with his mother and doctor stepfather. Trying to get to know his impressive, distant father better, he moves in for a semester with him and his long-time partner who forms an instant friendship with the boy."

Oddly Normal Now in Paperback

True story: Joe Schwartz came out to his classmates at thirteen, that didn't go so great, so after school he went home and swallowed a bottle of pills. Dad got a call from the hospital. Do not be turned off that this is a memoir and is pitched as self-helpy. Read it for Joe who will join your pantheon of favorite gay characters. The Book Review said, "It’s impossible not to fall in love with a kid who, even amid his torment, displays such droll humor and fierce intelligence." Joe's father is John Schwartz of the NYT and his wonderful book is Oddly Normal [Kindle]. Selecting it for last year's Thebes poll, Hank Stuever wrote, "I'm halfway through and completely absorbed by John Schwartz's Oddly Normal, about how he and his wife worked through some of the emotional problems their son, Joe, experienced when he came out at 13. This book is several steps beyond the old 'acceptance' memoir and thus much more useful for families living in the now. John has left a road map for modern fathers on how to be the kind of stand-up dad so many of us needed decades ago. (And what a pleasant surprise to find myself quoted in Chapter 2 on what happens to faaabulous five-year-olds who are sadly force-marched through the fires of teenagerdom. I find books that mention ME to be that much more enjoyable, don't you?)"

Out Today: Alice Munro, Andrew Solomon, Colm Tóibín

Other writers start repeating themselves with their second book, but Alice Munro, at 81, still finds fresh things to say in her thirteenth collection of stories, Dear Life. A career standout is "Gravel," which also happens to be her first story about a lesbian, after much earlier gay stories "Turkey Season" and "The Jack Randa Hotel." For once, readers of The New Yorker have a lot to look forward to; only six of the book's fourteen stories appeared in the magazine. Others debuted in Harpers, Granta, Tin House, and Narrative, and two are in print for the first time.

One of a very few openly gay National Book Award winners for nonfiction, Andrew Solomon's The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression rocked critics and readers in 2001. Now comes Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity [Kindle], his nearly thousand-page exploration of how families do or don't cope with kids born different from their parents: gay, autistic, genius, deaf, criminal, etc. Already a media sensation, the book "makes for fascinating and disturbing reading," says Sara Nelson.

Colm Tóibín's new religious novella The Testament of Mary [Kindle] inspired the NYT to rave, "Tóibín is at his lyrical best in The Testament of Mary, a beautiful and daring work…it takes its power from the surprises of its language, its almost shocking characterization, its austere refusal of consolation." The New Statesman called it "a flawless work, touching, moving and terrifying."

Swift Cuts

Reacting to Chick-Fil-A's increasingly vocal antigay rhetoric, The Muppets have severed ties with the fast food chain. Founder's daughter and current co-CEO Lisa Henson, a strong supporter of gay marriage, directed the fuzzy puppets in the accounting department to forward Chick-Fil-A's final royalty check to GLAAD.

Also, Boston's mayor Tom Menino says he will block Chick-Fil-A from opening a franchaise in the city.

Highlighting the mental in fundamentalist, Mike Huckabee is organizing a Chick-Fil-A APPRECIATION DAY for August 1. Evil queers plan gay kiss-ins at the restaurants nationwide on August 3.

I, alone and unheard, continue to protest the moronic spelling of Fil-A.

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The week after the Boy Scouts unanimously upheld their antigay policy, Major League Soccer announced they are ending their partnership with the BSA.

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After conflicting responses from commanders, on July 19 the Pentagon for the first time ever granted permission for military servicemembers to wear their uniforms in a gay pride parade. The exemption was limited to one time, on Saturday in San Diego [below], while the chiefs review their policy prohibiting uniforms in civilian parades. If next year the soldiers and sailors have to march out of uniform... not complaining.

 
photo via San Diego Union Tribune

Boy Scouts Unanimously Reaffirm Anti-Gay Bigotry

After a two-year secret review of their policy excluding gay people, the Boy Scouts of America yesterday announced the organization reaffirms that ban. A mouthpiece claimed the unidentified eleven-person panel represented "a diversity of perspectives and opinions," and yet the antigay vote was unanimous. The LAT quotes Jay Mechling, a professor at UC Davis and author of On My Honor: Boy Scouts and the Making of American Youth, calling it "a business decision based on religious pressure." Of 2.7 million scouts, an estimated 400,000 are Mormons.

The announcement also kills a new resolution from May's annual meeting to consider allowing individual local chapters to accept gay leaders. The issue received widespread media scrutiny in April after Jennifer Tyrrell [left] was ousted as a den mother in Ohio for being a lesbian. A petition to overturn the ban soon gained more than 300,000 signatures, spurred by support from Iowa Eagle Scout and incessant publicity hound Zach Wahls, 20, author of My Two Moms: Lessons of Love, Strength, and What Makes a Family.

Offering a shred of hope, two BSA board bigshots, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson and Ernst & Young CEO James Turley, have said it's time to change the policy and welcome gay people. They are in the minority now but Stephenson becomes president of the BSA board in 2014.

The Girl Scouts, Boys & Girls Clubs, and Big Brothers Big Sisters all have vowed to not exclude gay and lesbian people. 

Sort-of Top 12 States of LGBT Couples Raising Kids: All Red

 

Based on data from the 2010 Census, and analyzed by the The Williams Institute, this infographic is a little deceptive because it shows the percentage of each state's total number of same-sex couples, NOT where the highest percentage of all child-raisers are queer parents. The original key says in these top states approx 25% - 33% of same-sex couples are raising kids. This means, in theory, South Dakota could have made the top rank with a mere ten same-sex couples raising children if the census counted only forty households headed by a same-sex couple in the state. For more about LGBT people raising children check out the Family Equality Council, founded in 1979.

Younger Every Day

Last month, Amelia, a mom blogger on HuffPost wrote about her son happily announcing he's gay. He's seven. Predictably, a lot of naysayers claim children can't know their orientation so young, but legions of lgbt people can refute that personally. Now the boy's father, Dave, has written a post declaring his full support for his son's coming out and, he says, laughing at the ignorant comments inspired by his wife's article, like, "Isn't your son's father going to miss teaching him sports?" "Isn't not having your child get married going to just break your heart?" As it turns out, the little dude is a football jock.

On Sunday, the NYT magazine is running Elizabeth Weil's major article about the "new normal" of girls going through puberty before age ten. The story begins with the shocking detail of Ainsley growing pubic hair when she was six. Growth spurts, armpit hair, pimples, developing breasts, PMS cycling with her mother, somehow these are now issues some girls must cope with in third grade. Whatever the cause, that shift is robbing kids of childhood, not their own honesty in coming out.

So Says Sendak

The part of you that's weary of tiptoe diplomacy and cheap politeness may find a friend in 83 year-old Maurice Sendak, recently out after a nearly-fifty-year relationship with a psychoanalyst named Eugene. On the publication of his new book, Bumble Ardy, the Guardian's wonderful Emma Brockes stopped by his Connecticut farm for a friendly visit. Sendak spoke about

Childhood: "I refuse to lie to children. I refuse to cater to the bullshit of innocence."

Ebooks: "I hate them. It's like making believe there's another kind of sex. There isn't another kind of sex. There isn't another kind of book! A book is a book is a book."

Publishers: "They're all in trouble. They're all terrible."

The far right: "These Republican schnooks would be comical if they weren't not funny."

Where the Wild Things Are: not his favorite

His favorite: Outside Over There

Stephen King: "Bullshit."

Salman Rushdie: "That flaccid fuckhead. He was detestable."

Gwyneth Paltrow: "I can't stand her."

Roald Dahl: "Scary guy. I know he's very popular but what's nice about this guy? He's dead, that's what's nice about him."

His love of Middlemarch and his disappointment with Daniel Deronda: "Oy gevalt! She put aside her hard hat and was determined to be sweet and understanding. That won't get you anywhere, honey."

His parents: "They led desperate lives. They should have been crazy."

His partner: "He was a man who loved music and reading. He never smoked and he died of lung cancer, utterly ridiculous."

Being closeted and taking his partner home to his parents: "Of course, they knew. Especially my father. My mother was so bewildering and strange and lived in another world, I don't know what she knew. Nothing was said, but if something had been said, I would have been thrown out of the house. And yet they met him and respected him. Strange."

His dog Herman [Melville]: "He's German. He doesn't know I'm Jewish."

Himself 1: "I'm a lucky buck."

Himself 2: "I'm totally crazy, I know that. I don't say that to be a smartass, but I know that that's the very essence of what makes my work good. And I know my work is good. Not everybody likes it, that's fine. I don't do it for everybody. Or anybody. I do it because I can't not do it."

Himself 3: "I can't believe I've turned into a typical old man. I can't believe it. I was young just minutes ago."

Read the full article for more, including his painful barmitzvah story, his work with Isaac Bashevis Singer, his loneliness without Eugene, and his wish to die like William Blake.

(photo via)

"That Means You Love Each Other!"

Popular on the internets today. With all the hype, I expected more. But still...

The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai

Do you know Rebecca Makkai's work? I think you should. Her fiction has been included in the Best American Short Stories 2008 and 2009 and 2010 and the forthcoming 2011. Now her just-out first novel The Borrower [[Kindle]] has this wonderfully hopeless premise: Lucy Hull, a single 26 year-old children's librarian in Hannibal, Missouri, befriends Ian Drake, a bookish 10 year-old who is clearly gay. Indeed, Ian is so obviously queer that his concerned religious parents make him go to weekly therapy sessions with an ex-gay minister married to an ex-lesbian. Eventually, sensible Ian runs away to live at the library, and, uh, Lucy, um, sort of invites him on a spontaneous roadtrip. He is THRILLED, the happiest time of his life. I know, you know, and Lucy knows, that kidnapping is always wrong. Nevertheless, it kills her to think of delightful little Ian being brainwashed by the ex-gays and, well, off they go...

According to The Book Frog, "If you get all the book references ("Where's Papa going with that ax? said Fern"), then so much the better, but you'll enjoy this wonderful novel either way."

Maurice Sendak's First Picture Book in Thirty Years Is a Pig Party

Children's storytelling colossus Maurice Sendak will release his first picture book in thirty years -- and his first ever as an out gay man -- about a circuit party pig party.  Bumble-Ardy, a boy, has never had a birthday party and decides to host a forbidden bash when he turns nine, inviting nine swine for birthday cake and wine at ten past nine. Sendak created the character for Sesame Street forty years ago, below. The author says, "He was funny. He was robust. He was sly. He was a sneak. He was all the things I like." It pubs September 6. 

 

Two Gay Dads and their Fifth-Grade Son Around the World for a Year

Speaking of great fathers, meet Terry and Carl, two gay dads who are letting their fifth-grade son Corbin skip school again today. Actually, all year. Because they're taking him around the world, a different country every month. They're almost halfway, currently in Australia. Naturally, the three-man trip has spawned four blogs: 1, 2, 3, 4. Plus recipes.

(Hat tip: Jacqueline.)

Precocious Not Precious: Gertrude & Alice in Two New Picture Books

Tired of hearing your precocious young friends exaggerate that NO ONE else in daycare gets Max Jacob and Guillaime Apollinaire? Celebrate the upcoming International Children's Book Day (Apr 2) by reading them Joan Yolleck's lovely debut children's book Paris in the Spring with Picasso, on sale this week. The story unfolds on a Saturday as people anticipate the evening salon in Stein and Toklas's apartment. Readers meet Apollinaire and Marie Laurencian, Max Jacob, Picasso and his girlfriend Fernande, and the dog Frika. Sprinkled with a few easy French phrases, the text also namechecks Parisian highlights Luxembourg Garden, 27 rue de Fleurus, Lapin Agile, Notre Dame, and the Circus Medrano.

Yolleck's story shows Gertrude and Alice (who is described as her "best friend," though they call each other "birdie" and "lovie") content in domestic bliss -- reading, preparing party food, fixing flowers -- before, while, and after their guests join them. Marjorie Priceman's loose, festive drawings are wonderfully inviting. (Don't judge her vivid colors by the washed out sample above.) The book ends with a spread of brief biographies and b&w photos of the five main figures where Toklas is described as "Stein's lifelong companion" and her own talents are championed.

At once more playful and more sophisticated is Jonah Winter's Gertrude is Gertrude is Gertrude is Gertrude, one of six picture books recently chosen for the ALA lgbt Rainbow List. As his title suggests, Winter's work vaguely echoes Stein's writing style. To the glee of a certain kind of child and the outrage of another type, the flap copy warns, "some words may appear, uninvited, but delighted in spite of their lightbulbs. But, but, but, but -- that doesn't make any sense! Yes!" The "simple" text employs artful repetition, often in ascending font sizes, as it focuses on Gertrude and Alice as well as Picasso, Matisse, Hemingway, and the poodle Basket. Abstract in its sense of time, the story shows the couple at home, introduces their famous friends, conveys the excitement of their salon. Surprisingly, it ignores Paris but also depicts their summer days in the country, vegetable gardening, and driving a big pink car. Exactly matching the text's direct indirection and wit, Calef Brown's illustrations are elegant and quirky in a colorful, slightly subdued palette (lost in the quick snaps below).

Both books claim to be for ages 4 to 8, a too-low cut-off for two timeless treasures.