Two similarly named books coming out this month offer tweens and teens a colorful look at some of the revolutions and revolutionaries of LGBTQ history.
After having my daughter while writing my first book, Queer, There, and Everywhere, I resolved to share the representation that book provided with a younger audience. I didn’t see children’s books celebrating the stories of my LGBTQ+ family, so I decided to create a collection of fifty true stories of people from around the world and across time who everyone should know about.
The greater number of profiles in the new book also means a greater variety of people covered, some who should be familiar to many readers, but others who will likely be new. They are:
Adam Rippon, Alan L. Hart, Alan Turing, Albert Cashier, Alberto Santos-Dumont, Alexander the Great, Al-Hakam II, Alvin Ailey, Bayard Rustin, Benjamin Banneker, Billie Jean King, Chevalière d’Éon, Christina of Sweden, Christine Jorgensen, Cleve Jones, Ellen DeGeneres, Francisco Manicongo, Frida Kahlo, Frieda Belinfante, Georgina Beyer, Gilbert Baker, Glenn Burke, Greta Garbo, Harvey Milk, James Baldwin, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, José Sarria, Josephine Baker, Juana Inés de la Cruz, Julie d’Aubigny, Lili Elbe, Ma Rainey, Magnus Hirschfeld, Manvendra Singh Gohil, Marsha P. Johnson, Martine Rothblatt, Maryam Khatoon Molkara, Natalie Clifford Barney, Navtej Johar, Nzinga, Pauli Murray, Renée Richards, Rudolf Nureyev, Sally Ride, Simon Nkoli, Stormé DeLarverie, Sylvia Rivera, Tshepo Ricki Kgositau, Wen of Han, and We’wha.
As in her first book, Prager writes in an informal, approachable style (sprinkling in but not overusing phrases like “BFF” and “totally rock”), while also providing substantial facts about each person’s life and motivations. There’s also useful information woven in about what it means to be LGBTQ. For example, we read that tuberculosis researcher Alan L. Hart “was always a boy, but because he was assigned female at birth, he had to wait until he was grown up before he got the chance to present as a man full-time.”
While some might wish to learn more about each of these figures than can be encompassed in a single page, a compilation like this will likely appeal both to linear readers and to those who prefer to dabble their way around a book, picking out what interests them most. Either way is fine, of course, since both will have the effect of inspiring young readers. As Prager says in the introduction:
When I was younger, I didn’t learn the names or stories of any of these heroes. When I taught them to myself in high school, it changed my life. I knew I wasn’t alone, I knew I wasn’t the first to feel this way, I knew I could be anyone and achieve anything. I knew I was part of a big family.
At the end are a Timeline of LGBTQ+ History; a Glossary; guides to Pride and Identity Flags and LGBTQ+ symbols; and a selected bibliography, all of which will help engage and inform young readers (as well as their parents and teachers). Sarah Papworth’s colorful images of each person profiled, as well as her fun and fanciful page borders, add to the book’s appeal. For middle-grade readers, it will likely be a compelling volume, and would make a great companion to Robin Stevenson’s  Pride: The Celebration and the Struggle
Lawson, a queer anthropologist at the University of Bristol in the U.K., gives us two-page snapshots (sometimes with an additional preliminary spread) of significant moments and movements in LGBTQ history from the Victorian age to our current era. We learn of an early 19th-century campaign for gay rights in Germany, pre-Stonewall protests in the U.S., and the effort to have “homosexuality” removed from the list of mental disorders. The AIDS crisis is here, as is ACT UP, the New York ballroom scene, the U.K.’s infamous “Section 28” and other anti-LGBTQ laws, and the development of LGBTQ rights around the world, as well as a look at the development of terminology around queer identities. Lawson also perceptively notes that “Women are frequently left out of the story” of queer history, so he dedicates one section to Audre Lorde, Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Ruth Ellis, and other female activists.
There’s also a look at LGBTQ parenting, focusing largely on the story of Thomas Beatie, one of the first transgender men to make headlines for carrying a child, but also noting that other LGBTQ people around the world have faced challenges in trying to adopt or access fertility services. The choice of Beatie feels odd—not because he is trans (truth is, we shouldn’t always prioritize the experiences of lesbians and gay men)—but because his parenthood in 2008 came only after decades of pioneering LGBTQ parents, and we get no sense of that in a book that claims to be a history. In fact, transgender man Matt Rice gave birth to a child in 1999 (and probably wasn’t the first), and a Colorado court in 1973 upheld a transgender man’s right to child custody, in the first known opinion in the U.S. involving a transgender parent, to cite just two examples (not to mention many examples involving out LGB parents as well, starting after World War II).
Additionally, the entire parenting section is focused on the medical, legal, and societal difficulties that LGBTQ people have faced in forming their families. What’s missing is anything to show how the millions of LGBTQ people who are raising or have raised kids have formed community and found resources to support themselves and their children. Possibilities might have included the growth of LGBTQ family organizations around the world and the creation of International Family Equality Day; the development of summer camps and vacations for LGBTQ parents and their children, including the annual Family Week gathering in Provincetown, the New Family Social summer camp in the U.K., and R Family Vacations, among many others; or the increasing number of children’s books featuring LGBTQ people. We see the struggles, but none of the joys.
That’s not to say there isn’t a lot of fascinating information in the volume, although Lawson’s choices about what to focus on feel somewhat uneven. Why in a book on LGBTQ revolutions is there nothing about the Lesbian Avengers? Or any of the LGBTQ rights marches on Washington, D.C.? Non-Western developments also get short shrift, although there are a few mentions. And while his explanations of events and their significance are generally clear, the text would have been enlivened by more primary-source quotes from the people who actually lived through them.
The book ends with a look at the development of queer culture, queer representation in the media, and the growing number of out performers and sports stars. There’s also a helpful timeline and glossary. Pop-art illustrations by Eve Lloyd Knight, in bold, spattered colors, make the volume a visual delight, though in several instances the images would have benefited from captions (or a reference at the end) indicating who is pictured.
Despite some shortcomings, though, this beautifully designed book may serve to inspire young readers as it reminds them that “Every queer life is part of that rainbow revolution, and every time someone comes out, they become a revolutionary.”