Ten years ago this week, Jennifer Gennari published a middle-grade book about a girl with two moms in Vermont during the battle for civil unions there. Gennari guest posted here shortly afterward, explaining how seeing homophobia had motivated her to write the story. Today, as the book is one of many being targeted in a wave of book bans, she has guest posted again to talk about the current climate.
Guest post by Jennifer Gennari
“I pedaled crazily, ferociously, away from the hateful crowd. I’m just a kid with a mom who happens to be gay.”
When I wrote those words in My Mixed-Up Berry Blue Summer, I was imagining the feelings of June, a child whose parents are attacked for their relationship. If people read about children in happy same-gender homes, I had reasoned, then they would see that love is all that matters. A few short years after its release in 2012, the book felt like a historical footnote about what the U.S. was like before same-sex marriage became legal in 2015.
Instead, LGBTQ+ hate is on the rise again. Books, including mine, are being banned in Texas, Pennsylvania, and other states. In Florida, prejudice is being enshrined into law. The new right-wing wave is organized, forcing teachers to remove books from their classrooms and endangering the lives of LGBTQ youth. Under the banner of “parents’ rights,” they are denying all children the chance to read the books they want and need.
May 8 marks the tenth anniversary of the publication of My Mixed-Up Berry Blue Summer. I’ve written here before about how I came to write this book. The story takes place in Vermont, and I researched the reaction to the civil union law, the legal precursor to marriage equality. In 2000, some residents pushed back against the new civil union law (“Take back Vermont”), while others demanded that Vermont should keep “civil” our discourse and accept each other.
The book was mostly well-received, although the confrontation scene between twelve-year-old June and a crowd handing out anti-gay flyers outside the library struck some readers as unrealistic. What adult would hurl such vitriol at a child in real life? Sadly, that scene is almost quaint, compared to the open discrimination and attacks LGBTQ+ youth and adults experience today.
“We need to be loud in our defense of love.”
Now, we must be more than civil. We need to be loud in our defense of love. We must fight back against book banning, write letters of support to teachers and librarians, and vote for school board leaders who embrace truth in storytelling.
My slender book for young readers was once one of the few middle-grade books featuring LGBTQ+ characters. Since it was published, many authors are writing in their own voices, representing their lived experiences. Two of my favorite books with lesbian moms by queer authors are Hazel Bly and the Deep Blue Sea, by Ashley Herring Blake, and The Stars Beneath our Feet, by David Barclay Moore.
Reading is a powerful way to open hearts and minds. To see how you can stop book banning, visit PEN America’s website.
Jennifer Gennari is the author of Muffled (Bookshop; Amazon), a Junior Library Guild selection and Georgia Children’s Book Award finalist, and My Mixed-Up Berry Blue Summer, a Bank Street Best Children’s Books of the Year selection and an American Library Association Rainbow List title. A graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts, she lives on the water in the San Francisco Bay Area. Learn more at www.jengennari.com.