Finding examples of characters that are part of the LGBT community within the vast world that is literature is something actually quite complex. Although the situation is very different from what it was like in the last century, a female superhero who can fly and at the same time be in a relationship with another woman still hasn’t been created; or a wizard whom, apart from being worth billions and waving his wand around, is in a relationship with his best friend.
Most of the authors have for centuries stuck to traditional examples of relationships and love stories formed by a man and a woman, and only in the last twenty years, the battle for LGBT human rights has officially began, even within contemporary fiction, without these works being listed in some new index of banned books and then sent to the stake.
Fortunately things change.
Many (not so many that that you can hear the Hallelujah chorus though) are the authors, not necessarily gay, transgender of intersexual, who to this date have published more or less famous works and who have made it possible for many readers to see themselves in one of the characters who was not stereotypically traditional.
The list that I want to present to you today is made up of works and novels that feature gay characters, intersexual protagonists and LGBT love stories, definitely “beyond any stereotypes”, and that I can not help but recommend to read immediately.
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sàenz (2012)
Two fifteen-year olds find themselves to have the common desire to give a meaning to life and to fulfill, with their passions, each other’s life, thus giving rise to a moving story of friendship, loyalty and self-discovery, in the most pure and innocent way you can imagine.
With a clean, poetic and direct style of writing, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe is a young-adult novel able to excite everyone, young and old, because I still haven’t met anyone who didn’t have to go through that tough phase of life that is adolescence.
Call me by your name by Andrè Aciman (2008)
Considered by many to be the founder of modern LGBT literature, Call me by your name is the love story between Elio and Oliver during a hot Italian summer. Aciman shows, with vivid images and wonderful descriptions, how love can come around at the unexpected time and in the most unexpected places, how one could want someone so much to the point of getting hurt, how one could love every single gesture of the other person to the point of wishing it didn’t exist, how one needs courage, how one should never lost hope.
Golden Boy by Abigail Tarttelin (2013)
After devoting an entire article to Golden Boy and having interviewed the author, I recommend having a look through these pages to convince yourself to read and delve deeper into the overwhelming and hard story of Max.
Mes illusions donnent sur la cour by Sacha Sperling (2008)
A truly astonishing publishing case in France, Mes illusions donnent sur la cour was written by Sacha Sperling when he was only eighteen years old, partly being inspired by his own adolescence.
It’s a world in which there is no shallowness and thoughtlessness, it’s his world: it’s the world of a guy who is desperately looking for an escape from emptiness, loneliness and the cyclical monotony that grips his life, through a rebellious nightlife surrounded by drugs and casual sex. Narrated in the first person by the homonymous protagonist, the story of Sacha and that of his friend Augustin is described in a dramatically cold and real way, almost detached, as if both of them were immersed in an agonizing and painful doze.
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2002)
“I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a day in January of 1960 […] and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey.”
Pulitzer Prize-winner thanks to Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides leaves us overwhelmed by the story of a family for three generations, that moves from Greece to the United States, up to the birth of Cal (Calliope), an intersexual boy who tells the story of his transformation.
Trying to condense such a deep work and of over five hundred pages would be very foolish of me. Middlesex is not only the transition of Cal form a girl to a boy. It’s the transition of a family from natives to immigrants, from country mice to city mice. It’s the journey from faith to skepticism, from being saved to becoming rescuers, from prosperity to poverty, from knowledge to ignorance.
Soaked in classical Greek literature and with subtle irony that the protagonist reveals when speaking to the readers from when he was still in the womb, Middlesex faces intersexuality in a scientific manner and explains in a slow, gradual and poignant way the true nature of Cal.
More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera (2015)
What would happen in the world if there were a machine that could impair memory and completely erase the sad memories? What if a guy wants to forget that he is gay?
More Happy Than Not is a novel about coming out, about friendship, sexuality, nature against science, the pursuit of happiness, love, acceptance and suicide.
Developing very well all the key themes of the work, Silvera with his debut novel has made thousands of people cry, and has entered the heart of many readers, including mine.
None of the Above by I. W. Gregorio (2015)
The full title is “Male, Female… or None of the Above” and the novel was inspired by encounter of the surgeon I. W. Gregorio with an intersexual patient.
Kristin, the eighteen year-old protagonist of None of the Above, is a cool, popular and sporty girl at school, who finds out she is intersexual after great difficulties during her first sexual experience with her boyfriend.
Kristin’s life becomes a slow descent into the underworld of bullying and cyber-bullying, homophobia and transphobia, and abandoned by her boyfriend and friends, she decides to remove at all costs those testicles that, according to almost all the people around her, “make her a monster”.
This work by Gregorio, whom as a doctor describes Kristin’s life in an extremely technical way, is a novel about learning to accept and love oneself, understanding that “we are who we are”, without necessarily having to stop at the superficial dualism male-female.
This Book is Gay by James Dawson (2014)
This Book is Gay is not a novel: it’s a veritable textbook on the LGBT world that of course had to make it in this list.
James Dawson – with the help of the beautiful drawings by Spike Gerrel that divide the chapters of his guide – discusses a number of topics to define and understand the LGBT world in a (almost) funny and ironic way, both for those who are not part of it and for those who are about to receive their “membership card” to the rainbow world.
In this book you will find tips on how to come out of meet other gay people, how to deal with the transition from one sex to the other; you will also find a really funny list of stereotypes that society associates with gay people, methods on how to behave if you are a victim of homophobia or transphobia, and even a list of gay icons to expand with other artists you consider icons.
Trevor by James Lecesne (2012)
Trevor is a thirteen year-old boy who loves Lady Gaga, looks at the world with energy and zest for life, but at the same time is teased by his classmates “because you walk like a gay person”, and he fails to have a dialogue with his parents who get to the point of sending him to a priest to talk about his sexuality.
Inspired by The Trevor Project [link], this work by Lecesne is a short novel that, for its simplicity, I recommend it to younger children, new teenagers who are realizing that their sexuality may not be directed towards “the other sex” and who are terrified by the fact that this revelation might negatively affect and change their lives to the point where they start thinking that suicide is easier than accepting oneself.
