Reading lists for older teen and young adult readers:
LGBTQI+
Finding Nevo
Nevo Zisin
Meet Nevo: girl, boy, he, she, him, her, they, them, daughter, son, teacher, student, friend, gay, bi, lesbian, trans, homo, Jew, dyke, masculine, feminine, androgynous, queer. Nevo was not born in the wrong body and just wants everyone to catch up with all that Nevo is.
Lemons in the Chicken Wire
Alison Whittaker
At times sensual, always potent, Lemons in the Chicken Wire delivers a collage of work that reflects rural identity through a rich medley of techniques and forms. It is an audacious and lyrical poetry collection that possesses a rare edginess and seeks to challenge our imagination beyond the ordinary.
‘Fuckability: Exploring My Disability and Queer Sexuality’ (in Doing It, edited by Karen Pickering)
Jax Jacki Brown
In this essay, from a collection of essays by Australian women on sexual empowerment, Jax Jacki Brown explores love and desire within – and beyond – the confines of the current social understanding of disability.
Queens of Geek
Jen Wilde
Three friends, two love stories, one convention: this fun, feminist love letter to geek culture is all about fandom, friendship, and finding the courage to be yourself.
Welcome to Orphancorp
Marlee Jane Ward
If she can just keep out of trouble, Mirii Mahoney is going to taste freedom for the first time, but she’s fighting against the system, against the other kids, and against herself.
Honor Girl
Maggie Thrash
A split-second of innocent physical contact at Camp Bellflower pulls Maggie into a gut-twisting love for an older, wiser, and most surprising of all (at least to Maggie), female counsellor named Erin. But Camp Bellflower is an impossible place for a girl to fall in love with another girl.
Golden Boy
Abigail Tarttelin
CW: rape
Max Walker is the golden boy, He’s the perfect son, the perfect friend and the perfect crush for the girls at his school. Max Walker has a terrible secret. If it gets out, his perfect life will be blown apart. The consequences are unimaginable. But someone knows his secret and that person must not be trusted.
Skim
Mariko & Jillian Tamaki
CW: suicide
When Skim’s classmate takes his own life, the entire school goes into mourning overdrive. It’s a weird time to fall in love, but that’s what happens when Skim starts meeting secretly with her neo-hippie English teacher, Ms Archer.
Lumberjanes, Volume 1: Beware The Kitten Holy
Noelle Stevenson, Grace Ellis, Shannon Watters and Brooke A Allen
Jo, April, Mal, Molly and Ripley are five best pals determined to have an awesome summer together, and they’re not going to let any insane quest or an array of supernatural critters get in their way.
Moral Panic 101: Equality, Acceptance and the Safe Schools Scandal
Benjamin Law
Are Australian schools safe? And if they’re not, what happens when kids are caught in a bleak collision between ill-equipped teachers and a confected scandal? In 2016, the Safe Schools program became the focus of an ideological firestorm. In Moral Panic 101, Benjamin Law explores how and why this happened.
Beyond Magenta
Susan Kuklin
Author and photographer Susan Kuklin met and interviewed six transgender or gender-neutral young adults. She uses photographs and words to represent them thoughtfully and respectfully before, during and after their personal acknowledgement of their gender preference, following their journeys to recognise their true selves.
The Sidekicks
Will Kostakis
The Swimmer. The Rebel. The Nerd. All Ryan, Harley and Miles had in common was Isaac. They lived different lives, had different interests and kept different secrets. But they shared the same best friend. They were sidekicks. And now that Isaac’s gone, what does that make them?
Sometimes difference can make us the target, particularly when it comes to gender and sexual identity. The books on this list challenge rigid gender binaries and the assumption of heterosexuality, offering a range of stories that explore diverse genders and sexualities, creating a safe space where love is love, and gender and sexuality can be fluid. Encompassing memoir and fiction, these texts experiment with language, character and identity to explore what it means to be queer.
Most of these texts are ‘Own Voices’, meaning they are authored by people from LGBTQI+ backgrounds whose personal experience informs their work or whose central protagonist/s share their identity. Tags relate to the characters in the story.
Resources
- Intersex Australia
Promotes human rights and bodily autonomy for intersex people - Lambda Literary
LGBT book reviews, author interviews, opinion and news - Minus 18
Australia’s largest youth-led network for gay, bi, lesbian and trans teens - QLife
A national telephone and web counselling service for LGBTQI+ people, families and friends - Switchboard
Support to the gender diverse, sex diverse and same-sex attracted communities and their supporters - Twenty10
Space to be ourselves, where we can be welcomed, supported and celebrated
Thinking Points
- What examples of LGBTQI+ characters celebrating or being supported as their authentic selves have you come across in these texts?
- How are diverse genders and sexualities represented in the majority of books you read, films you watch or other media you encounter?
- In what ways do these books challenge the conventional gender binary and write against stereotypes to create safe spaces for LGBTQI+ characters?
- How do characters experience and express gender? Do people who identify as trans or non-binary struggle in their relationships with the people they love? Where or how do they find comfort and support?
- How can making assumptions about people’s sexuality and gender be harmful? Are there examples in the text of characters making assumptions about someone based on initial impressions? Can you think of a time when an assumption about you did not feel okay?
- What does binary mean? How does this term relate to gender and sexuality?
- How do binary representations harm those who exist outside of those definitions? What are the limitations of binaries?
- What do you think makes a safe space for people of diverse genders and sexualities?
- How do the people or characters in these books react when they discover that someone’s sexuality or gender doesn’t meet their expectations? Are these reactions positive or negative? Are these sorts of reactions familiar to you?
- How has reading any of these books changed the way you view the people around you?
- How important is it to you to read books where the author is writing from their own experience? What is the impact of this on your understanding of the book?
- How is fear explored in these texts? Does fear contribute to the way characters behave towards those around them? In what ways is fear overcome?
- What examples of support and acceptance resonated with you in these texts? Are there any characters who you think did a particularly good job of creating a loving and safe space for the gender and sexually diverse?