Malinda Lo’s first novel, Ash, a retelling of Cinderella with a lesbian twist, was a finalist for the William C. Morris YA Debut Award, the Andre Norton Award for YA Fantasy and Science Fiction, and the Lambda Literary Award. Her second novel, Huntress, was just published in April 2011 and received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. Visit her website at www.malindalo.com.
In my two young adult fantasy novels, Ash and Huntress, the main characters are girls who fall in love with other girls. I admit there’s something different about the love stories told in my books, but it’s not that they’re gay love stories.
The difference is: in the world of my novels, being gay doesn’t matter.
What that means is that the characters are able to fall in love without dealing with homophobia. They don’t have to come out, because sexual orientation is never assumed in their worlds, and falling in love with someone of the same sex is seen as perfectly natural.
A lot of times, I get email from readers or come across reviews in which the lack of homophobia in my novels is described as refreshing or unusual, and I really appreciate that. I’m glad they find it a positive thing. On the other hand, it makes me realize that my approach to writing about same-sex romance is pretty much the exception to the rule, especially in YA.
There are adult novels in which coming out is no longer an issue and characters fall in love without needing to deal with homophobia — but often that’s because they’ve dealt with it already in their pasts. In YA, the characters are teens. They’re dealing with first love, and if their stories are set in our real world, homophobia is unfortunately a reality and coming out usually does have to happen.
But if the novel is a fantasy set in a secondary world, or a science fiction novel set sometime in the future, the author has the option from the get-go to write a world that is free from homophobia.
There’s no trick to this. The author simply has to decide: Are the people in this fantasy world homophobic? Or not?
If yes, then the author has to deal with that if she is going to be writing about gay characters. But if no, that means the gay characters don’t even need to identify as “gay” anymore. They can simply be human beings.
I think that sometimes people have a hard time wrapping their minds around how exactly one would write a homophobic-free fantasy world, because we’re used to thinking about gay identity being inextricably linked with homophobia. (Gay Pride parades can be, for example, positive ways to reclaim many homophobic stereotypes.) So here are a few practical tips I can give writers who are interested in writing worlds free from homophobia:
1. The characters do not need to come out to themselves or anyone else. That means that when they fall in love, they feel no shame about the fact that they’re falling for someone of the same sex; they only feel what a straight person might feel.
2. Nobody in the world needs to comment on the characters’ sexual orientations. When others notice that the character is falling for someone of the same sex, they would not comment on the same-sex aspect.
3. It’s helpful to insert some background characters who are in same-sex relationships, just as walk-on characters that help set the scene. But make sure that the description of those same-sex couples or relationships is presented as perfectly normal.
4. The words “gay,” “lesbian” or “bisexual” do not need to be used to describe these characters. This may feel very weird, but I believe it’s true. If nobody cares about sexual orientation, there don’t need to be words about it in the language, because essentially everyone would be potentially bisexual.
5. The existence or lack of homophobia is not necessarily related to the existence or lack of modern technology or sexism in the fantasy world. I think that sometimes people believe that a fantasy set in a medieval-esque world would automatically be homophobic and sexist, but that’s not necessarily true. It is within the author’s power to control all these elements; they are all part of world-building.
Personally, I want desperately to read more books in which homophobia is not an issue, but people still fall in love with others of the same sex. That’s the kind of world I want to live in, so I’m not surprised that I write those worlds and want to read about more of them.
Being gay, lesbian or bisexual isn’t an issue. Homophobia is the issue. While it’s a significant problem in the real world, I think that leaving it behind in a fantasy world is a wonderful and empowering way to say that being gay really is OK.
[…] More: Taking the Homophobia Out of Fantasy […]
“Being gay, lesbian or bisexual isn’t an issue. Homophobia is the issue.”
I really like this statement.
I get frustrated when (I think, naive) readers ask why so many contemporary YA books with queer characters still deal with homophobia in the plot. Hello, it’s still a fact of life, and it’s important for readers to see characters facing and overcoming the challenges homophobia presents! But while I don’t want to see these realistic stories and their characters’ struggles dwindle on the shelves, I’m excited by the possibilities that speculative fiction opens up — possibilities in terms of plot and characters, but also possibilities in terms of where we may finally find ourselves someday!
I agree with that post. What I find unacceptable is the demand AND the offer of “REAL LGBT stories” without issues like coming-out and homophobia. Sure, some LGBT are more lucky than others, but there’s no way to totally avoid it in our days. So if one wants no homophobia, they should read/write fiction.
Myself, I feel like writing realistic stories right now, because what I live now and there made story writing my only exodus.
I like having some stories without homophobia to balance out the ones with real-world homophobia, particularly when it comes to speculative fiction. Another area where that type of setup is fairly prevalent is Japanese yuri manga (comics dealing with f/f relationships). Many of them are set in all-girls schools or other all-female environments, and characters often think it’s normal for girls to fall in love with each other (though post-graduation plans don’t come up much in those stories).
Diane Duane’s Tale of the Five series is exactly this – besides being great stories, they’re set in a world where, aside from requiring every individual to produce a child (and make sure the child is safely raised), your partnerships are up to you. Just about every possible combination is explored – it’s not a focus, just what the people are doing _while_ they’re on the quests that are the focus. And it ends (in the third book) with a mass wedding – two women and three men all married to each other. The first book was published in 1985 – Door into Fire.
[…] Taking the Homophobia Out of Fantasy – Gay YA […]
Yep! I liked your point about the lack of need for words like gay or bisexual to describe people in a homophobia-free world.
In fact, the word “heterosexual” was not coined until well after the word “homosexual” was (in the late 19th century), specifically because there was no point in naming something that was just “normal.” Until homosexuality became a thing unto itself (rather than just sex acts independent of someone’s identity) there was no need to name any of these things.
I write historical fiction set mostly before or right during that moment in history when thinking shifted to believing homosexuality was an identity rather than just acts. One reason I’m drawn to that period is its very different way of thinking about love between women. It was “normal” up to a point.
So while historical fiction does have to deal with “homophobia” (though to call it that is a bit anachronistic), it is still quite different from contemporary realistic fiction. This is one of the reasons I think historical fiction is a cousin of fantasy.
Lo has created an interesting premise in this reworking of Cinderella’s story. There is absolutely no question of that. The problem is that there was too much going on. Was it a faerie story or was it a story about a girl awakening to the fact that she could be in love with another woman?