Growing Up Gay/Growing Up Lesbian: A Literary Anthology

The first literary anthology geared specifically to lesbian and gay youth, Growing Up Gay is a much-needed resource for young people who are often isolated, shunned by their peers, and treated by schools and the media as though they do not exist. This ambitious collection of more than fifty coming of age stories pairs selections by teenagers with older writers' reflections on growing up gay or lesbian. Fiction by James Baldwin, Rita Mae Brown, and Jeanette Winterson counterpoints autobiographical pieces by Quentin Crisp, Audre Lorde, and Paul Monette; diary accounts of growing up gay in the 1980s and 1990s complement poems, stories, and oral histories that tell what it was like to come of age as a gay man or lesbian in the 1940s and 1950s, when the notion of gay liberation was a distant prospect indeed. Topics include discovering one's sexual identity, entering into friendships and relationships, and finding a place within the sometimes hostile, sometimes welcoming worlds of school, family, work, faith, and community. Central to the book are the voices of young people struggling with how it feels to be part of a largely invisible and often misunderstood minority. The anthology also contains a comprehensive resource guide, with suggestions for further reading, listings of gay and lesbian youth organizations, and phone numbers for national and local hot lines.