As a straight writer of GLBT fiction, the question of categorization comes up fairly frequently and in a number of formats. Lately I’ve been thinking that perhaps it’s time I look briefly at the questions, especially in this brave new decade that we’re now in. So here they are, in no particular order:
1. Why are so few GLBT novels published in the UK?
This is a mystery to me. Only one of my GLBT novels (A Dangerous Man, Flame Books, 2007) is published in the UK. The rest of my work had found its home in the US or Canada, where the GLBT market is a very strong minority. Here in the UK, I’m made to feel very much like a second-class writer simply because of the genre I write. That in spite of the fact that a couple of my GLBT novels have been placed or won prizes in literary competitions. It seems to be the case that UK publishers believe you have to be GLBT yourself if you’re writing GLBT literature. To me this seems extraordinarily narrow-minded and a way of marginalizing the market for GLBT literature. The market is there in the States and it is also here in the UK – and of necessity we GLBT fiction readers get most of our reading from America. The UK should be willing to tap into that market with our own home-grown talent. It’s frankly appalling that it isn’t. Yes, I appreciate that there are writers such as Alan Hollingsworth and Maria McCann who do make it into the UK mainstream, but it’s not nearly enough and not nearly quickly enough either.
2. Is GLBT fiction a separate category at all?
In the writing world it most definitely is a separate category. All kinds of books – romances, mysteries, literary novels, thrillers – are classed as GLBT if their main character(s) are GLBT. This really echoes the current understanding of society where people are divided into straight or GLBT almost as a matter of course. How we love to categorize. It irritates me beyond measure, however, that books with straight protagonists are allowed to have stand-alone categories, whereas GLBT fiction is not. Who goes into a bookshop and asks where the straight fiction is shelved? Perhaps I’m being naïve, but I long for the day when GLBT main characters are seen as just as valid as their straight literary counterparts. I long to live in a reading and writing world where sexuality doesn’t put you automatically into a separate genre, but that other aspects of a book are viewed as far more important and interesting. Perhaps I long to live in that kind of a world too.
3. Why isn’t GLBT fiction judged as part of the mainstream?
But I don’t live in that kind of world, sadly. And it therefore strikes me, carrying on from Point 3, that just as GLBT people are still seen as outside the system of an imposed “straight normality” (whatever that may be), so GLBT books are viewed in a similar light. Unfortunately. As the society is, so are its books. As a result, until that social attitude changes (and I believe it’s getting there, but oh so slowly), GLBT books will on the whole be seen as a minority interest. Such attitudes are surely an indictment on us all, no matter what our preferences. Though I speak, by default, as a straight female, so I’d be fascinated to learn what other people, of all preferences, might think. Please do let me know.
4. Why is GLBT fiction invariably classed as erotica?
Another mystery, frankly. When I say I write GLBT fiction, everyone always assumes it’s about sex. Why? I don’t think people would assume this to be the case if I said I write straight fiction (which I do, sometimes …). Straight fiction is allowed to have real genres – it annoys me intensely that GLBT fiction isn’t. Some of my GLBT fiction is about sex – it’s part of human life, after all, and when I write, I like to think I’m focusing on life. What else is there? But it can also be romantic comedy, dark thriller, psychological thriller, or anything else that other GLBT authors write. And there doesn’t have to be a lot of sex in it either. Books, like people, are not all the same. If only we could remove the blinkers from the publishing/bookselling world and allow every book to have its proper place, then we’d have taken another small step to the equality we all undoubtedly long for, whatever sexual preference we have. Bring it on.
Anne Brooke’s fiction has been shortlisted for the Harry Bowling Novel Award, the Royal Literary Fund Awards and the Asham Award for Women Writers. She has also twice been the winner of the DSJT Charitable Trust Open Poetry Competition. Her latest novel is The Bones of Summer, a romantic GLBT thriller about religion, murder and the chance for a new beginning. She has a secret passion for birdwatching.
More information can be found at http://www.annebrooke.com
Anne Brooke
http://www.annebrooke.com
http://annebrooke.blogspot.com
http://theprayerseeker.blogspot.com
The Bones of Summer: third prize winner in the Rainbow Gay Mystery Fiction awards 2009
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2010-01-24 17:55:39 |67.235.237.xxx| Amber Green
Very well put.
Given that I am a straight woman, it's assumed I have a lively interest in males as sexual objects and as the focus of romantic ideation. Given that, why do people never ask how I can presume to write from a man's point of view or from a straight man's point of view, but frequently ask how I can write from a gay man's point of view? Why are gay men, man-loving men, presumed to be more alien to a man-loving woman than are woman-loving men?
The only answer I see is a step past what ISB said: the presumption I can't write gay men when I can write straight men is a presumption that gay men are alien to humanity.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, appears to be where we stand today. All we can do is continue chipping at the wall from both sides: gay writing straight as well as gay, and straight writing gay as well as straight, until the wall lies in rubble at our feet.
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2010-01-25 00:56:58 |86.177.207.xxx| Clare London
Very well artculated Anne! Thanks for confirming what I've always felt - that the 'gay' descriptor seems to take precedence, regardless of any other theme of the book. I also passionately believe in the fiction being absorbed into a usual range of genres. I don't think, however, that this can be achieved while people still view them *all* as erotica, as per your point 4.
These are excellent questions to address. I too am enormously frustrated both by the assumption I can't write from a gay man's point of view if I am a woman, and that my novels in which the protagonists are gay men are by definition reduced to their sexual orientation as a category, rather than judged on the merits of the story.
Regarding my ability to write from a gay man's perspective, I am reminded of Isaac Bashevis Singer's comment on Dick Cavett's talk show (yes, I am OLD!). He was marveling that Bashevis Singer could write so well from a woman's point of view. Bashevis Singer looked kind of annoyed and said, "I don't really know what you're talking about. I write from a human's point of view."
That 'bout sums it up for me!