Jiménez's Representations In Award-Winning LGBTQ Young Adult Literature

As cultural attitudes shift with regards to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning community corresponding literature becomes increasingly prevalent. Unfortunately, the adolescents in these stories are fated to cliché lives, and subject to remaining stereotypes. Many sexual and gender identities remain underrepresented, with some not represented at all. Another issue is that of availability, with a large percentage of LGBTQ literature nearly impossible to locate. Due to continuing tension and equal rights struggles in the United States, it is imperative that every person who identifies on the spectrum feels visible and accurately portrayed. Literature professionals Laura Jiménez and Talya Sokoll attempt to draw attention
These awards, which began recognizing young adult works within the last twenty years, support only LGBTQ literature (Jiménez 409). The Jiménez study covers sixteen works: fourteen fiction novels and two personal essay collections (412). In order to ensure a full assessment, Jiménez, along with three graduate students, conduct two readings of each book (410). The first reading focuses on quantitative data: gender, race, and sexual orientation of the authors and protagonists. The second concentrates on qualitative data, such as genre, plot, theme and tone (Jiménez 411). The novels contain twenty-one protagonists: fourteen gay males, five lesbians, one male-to-female transgender, and two straight. No bisexual or questioning characters are represented in the study (Jiménez 415). This data shows a disturbing trend of omission among less accepted groups on the
Unlike Jiménez, Sokoll does not limit her research to award winning works. The study covers fifty-one books in total, each with LGBTQ themes (Sokoll 26). Sokoll considers twenty-one of the novels widely available, meaning they can be found in libraries, bookstores, and online. Eight transgender characters can be found within these books. The other thirty-one novels are not widely available, and one can only be found only on the author’s website. Of those, twelve represent transgender adolescents (Sokoll 26). As Sokoll points out, nearly twice the number of transgender characters are represented in hard to find novels (26).
The 2011 National School Climate Survey states that “80 percent of transgender students reported feeling unsafe at school [and]. . . 58.7 percent of gender nonconforming students experienced harassment in the past year because of their gender expression, (Sokoll 23-24)” Additionally, Laura Jiménez believes that by omitting characters of any identity from literature a message is sent that those people are invisible (418). With gender and sexual identities outside the norm infrequently represented, or the books depicting them hidden, we perpetuate the stereotypes that lead to children feeling unsafe or