- Elizabeth L. Chapman & B.J. Epstein
International LGBTQ+ Literature for Children & YA: Imports, Self-Publishing, & Good Intentions
In the autumn of 2021, International LGBTQ+ Literature for Children and Young Adults, an academic collection of essays that we edited together, was published. This was a project we started in 2016, and seeing it finally enter the world was an exciting experience. In this short post, we’ll give a little background about the book and mention some of the many fascinating findings that are in it.
Both of us (Elizabeth L. Chapman and B.J. Epstein) have read and researched LGBTQ+ literature for young readers for many years, and we are both translators (B.J. from Swedish and Liz from French). B.J. had previously published a book about English-language queer lit for children and young adults (Are the Kids All Right?) and then had gone on to compare English-language texts to books in Swedish. Liz, meanwhile, had a background in French literature, and had subsequently moved on to work on LGBTQ+ literature and library services for children and young people. We realised that we hadn’t seen much research on LGBTQ+ lit from around the world – particularly in languages other than English – and we decided to rectify this absence.
This wasn’t as easy as we would have hoped. Some scholars said there wasn’t much literature in their country that was queer and for young readers; in some places, such as many African countries and large swathes of Asia, we were told that just the idea of it was controversial. Some people agreed to write for us and then backed out, saying that to do so would put them in a politically or culturally uncomfortable position; this happened, for example, with potential contributors from Indonesia and Mongolia. One person said they would give us some notes and we could write it up, but they didn’t feel able to put their name on it; this became our single chapter on the Arab world.
On the other hand, we received plenty of interest from scholars working on English-speaking countries, which we felt we didn’t want to focus on as there has already been a lot of work on it. We also got more proposals than we could include from all across Europe, so we had to consciously decide how to balance the book; we didn’t want to turn down important work, but we did want to be as inclusive as possible
Once we had a good array of contributions from scholars, writers, and activists, we began to see some interesting commonalities. A number of the LGBTQ+ books for younger readers were imported, often from English, and sometimes they continued to be in English. For instance, in India, many of the works were from the US rather than being originally written and published in Indian. Also, given that English is one of the majority languages in India, it was not a surprise to learn that most of these books remained in English rather than being translated, but perhaps they could have been published both in English and in other languages in Indian. It would be exciting to see more homegrown children’s literature in Indian languages in the future; as the chapter on the Philippines, which is also a country that employs English along with other tongues, reveals, it is possible to produce queer children’s books in a nation’s own language, or even to make bilingual editions. Germany also brought over English-language books, but translated to German in this case; these books sat alongside ones written originally in German. Sadly, this does not seem to hold true the other way round: despite the efforts of activists, translators, and a small number of publishers, books in translation – whether LGBTQ+ or not – still make up only a very small proportion of children’s literature published in the UK. This likely reflects the cultural and linguistic hegemony of English.
Another theme was self-publishing. Mirroring the findings of existing research from the UK and the US, this theme appeared in a number of the chapters, in countries as disparate as Slovenia, France, Sweden, Italy, Australia, and New Zealand. Picture books seemed particularly difficult to bring to market through traditional channels, revealing how challenging mainstream publishers might consider LGBTQ+ literature for children to be, or perhaps how concerned they are that such books might not make money. Publishers just weren’t taking chances on queer material for young readers.
The large number of self-published works also related to another topic: this was good intentions. Many of the contributors, whether looking at literature from Brazil or Italy or elsewhere, noted that the authors of these books for children and young adults seemed to treat queerness as an “issue”. Queerness needed to be taught about, it appeared, which meant that the books focused on LGBTQ+ topics, sometimes in a rather heavy-handed way. For this reason, the writing or the illustrations weren’t always as engaging as it could have been and the plots sometimes were missing in action, presumably because the authors – who, again, were often also the publishers of their works – were so eager to try to enact change in their countries. It was amazing to appreciate the extent of the authors’ passion and their desire for activism, but it did sometimes appear to have the effect of ghettoizing the books. In other words, they were queer books, usually written by queer authors, who hoped to teach children about queer issues and to try to make their countries more LGBTQ+-friendly. Good intentions indeed.
Of course, there were many other interesting findings, such as the erasure of bisexuality; the use of animals as a stand-in for queer humans; the persistence of the gender binary, even in books dealing with trans experiences; and the potential for queer lit to serve as a form of reparation. Putting together this anthology, which is the first of its kind, has been eye-opening and thrilling.
We sincerely hope that there will be more LGBTQ+ literature produced for children around the world and in many languages in the near future and, concomitantly, more research carried out to analyze it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Elizabeth L. Chapman works for Sheffield Libraries and as a freelance French-to-English translator, interspersed with teaching in Education Studies at Sheffield Hallam University and Library & Information Studies at the University of Sheffield, in England. Her research interests focus on LGBTQ+ fiction for children and young people.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: B.J. Epstein is an associate professor in literature and translation at the University of East Anglia, in England. She’s also a writer, editor, and Swedish-to-English translator. In addition, she works as a doula and lactation consultant.