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Let’s Move Beyond the Gender Binary: Guest Post by I. W. Gregorio

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Since gender has been a topic through some of the posts this week — and a topic we talk about frequently here at STACKED — let’s round out this week of contemporary YA with another post about gender. . . and about sex. Welcome to upcoming debut author I. W. Gregorio. 







I. W. Gregorio is a practicing surgeon by day, masked avenging YA writer by night. After getting her MD, she did her residency at Stanford, where she met the intersex patient who inspired her debut novel, None of the Above (Balzer & Bray / HarperCollins, 4/28/15). She is a founding member of We Need Diverse Books™ and serves as its VP of Development. A recovering ice hockey player, she lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two children. Find her online at www.iwgregorio.com, and on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and Instagram at @iwgregorio.












Anyone who’s ever walked down the aisles of a toy store knows that the gender binary is a monolith that is almost impossible to topple, and I admit freely to being someone who’s tried and failed. For the first two years of my daughter’s life, I clothed her preferentially in non-pink clothing. I gave away onesies and bibs that had the word “princess” on it (once, I even took scissors to cut them out). Instead of dolls, I got her Thomas the Tank Engine trains and Legos.

Then she started preschool, and she’s now a princess-loving, pink-wearing girlie girl who is begging for an American Girl doll for Christmas. Which is fine, except that I fear that her internalization of stereotyped “girliness” won’t stop at toys and clothes.


The gender binary is insidious, impacting our everyday lives in countless ways. I struggle against its restrictions every day in both of my professions. As a female surgeon, I encounter it when my colleague makes an offhand comment about how he prefers it when I don’t wear scrubs (as they’re “so unflattering”). As an author, I see it on the shelves: books are divided into “girl books” and “boy books.”


Binary thinking does harm to both women and men. The stereotype of women as submissive, nurturing caretakers has caused generations of girls to grow up thinking that to be assertive is to be bossy, and that their education and employment is less important than that of their male counterparts. Likewise, damage is done to men who go through life being called “sissies” for showing emotion, or daring to like musicals or art or literature. The gender binary also contributes to homophobia, by dictating who people “should” love, and transphobia, by failing to recognize that one’s biological sex doesn’t always correlate to gender identity.


The truth is that men should be allowed to wear pink, and women shouldn’t have to fear being labeled “butch” for wanting to play football. Pigeonholing certain traits as masculine or feminine is self-defeating, and prevents all of us from being our truest and best selves.


Some people defend the gender binary by saying that it’s based on biology. If gender stereotypes were restricted to the fact that men need jockstraps and women require bras, I’d be fine with that. But there is no biological reason, for example, why girls should prefer the color pink or books with skinny girls wearing dresses on the cover. Indeed, studies have shown that the presence of personality traits like assertiveness, empathy, and interest in science don’t significantly differ between men and women.


The dagger to the heart of the gender binary, however, is the fact that most men and women have physical traits specific to one sex only, but not all. There’s an exception to every rule, and in this case it’s the existence of intersex conditions in which people are born with sexual characteristics that are neither wholly male or wholly female (PSA: In the old days, people used the term “hermaphrodite,” which is inaccurate and considered offensive by most of the intersex community). For a great primer on intersex, please read this FAQ from the Intersex Society of North America.
For a long time, intersex has been invisible in popular culture because of the fear and stigma surrounding it (one exception is Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex). But things are changing – MTV recently revealed that one of its main characters is intersex, and just last week the press reported on an intersex woman with a connection to Michael Phelps. I have conflicting feelings about the press coverage of the Phelps case, for reasons well articulated here, but I am encouraged by the increased visibility of intersex and transgender people in the media overall.  


The gender binary isn’t going to disappear overnight. It can only be dismantled and undermined slowly, story by story. That’s where we have the responsibility as authors and readers to seek out literature that shows us that gender isn’t a binary – it’s a spectrum. Not everyone who is born with XX chromosomes is attracted to men, identifies as a woman, or has a uterus. To assume otherwise ignores the biological diversity of the human race.  


In an essay for PEN/American, I wrote that the first gay person I ever met was in a book (Mercedes Lackey’s Magic’s Pawn). The same is true for the first intersex person (Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex), and the first gender-fluid person (Kristin Elizabeth Clark’s Freakboy). I am so grateful to all of these books for opening my mind to the spectrum of gender identity and sexual orientation. But the binary-busting books don’t stop there – they include novels about girl football players, like Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s Dairy Queen, and picture books about little boys who love wearing dresses like Sara and Ian Hoffman’s Jacob’s New Dress.


To read about others is to know them. To know them is to expand your world. Here’s to reading books that show a world beyond the gender binary. Here’s to showing our kids that girls can have masculine traits and that boys can be feminine, too.

By the way: Recently my daughter started Tae Kwon Do lessons. Her favorite color is now black.  

Featured at BlogHer & A Big Welcome to STACKED!

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Today, Kelly’s post about how to keep your privacy safe on the internet is featured over at BlogHer. Go check it out if you missed it the first time around.
Because of that, we thought we’d do a quick revisit of who we are and what we do at STACKED. 
Welcome new readers who are stopping by STACKED. If this is your first time here or you’ve been away for a while, we thought we’d give you a quick introduction to our blog, our history, and what it is we like to write about here.
STACKED is run by Kelly Jensen and Kimberly Francisco, who met in graduate school for library/information studies at the University of Texas in Austin. The blog started in April 2009, with the goal of writing about books, reading, and other library-ish/book-ish content. We write critical book reviews, explore topics of interest to us in reading and books, and we’re both unabashed feminists in how we think, read, and discuss. We’re passionate about diversity, as well as passionate about matching books to readers. Though the bulk of our reading and blogging focuses on YA lit, we do talk about other categories of writing, too. We also offer up periodic week-long series on different topics of interest — this week, for example, we’ve got 5 guest bloggers talking about different aspects of contemporary/realistic YA fiction, along with accompanying book lists. 
A few posts to give you a feel and flavor of what you’ll see around here: 

Thanks for stopping by and we hope you stick around, hop in, and/or pass along our blog to others who may be interested. 

Boy Meets Girl: Guest Post by Lamar Giles (author of Fake ID and Endangered)

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How often is it that female authors are asked to talk about how they write male main characters? Let’s flip the script this time and see what a male author has to say about writing a realistic teen girl character. Welcome Lamar Giles!




Lamar “L. R.” Giles writes stories for teens and adults. He’s never met a genre he didn’t like, having penned science fiction, fantasy, horror, and noir thrillers, among others. He is a Virginia native, a Hopewell High Blue Devil, and an Old Dominion University Monarch. He resides in Chesapeake, Virginia, with his wife.


Fake ID is available now and Endangered will be available in April. 








Awhile ago I was on a panel talking about my new book ENDANGERED, which will be out in April. I was discussing the protagonist—Panda—and how “she” does this, and “she” does that. During the Q&A, an audience member raised her hand and said something along the lines of, “So, you’re writing a girl? Are you worried about that?”
Well…I wasn’t until then. 
I answered her question more elegantly than that—and because I write suspenseful things, I’ll hold off on telling you that answer. Instead, I’m going to focus on the broader topic, writing outside of one’s gender, and the trio of FAQs that often come along with it.
1) How do you do it? One word at a time (rimshot!)
2) Why? Because “write what you know” only takes you so far.
3) Should you be allowed to? Of course, and anyone who tells you you can’t should be plucked squarely (but gently, we’re not ruffians here) in the forehead.
Now that that’s out of the way, I told that audience member…Wait, what’s that? You’d like a little more detail on the how, why, and should questions. Some useful advice. Well, okay.
Whenever someone writes a character who isn’t a mirror image of themselves there’s inevitably the questions about the writer doing that character justice and/or should they have even attempted to write so far from their own purview? This concern is relegated mostly to writing outside of one’s gender or race (because no one has a problem with paunchy introverts writing about superheroes who  live in dystopian futures and lead freedom fighters against corrupt governments). Because of my involvement in diversity movements, I’m often asked to comment on who’s allowed to write about what. My unwavering answer—write what you want. 
No one should be able to dictate what happens between a writer and the blank page other than the writer herself. 
However, the second part of my unwavering answer is be prepared to get called out if you’ve been lazy on your research, relied on stereotypes to flesh out your characters, or been wholly offensive in your portrayal. 
Seems risky. Feels risky. Why go there at all?
I can’t speak for other writers, but I always want to grow, moving beyond my comfort zone. Nick Pearson from FAKE ID, I can write about him all day. There’s a lot of me in him. Panda comes from a different, harder to reach place. But…
NOT BECAUSE SHE’S A GIRL.
Because she’s had stuff happen to her that I’ve never experienced. Because she does things I could never do. The way she processes information is way different than how I do. These are exciting things to get into when you’re writing. 
Though, that doesn’t make me exempt to what I’ve said before. I could’ve gotten something wrong, I could’ve written some stereotypical things, I hope I won’t offend anyone, but you don’t know until it happens.
So, was I worried about writing a girl? Not really. I told the audience member, at that long ago Q&A, that I didn’t think of Panda as a girl, but as a person. Her own person. She does things, says things, and thinks things that Panda would think. Did I pull it off? 
I’ll worry about that another day.

The Less Financially Privileged Teens in Contemporary YA Fiction: A Reading List

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It’s weird how often teens go on vacation, have summer rental homes, can afford cars (and car insurance!) or cell phones and other luxuries in YA fiction. It seems hardly representative of real life teens, many who work part-time jobs to pay for their own items or who work part-time to support their families. Faythe’s post did an excellent job bringing up why the issues of social class matter when we read and think about contemporary realistic fiction. A few of the titles on this list are ones she’s suggested.

Today, let’s look at the contemporary YA books that feature main characters who don’t have luxuries. These are the teens who aren’t upper middle class — or even middle-middle class — and I’ve also included novels where teens are working part-time jobs and those part-time jobs are a significant part of who they are. All of these books have been published in the last 10 years and all descriptions come from WorldCat (unless otherwise noted). 

Girls Like Us by Gail Giles: Graduating from their school’s special education program, Quincy and Biddy are placed together in their first independent apartment and discover unexpected things they have in common in the face of past challenges and a harrowing trauma.

Love and Other Perishable Items by Laura Buzo: A fifteen-year-old Australian girl gets her first job and first crush on her unattainable university-aged co-worker, as both search for meaning in their lives.

Panic by Lauren Oliver: Panic began as so many things do in Carp, a dead-end town of 12,000 people in the middle of nowhere: because it was summer, and there was nothing else to do. Heather never thought she would compete in Panic, a legendary game played by graduating seniors, where the stakes are high and the payoff is even higher — $67,000. She’d never thought of herself as fearless, the kind of person who would fight to stand out. But when she finds something, and someone, to fight for, she will discover that she is braver than she ever thought… Dodge has never been afraid of Panic. His secret will fuel him, and get him all the way through the game, he’s sure of it. But what he doesn’t know is that he’s not the only one with a secret. Everyone has something to play for. For Heather and Dodge, the game will bring new alliances, unexpected revelations, and the possibility of first love for each of them — and the knowledge that sometimes the very things we fear are those we need the most. 

Black Helicopters by Blythe Woolston: In a day-after-tomorrow Montana, fifteen-year-old Valley (now Valkyrie) and her big brother leave their underground den to fight a government that will kill them like coyotes. (Note: All of Woolston’s books feature rural impovershed characters). 

Starting from Here by Lisa Jenn Bigelow: Sixteen-year-old Colby is barely hanging on with her mother dead, her long-haul trucker father often away, her almost-girlfriend dumping her for a boy, and her failing grades, when a stray dog appears and helps her find hope.

Shine by Lauren Myracle: When her best friend falls victim to a vicious hate crime, sixteen-year-old Cat sets out to discover the culprits in her small North Carolina town.

15 Days Without A Head by Dave Cousins: When his alcoholic mother disappears, fifteen-year-old Laurence is determined to find her, take care of his little brother, and keep their predicament a secret, all while trying to win a luxury vacation for his mom in a radio call-in contest.

The Sky Always Hears Me: And The Hills Don’t Mind by Kristin Cronn-Mills: Sixteen-year-old Morgan struggles with her growing attraction to a co-worker, her unsatisfactory relationship with her boyfriend, and with her own sexual orientation after a girlfriend is rumored to be gay.

Yaqui Delgado Wants To Kick Your Ass by Meg Medina: One morning before school, some girl tells Piddy Sanchez that Yaqui Delgado hates her and wants to kick her ass. Piddy doesn’t even know who Yaqui is, never mind what she’s done to piss her off. Word is that Yaqui thinks Piddy is stuck-up, shakes her stuff when she walks, and isn’t Latin enough with her white skin, good grades, and no accent. And Yaqui isn’t kidding around, so Piddy better watch her back. At first Piddy is more concerned with trying to find out more about the father she’s never met and how to balance honors courses with her weekend job at the neighborhood hair salon. But as the harassment escalates, avoiding Yaqui and her gang starts to take over Piddy’s life. Is there any way for Piddy to survive without closing herself off or running away?

Gabi, A Girl in Pieces by Isabel Quintero: Sixteen-year-old Gabi Hernandez chronicles her senior year in high school as she copes with her friend Cindy’s pregnancy, friend Sebastian’s coming out, her father’s meth habit, her own cravings for food and cute boys, and especially, the poetry that helps forge her identity.

Saint Iggy by K. L. Going: Iggy Corso, who lives in city public housing, is caught physically and spiritually between good and bad when he is kicked out of high school, goes searching for his missing mother, and causes his friend to get involved with the same dangerous drug dealer who deals to his parents.

The Not-So-Great Depression by Amy Goldman Koss: Jacki, a ninth-grader, does not understand when her teacher talks about unemployment and recession, until her mother loses her job and Jacki cannot buy the things she wants.

 

Brianna on the Brink by Nicole McInnes: A one-night stand has life-altering consequences for popular, sixteen-year-old Brianna, who must then accept help from the one person closest to her mistake.

Leap of Faith by Jamie Blair:  Seventeen-year-old Faith shepherds her neglectful, drug-addicted mother through her pregnancy and then kidnaps the baby, taking on the responsibility of being her baby sister’s parent while hiding from the authorities.

Sorta Like A Rock Star by Matthew Quick: Although seventeen-year-old Amber Appleton is homeless, living in a school bus with her unfit mother, she is a relentless optimist who visits the elderly at a nursing home, teaches English to Korean Catholic women with the use of rhythm and blues music, and befriends a solitary Vietnam veteran and his dog, but eventually she experiences one burden more than she can bear and slips into a deep depression.

The Lure by Lynne Ewing: Living in a violent, impoverished town outside Washington, D.C., 15-year-old Blaise joins an infamous gang against the advice and warnings of her best friends only to be required by her new leader to put herself in life-threatening situations.

Tyrell by Coe Booth: Fifteen-year-old Tyrell, who is living in a Bronx homeless shelter with his spaced-out mother and his younger brother, tries to avoid temptation so he does not end up in jail like his father.

When I Was The Greatest by Jason Reynolds: Ali lives in Bed-Stuy, a Brooklyn neighborhood known for guns and drugs, but he and his sister, Jazz, and their neighbors, Needles and Noodles, stay out of trouble until they go to the wrong party, where one gets badly hurt and another leaves with a target on his back.

Revenge of the Girl with the Great Personality by Elizabeth Eulberg: Sick of living in the shadow of her seven-year-old pageant queen sister who is praised for her looks, Lexi resolves to get a makeover when she determines her personality just isn’t enough to garner the attentions of boys.

Take Me On by Katie McGarry: Abandoning kickboxing after a tragedy in the ring, champion fighter Haley is forced to train an attractive mixed martial arts student who secretly fights on Haley’s behalf to redeem his troubled past.

The Distance Between Us by Kasie West: Seventeen-year-old Caymen Meyers knows better thant to trust a rich boy. But then she meets the richest guy of all, who proves money might not matter after all. 

Cherry Money Baby by John M. Cusick: Cherry Kerrigan loves her simple life, her family’s tiny trailer, even working at Burrito Barn. Forget college–she’s marrying her sweetheart from next door. But here comes Ardelia Deen, a glamorous starlet who sweeps Cherry into a world of fast cars and penthouse parties. Now Cherry’s small-town life just seems so small. When Ardelia drops a bomb of an offer, Cherry knows her life will change forever, no matter what she decides.

Kiss Kill Vanish by Jessica Martinez: A teenage girl flees her opulent life in Miami when she witnesses her boyfriend commit a murder that was ordered by her father. 

Rules of Summer by Joanna Philbin: Spending the summer working as an errand girl for the Rule family in the Hamptons, seventeen-year-old Rory befriends the family’s teenaged daughter and develops feelings for their older son, but she finds that societal rules can be hard to break.

The Secret Year by Jennifer R. Hubbard: Reading the journal of the high-society girl he was secretly involved with for a year helps high school senior Colt cope with her death and come closer to understanding why she needed him while continuing to be the girlfriend of a wealthy classmate.
Damaged by Amy Reed: Numb after the death of her best friend, Camille, Kinsey starts to shut down but Hunter, Camille’s mysterious boyfriend, has other ideas and whisks Kinsey off on a multi-state road trip to forget the ghosts of their pasts and their own fears.

** Okay, this one is maybe not contemporary realistic YA, but that depends on your reading of the ghost here. More, the depiction of Kinsey’s home financial situation and her job are noteworthy.

Socioeconomic Class in Contemporary YA Lit: Where Are The Poor Teens? Guest Post by Librarian Faythe Arrendondo

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There’s been more and more talk lately about the lack of diversity when it comes to socioeconomic class in contemporary YA fiction. Today, librarian Faythe Arrendondo talks about why this conversation is important and why we need to see more poor kids in realistic YA. 

When she’s not wasting time on Twitter, Faythe Arredondo is a teen services librarian is a rural (poor) area of California. She’s a fan of dogs, hockey, popular culture, and getting ragey about things people take for granted.  










For most of my life, I have been surrounded by people that can be classified as “rural poor.” It’s the nature of our agricultural area, especially now that we are in the midst of the worst drought anyone can remember.  I’ve worked in or around the same area since I became a librarian. Nothing I see is new; it’s just how life is.


I’m not sure how the topic was brought up, but I think I mentioned how poor people in young adult literature aren’t a “thing” like vampires and werewolves were/are. This sparked an immediate reaction from three of the teens sitting in my office. They went off on how you never “see anyone” like them. How there is “no middle” and characters are either homeless, from a drug riddled home, or rich. There are no characters that are just living life and trying to find their way in an “instant gratification takes too long” society. You don’t read about characters who have a place to live and food to eat, but “don’t have the extras.” As I listened to them talk, my soul hurt. Here are three teens that know they are doing okay in life, but society would look at them with pity. That day I found out for certain the parents of these particular kids didn’t work and their money comes from the government.


Some people would feel sorry for them because they don’t have the latest iPhone, or an iPad, or a computer. These are things that a lot of people take for granted but for a lot of families, these things are an extravagance. Why is this? My gut reaction is because of popular culture. There are no leads in contemporary TV shows, movies, or books where an adolescent character doesn’t have a cell phone or an Internet connection at home. In the fall of 2013 I started a study hall at the library when I found out that a couple of the teens couldn’t finish their homework because they shared their small apartment with eight other people. They also couldn’t get some of their homework done because teachers were putting the homework assignments and extra credit online. These teens would walk 20 minutes from school to the library and study for at least two hours. They would have to leave by 6pm because their walk home took almost an hour. They couldn’t afford bus passes.


This isn’t abnormal. These kids aren’t special cases. This is their norm. According the National Center for Children in Poverty, 41% of adolescents (their definition is ages 12-17) live in low-income families. This is fact. I didn’t know these numbers when I decided I needed to call attention to the lack of the socio-economic diversity (low-income) in books. I only knew what I saw on a daily basis and what I lived with growing up.  We didn’t have the “extras” growing up, yet all I seemed to see when I read YA books were teens who had everything and didn’t have to worry about trying to finish their homework to avoid flunking.


So why isn’t this large group of teens represented in culture? When was the last time you read a book about low income kids that didn’t involve drugs, aliens, the supernatural, government control, or a natural disaster? Can you recall a book when teens are from a low-income family that takes place in modern society? Where things like a cell phone or computer aren’t commonplace? Or the family is on welfare? Reading should open up your worldview, but not discussing low-incomes teens or families is failing all readers.


I was given access to the Children’s Literature Comprehensive Database and I did some searching trying to find books that had low-income families.  The first search I did was for “poor” with 2013 and 13-18 as filters.  That returned just 68 results.  Of those, 22 used “poor” as a descriptor including “poor judgment” and “poor little rich girl.”  Only eight of these results actually had low-income teens or similar situations in the books.  A couple of months later I decided to use the same filters but try “poverty” instead and only found nine of 46 books had low-income teens.    


To say I was disappointed in the results would be an understatement. I thought there would be more, but I did find some titles that address socioeconomics. I read a lot and I don’t remember more than a handful that talked about poor teens and their lives. These are the books that we need to talk about and read. The more we read, the more demand there will be.


The first one that immediately comes to mind is Sherman Alexi’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. This books tackles so many issues that a lot of YA books shy away from. It is probably one of the first books I can remember reading that actually addressed being poor. To try and get ahead, Junior had to make an effort and attend school off the reservation. This reminded me of the teens I work with at the library. They make the extra effort a lot of people take for granted.


The Distance Between Us by Kasie West tackles the rich versus poor in a small coastal town. Money is an obvious issue and drives most of the plot, but it takes the easy way out in the end by having the protagonist find her wealthy grandparents. This theme also plays a part in Maggie Stiefvater’s Raven Boys (of which I’ve only read book 1). It’s a point of contention between the characters almost every time they interact. The book isn’t exactly contemporary, but I felt it should be mentioned along with The Distance Between Us.


In The Lure by Lynne Ewing, Blaise lives outside of Washington DC where life is not easy. By being a “lure” for the local gang, Blaise can find money, safety, and love. She lives in a broken down neighborhood where violence is commonplace. She sees being in a gang as her only way to survive and have money. Lack of money is the driving factor in this book and it’s a favorite among some of the teens in my library.


On the flip side, Lauren Oliver’s Panic takes place in rural New York. These kids are some that I recognize: teens who want to get out of their life, want to break the cycle and who have to work if they want the extra things. The teens in this story all have cells phones, but they all also seem to have jobs.  They literally risk their lives to win money so they can start their lives some place else. The plot may seem a little far-fetched, but the motivating factors are genuine.


One author who always incorporates low-income teens is Katie McGarry. In her latest, Take Me On, the protagonist and her family were evicted from their home and are temporarily homeless. The rich guy in the story is cut off from his parents and also ends up homeless for a little while. Prior to this novel, each title had a protagonist who was in the foster care system. By book three in the series, two of the characters lived in their own apartment, but always had to worry about making rent. I recommend these books to my teen patrons because they contain something for everyone.


The latest book to capture my attention is Gabi, a Girl in Pieces by Isabel Quintero. It is a book people need to talk about more and handles almost every issue a teen can face. It’s the first time I read a book and could see actual people in the characters, with situations that happened to people I know. When Gabi loses a cell to water damage, she didn’t get a new one right away. In fact, she had no real plans to replace it because she had no money. I can recall several instances in other books when a teen lost their phone and it was replaced instantly.

These are just a handful of books I’ve read and thought they did a good job of addressing low-income families. I want everyone to read these books and talk more about them, but it’s not enough. These are a fraction of books published.  Why can books about vampires, angels, aliens, werewolves, and so on be published ad nauseum, but we can’t publish fiction that actually reflects its readers?  Why can’t there be more books about teens that live in a low-income family? It’s up to us as readers to question publishers and writers as to why we aren’t seeing these teens in literature. If we don’t ask, they won’t realize there is a need.