The Lesbian Teen Week will be starting tomorrow. I've already wrote a post about why I decided to organise the week so head over here if you want to read it and find some book suggestions.
During this week I will try to spotlight some young adult novels featuring a lesbian love story or lesbian characters. Even though there are more and more LGBT novels, they are quite scarce in comparison to the number of YA books published each year and LGBT novels also suffer from being categorised as "genre books" in that LGBT section of your local bookshop (if there is one at all) mostly alongside gay erotica. There is a lot of work to be done about this!
Besides being a fan of LGBT novels (well, I like diversity in novels in general, but LGBT is closer to me!), you know I love books with strong female characters and any book which talks about the condition of women. Well some of the novels featuring lesbian characters also bring a very interesting outlook on what it is like to be a woman today. Teenage girls have a lot of pressure from their family, peers or society to become the image of "a woman". Obviously, what parents want, classmates abhor and society usually likes to criticise and praise the same attitude depending on the person. Teenage girls having doubts about their sexuality live this pressure even more acutely and some of the lesbian teen novels are brilliantly putting in words that hurricane of emotions which the girls go through. They are eye-opening even if you are not having doubts about yourself and they help raise awareness of some issues.
Enough of me rambling! Here is the program for the week:
(As the week is finished, all posts are linked below)
(As the week is finished, all posts are linked below)
Monday
Review of debut novel A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend by Emily Horner
A beautiful story of bereavement, friendship, identity and err... ninjas!
Cass sees her world collapse when her best (only?) friend Julia dies in a car accident. She can't explain the pain she feels and she realises that Julia was the one holding their group's friendships together. Now Cass is alone to deal with her feelings, especially since her group of friends decide to finish Julia's musical about a ninja princess and play it at school.
Review of Julia Burchill's Sugar Rush by Raimy from Readaraptor
Review of Julia Burchill's Sugar Rush by Raimy from Readaraptor
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Tuesday
Sara Ryan day on the blog with a review of Empress Of The World and The Rules For Hearts. I discovered Sara Ryan thanks to the gorgeous cover of Empress Of The World and her novels are one of the most original and sensitive I have ever read and I am in love with both stories.
A discussion post on Why I think LGBT characters are important in YA over on Raimy's blog, Readaraptor.
Review of Malinda Lo's cinderella retelling Ash by Leanne-Luce from YA Forever.
Review of Malinda Lo's cinderella retelling Ash by Leanne-Luce from YA Forever.
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Wednesday
Guest review by the fantastic Raimy of Readaraptor of The Bermudez Triangle by Maureen Johnson.
When one girl of a group of three best friends comes back from summer school to find her two friends much closer than before.
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Thursday
Reviewing the Australian novel About A Girl by Joanne Horniman
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Friday
Raimy @ Readaraptor has re-posted her review of Kissing Kate by Lauren Myracle
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Saturday
Review of Julie Anne Peters' book Keeping You A Secret
Beth at Thoughts From The Hearthfire reviews Ash by Malinda Lo
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Sunday
A recommendation of the lovely Lauren from I Was A Teenage Book Geek and Jenny from Wondrous Reads: The Sky Always hears Me... and The Hills Don't Mind by Kirstin Cronn-Mills which sounds like a very cool read with a very interesting main character.
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Monday
When you have discovered and loved lesbian teen novels (may you be a teenage girl questioning your sexuality or not) what else is there to read and think about? It will be a post of me rambling about women in today's society, feminism, a bit of Virginia Woolf and homosexuality...
Followed by guest review by the fantastic Andrew from The Pewter Wolf of The Hours by Michael Cunningham where Virginia Woolf, a fan of Mrs Dalloway in the 1960s and a contemporary Mrs Dalloway all come together.
~~~
I will link other bloggers' post as they go along so don't hesitate to come back to this page to check out the other reviews!
A huge thank you to all the bloggers participating and supporting the week, you guys rock :)
I hope you will find some great books to discover.
Enjoy the week!
x Caroline
Go Caroline Go Caroline :D :D
ReplyDeleteI will! I don't think there's that much LGBT YA...you've found some for me! Following for this week...going to enjoy this event!
ReplyDeleteI think there needs to be more books associated with this subject, because a lot of teens go through ith it - good idea holding this!
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Yay! awesome week planned and thank you for linking up my blog! though I think it will be linked a lot if you put in every post! (Im sorry Ive gone lesbian reading crazy!)
ReplyDeleteI stumbled across a link to this blog post, and I really want to express my gratitude for putting this whole week together! There is such a small amount of YA lesbian and bisexual literature, and I'm happy to see people promoting it. :) Thanks and by the way, I LOVE Ash! Malinda Lo is so talented, and I'm looking forward to her newest release Huntress!
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