An LGBT author’s journey to publication.
I remember the year it all began. The twin towers still stood proud. Manhattan still seemed indestructible. My faith in the general goodness of people wasn’t yet marred. And although I was suffering my first real heartbreak (the kind that has you trying everything to win back the girl—everything from candle magic, to palm readers, to therapy), I still held a certain innocence.
It began after leaving the college bubble. The urgent idealism of campus life followed me wherever I went, but something new followed me—looks and discouraging reactions, powerful enough to make me feel unwanted. Caught somewhere between the comforting teenage fluff of my stuffed animal collection and the harsh screeching sound of the 6 train coming to a halt on 24th, those awful stares began to push me into seclusion. I call it the alien-head look. As soon as people found out “who” I “really” was…it was like this one thing began to define me and invalidated all the rest. “Lesbian” became a dirty word. It made everything else about me disappear.
At the time, my desire to read books was insatiable. I loved the feeling of curling up on the subway with a good paperback. I loved everything about it: the cover, the feel of the pages, the cup of scalding-hot tea warming my right hand. I read constantly, but quickly ran out of books that were really well-written pieces of fiction with lesbian protagonists—there were only a handful. However, I never ever ran out of really well-written literature with straight protagonists. This really bothered me, so I decided to write a nice piece of fiction, hop the barb-wired fence, and sneak it into mainstream publishing. After all, it was the new millennium, why shouldn’t someone like me write a fiction novel and attempt to integrate it into standard genres? A question came to mind and just sort of stuck: Is it detrimental to readers and society to segregate literature because of a character’s sexuality? We live in a society where we’re constantly fed media images, T.V. shows and movies, with straight protagonists and straight love stories. It’s confusing. It’s a strange feeling to second-guess the most mundane everyday actions: Can I take my wife’s hand as I cross this street? After a while you start to wonder if this world really is a place where you belong.
I didn't want to feel like such an anomaly—so I decided to write a book about someone like me and publish it through a mainstream publisher, because a book like this would help normalize a life that seemed so abnormal to society at large. Millions of people around the world were getting the alien-head look and so much worse.
I rode the 6 train and walked to work on 24th with the confidence of a girl who’d been fed widely used platitudes her whole life: absurd things we love to tell our youth, like, “you can do anything you want to do, if you work hard enough.” If my black and white department had a lull, instead of sitting in the dark, waiting for the next custom order, I’d take out my laptop and type.
A book that crossed barriers could help young people who were struggling to feel like they belonged, and maybe even help the older generations who’d grown up with such cruel stigma, that they often found themselves fading into the shadows. I’d only just begun to fade and it was a terrible feeling. The book wouldn’t end like other well-written lesbian novels. My protagonists wouldn’t die or be robbed of all hope. The characters might often have harsh realities, but their sexualities wouldn’t take center stage. Instead, the girl-meets-girl love story would be somewhat cradled in a tight-knit town with a sort of unspoken acceptance. It’d be craftily woven into a bigger story, about a haunted county in the 1950's with lots of secrets. It would read like any other good piece of mainstream literature and there’d be no need to pigeonhole.
Those platitudes we tell our youth were still so fresh in mind: “What the mind can conceive, it can achieve.” Access to a wider audience was essential—reaching the bullies and the people who sat by and said nothing, parents who disowned their children and leaders of the free world, so that we, the rainbow people, wouldn’t seem so strange to outsiders. I embarked on this challenging path with the unwavering faith of a child in the confession booth, kneeling upon a pew.
In 2006, I met my wife—the kind of girl I’d been writing about for so many years, the kind you don’t think really exists till you meet her. It was time to get my stories out there. The submission process was disenchanting. In the years to come, asked to rewrite the characters straight more than once, I stubbornly clung to my principles. In 2007 my dance company was hailed by Curve magazine as “the sexiest dyke-dance troupe on the planet.” I was making my mark and using all things girl-cliché to do it: high heels, lipstick, push-up bras, fishnets. But at the same time, I went against all things girl-cliché and put andro-chicks into the spotlight. The old bait-and-switch. If a ‘straight’ venue had a problem with it, I wouldn’t bend. There was a mission in this too. There was always an underlying mission to push the boundaries with the hope of normalizing what was seen as so abnormal to the outside. By 2008, when I said things like “This is my wife,” people gave me a new kind of look. The kind that assumed we’d snagged a California marriage certificate during the brief window of marriage equality. It seemed like the perfect time for a book like mine, so the rejections felt as nonsensical as the “Yes on 8” signs littering lawns all over L.A.
As those rejections kept coming in I was faced with one awful conclusion: The work was too gay to be mainstream and “not gay enough” to be pigeonholed. The mainstream didn’t seem to have a place for me. I realized something else: I’d been pitching to the very mainstream publishing world that lead the matriarchs of lesbian publishing to start up their own small presses.
I hadn’t even considered that courting the mainstream could put off the matriarchs of my own community. They’d carved out a safe-haven for the next generation. A cozy rainbow-quilted pigeonhole so we could have a voice and a place to go when the outside rejected us. Carving that corner took a great deal of courage when they did it. My generation was trying to push too. We sang along to the semi-melodic feminist rantings of Ani DiFranco and snickered at the half-joking, wrist-slapping, homophobia of modern media. The me of Y2K was trying to push. It was never my intention to turn my back on the rainbow flag; on the contrary, the idea was to wave it as far and wide as possible.
Over the years, as I typed and typed, the whole world changed around me. The beloved skyline of Manhattan, Starbucks popping up on every corner, MySpace and then Facebook. Soon we were Snapchatting and Instagramming. Somewhere in there, I left Saint Theresa Avenue, the Bronx and the 6 train where I dreamed all those lofty dreams. Somewhere in there, I went to California, started a dance company, met the love of my life and became a better writer. Somewhere in there, I came back to the land where Lady Liberty still watches over the towering hopes and dreams of the city.
So: Is it detrimental to readers and society to segregate literature? Is there no place for a fiction book about someone like me amongst the standard genres? Can’t I be standard? I’m an anomaly, but I think most writers are. I’m an anomaly, but not in the way society might think I am. In all actuality, my love life might just be the most normal thing about me.
My sister recently did a post on my behalf. She put it into very plain and perfect words: “[Segregating literature] perpetuates the thought that people who read mainstream ‘straight’ love stories need to be somehow ‘protected’ from gay or lesbian characters that would make them feel uncomfortable.” No one tried to protect me from the plethora of straight love stories. No one gave a second thought to my comfort. I didn’t need protection; I just needed to see myself reflected in the landscape. To know I existed and that that existence had a place outside the bubble. As far as we’ve come, it’s not yet enough. I still get those stares and still think twice before taking my wife’s hand to cross the street. If we go into a barbershop the barber will likely insult my wife and I’ll have to watch her crumble. If we go to the market someone is sure to intentionally call her ‘sir.’ So we stay home a lot more than we should and we do our best with a pair of clippers. I still often have that feeling that I just don’t belong here.
I end this with my new favorite quote because these words need to land themselves in as many places as possible: "There's plenty of room in the world for mediocre men, but there is no room for mediocre women."—Madeline Albright. This quote applies to writing fiction in "my" genre. I grew up in a world that told me I was limited—on television, in magazines and in my own backyard. I don’t have the luxury of being mediocre, not as a woman and certainly not as a “lesbian writer.” I have to push to be the best at everything I do. I feel this responsibility. Women like Hillary and Madeline and Shonda Rhimes feel it too. Doing your best simply isn’t good enough. We have to claw and fight and push.
Part of me still resides somewhere on the 6 train, full of big dreams, riding to and from reality, flipping through pages, lost in the gentle comfort of a great paperback. The other part of me finds herself exhausted and grateful, falling back onto the rainbow quilt in the cozy corner that was carved out for people “like me.” But make no mistake, I, along with so many others, will fight from that corner until the words “people like me” are as antiquated as the glimmering platitudes of childhood.
*Julia Diana Robertson is the author of the recently published novel, Beyond the Screen Door. You can find her (and her fiction) at www.juliadianarobertson.com