Legalized same-sex marriage is linked to fewer youth suicide attempts, a striking finding since suicide, after fatal injuries and homicides, is the most frequent cause of death for US citizens between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four. LGBTQ youth attempt suicide at four times the rate of heterosexual teens. The data in this same-sex marriage study reflected thirty-two states that legalized same-sex marriage between 2004 and 2015 and fifteen that did not. The study concluded that legalizing same-sex marriage was related to a drop in suicide attempts, most likely related to a reduction in social stigma. This Harvard-Johns Hopkins Schools of Public Health study has the validity of self-reported data from 750,000 students over the course of more than a decade, 1999-2015 (JAMA Pediatrics, Feb. 20, 2017).
So while the world is growing more tolerant of LGBTQ artists, icons, and everyday heroes, LGBTQ youth around the world are hungry for positive, successful, life-affirming, openly queer role models. A full 42 percent do not feel accepted in the communities where they live in America, and 92 percent hear negative messages about being LGBT at school, on the Internet, and from peers (“Growing Up LGBT in America,” based on 10,000+ survey participants, ages 13-17, HRC, 2014 ).
It is also true that you must keep yourself safe wherever you are; it may mean remaining circumspect or even closeted. Sometimes it means moving to another city or creating a family of choice if your family of origin rejects you. It sometimes even means leaving your home country.
This book serves as a beacon to LGBTQ individuals around the world, demonstrating in real-life stories how it’s possible to live happy, fulfilling, open queer lives. Being queer does not condemn you to a life of misery or a life in the closet. You do not have to seek sex in the shadows of parks and bathrooms. You can be out and successful at work. You can be happily married and raise a family if you choose. And unlike most of the books out there, this one doesn’t end with its subjects committing suicide, murder, or dying alone. And unlike most of the queer anthologies, this one is not confined to only the most educated and affluent in Western society.
On these pages, you’ll find someone just like you. From China to England, from The Netherlands to New Zealand, from Uruguay to the Philippines, from Vietnam to Argentina, from Belgium to Russia, from Ireland to Canada, from big cities on the coasts of America to small towns in the heartland. The message in these pages echoes the bravery of one Irish author of the last century, Oscar Wilde: “Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.”
“Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.”
Oscar Wilde,
1854-1900
1 1.Richard Blanco, Cuban-American, Presidential Inaugural Award-Winning Poet
2 2.Carolina De Robertis, Uruguayan Award-Winning Novelist and Translator
3 3.Emma Donoghue, Award-Winning Irish-Canadian Novelist, Screenwriter, and Playwright, Academy Award nominated film, Room
4 4.Sean Dorsey, Award-Winning Transgender Dancer, Choreographer, and Producer
5 5.Thea Farhadian, Violinist, Electronic Music Composer, and Co-Founder of Armenian Film Festival
6 6.Bill T. Jones, Two-Time Tony Award-Winning African-American Choreographer, Spring Awakening and Fela!, and Dancer
7 7.Tony Kushner, Tony and Pulitzer Prize Award-Winning Playwright, Lyricist, and Emmy Award-Winning Screenwriter, Angels in America
8 8.Maarten Mourik, Dutch Singer, Songwriter, Author, and Independent Theater and Film Director
9 9.Laurie Rubin, Blind Mezzo-Soprano, Author, and Lyricist; Co-Founder of Ohana Arts
10 10.Colm Toibin, Award-Winning Irish Novelist, Short-Listed for the Man Booker Prize Three Times, Author of Academy Award-nominated film, Brooklyn
First Immigrant, Youngest and Only Gay Inaugural Poet, 2013
Award-Winning Cuban-American Poet
Paterson Poetry Prize and Thom Gunn Award for Poetry
“I think we’re finally Americanos,” Richard Blanco, Cuban immigrant poet, leaned over and whispered to his mother that cold January day in Washington, DC in 2013 when Barack Obama was sworn in to his second term as President of the United States. Blanco, only the fifth inauguration poet since Robert Frost during the Kennedy presidency, was the first immigrant, the first openly gay, and the youngest poet ever to read before a televised audience of 21.6 million viewers and more than a million Obama supporters present on the Washington Mall. Once known in Miami, Florida as the Poet Engineer, Blanco began his career as a civil engineer. Like many working class kids from immigrant families, Blanco was encouraged to graduate from Florida International University in engineering in 1991 and “get a good job.” He came relatively late to poetry, began writing at age twenty-five, and graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing in 1997 from his alma mater at age twenty-nine. However, since that very public reading of his universal poem, “One Today,” Blanco feels he’s come to a fork in the road and that he will be writing for the rest of his life. Now forty-eight, Blanco was appointed by the Academy of American Poets as the first-ever Education Ambassador and meets with teachers, “turning people on to poetry.”
In fact, in 2015, his poem, “One Today”, was made into an illustrated children’s book. “We didn’t change a word,” he said. In this poem, Blanco so eloquently lays out the American dream: “One sun rose on us today “One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story/ “We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight/ of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always – home, / always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon…”
Richard Blanco, winner of the 2013 Paterson Poetry Prize and the Thom Gunn Award for Poetry for his collection, Looking for the Gulf Motel, and the 2015 Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Memoir, The Prince of los Cocuyos, has, by the very “act of being who I am,” created a positive impression of gay people to the American public. Maybe because of his deriding, homophobic, and xenophobic grandmother, maybe because he knew he was different early on, Blanco felt, as many gay children feel, out of the mainstream, reserved, and always watching the world. Perhaps, ironically, his abuela’s constant surveillance and verbal outbursts made Blanco more introverted, an observer of the world who learned how to read people emotionally. In essence, perhaps it made him the poet and writer he is today.
“One Today” Inaugural poem presented to President Barack Obama.
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