Talk:Gay teen fiction

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I removed the info about "Heather Has Two Mommies" since it apparently wasn't aimed towards young adults (small children, maybe, but not young adults). Perhaps that info should be added to a new article about glbt-themed children's books. 151.203.178.253 20:27, 15 July 2006 (UTC)John1728

[edit] Cleanup and sourcing needed

There are several problems with this (very important) article. First, I agree with the person who noted that Heather Has Two Mommies is NOT "young adult literature." While I can see mentioning it in the article if an editor has a source for connecting it to a general increase in acceptance in GLBT themes in literature for younger readers, it shouldn't be leading off the article now that someone has put it back. We need a more general lead section.

Second, someone (it's too late at night for me to sort out the history, sorry) appears to have relied heavily on the sources listed at the end in External Links, but only listed them at the end as links, rather than tying each to the items that were drawn from it. I started trying to fix that with the USA Today source, but undoing the damage is going to take a while. My ability to fix the problem is limited by my very rudimentary knowledge of Wikipedia footnoting methodology. I know how to use the tags from cite.php, but if the same source is referenced more than once in the article (which I can already tell will be the case), my way is going to get unreadable, fast.

Third, in a related matter, some of the sources have been misread. Being very familiar with Seventeenth Summer, I wondered how I would have missed its being the first gay young-adult novel, as this article claimed when I first got here. Doing a Google search for the title and "gay or lesbian" quickly showed that the USA Today article mentioned SS as the first YOUNG ADULT novel, in a paragraph about GLBT literature for the YA market, then was misread by the person using the source. This has been fixed now, but the article needs pretty thorough editing and cleanup.

Fourth, above and beyond the flaws already mentioned, the article doesn't work well (yet) as an encyclopedia introduction to the topic. Award-winning titles such as Kerr's Deliver Us From Evie are as yet unmentioned, for example. Much of the content seems to have been patchworked together from three general articles on the subject from print media and online sites.

I'm a total novice on this topic, having read only two novels in the category and being a fan of M. E. Kerr. Someone more knowledgeable should tackle creating a better overview, but in the meantime, I'll try and "sweat the small stuff" as time permits. Lawikitejana 05:09, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree; this article needs serious work. Since I'm working on the article lesbian teen fiction currently, I'll try to help clean this one up at the same time. — Emiellaiendiay 03:53, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Scope

How are we defining "gay"? Is it just homosexuality, both male and female? I see two possibilities:

Any thoughts?

Emiellaiendiay 06:32, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I think if we're going to have two articles, then this one should cover males and Lesbian teen fiction should cover females- and we should standardize the titles somehow, and make sure the 'gay' article has a clear redirect to the lesbian article. If we decide to use this one to cover both male and female characters, then we should just delete Lesbian teen fiction and merge its contents here- but that might make for an overlong article. For whatever my two cents' worth is... er... worth. -FisherQueen (Talk) 13:25, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree. I'll start implementing the changes, if no one objects. — Emiellaiendiay 06:49, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Name

I think we ought to discuss renaming the article.

Choices:

Any thoughts? — Emiellaiendiay 06:54, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I am opposed to Gay young adult novels, because it eliminates the good literature that isn't novels- I love Am I Blue?, which is a collection of short stories. I'm leaning toward Gay teen fiction and Lesbian teen fiction, which will be consistent and clear. Just my opinion, feel free to ignore it. -FisherQueen (Talk) 12:13, 1 March 2007 (UTC)