This post has really been months in the making. Over the summer I was reading the synopsis for a book and was really interested until the second paragraph. It said that the (male) main character’s boyfriend died by suicide. I don’t know why this particular book—whose title nor author I can’t even remember anymore—sparked such an annoyance for me, but it did. I am so tired of tragic gays stories.
Eventually, I let the thought go because I didn’t know how to talk about it without calling out some authors that I love. I mean, Shaun David Hutchinson and Adam Silvera write some really sad stories whose main characters have ex-boyfriends that commit suicide. And those are necessary stories! The higher forces know that we gays are not doing well. Still, it seems that there is an overwhelmingly higher percentage of queer stories with tragedy than allocishet stories with tragedy. One of the things that bothers me is that most of these tragic stories are written by authors outside of our community. It’s just another punch in the gut.
Needless to say, this anger/annoyance/overall negative feeling towards the situation stuck with me for a few months. The reason I’m writing this post now is that I was discussing the issue with some of my friends a couple weeks ago and realized that we need to bring attention to this issue. My first step in doing this is to write a list of queer stories that don’t qualify as tragedy.
All of the books below feature a main character in a romantic pairing that is male/male, male/enby, female/female, or female/enby. Additionally, they all have an ending with a happy and/or hopeful feel to it. They are listed alphabetically by the author’s last name.
♠ – DISCLAIMER: I have only read the books with a spade symbol after the author’s name. I’ll be happy to provide more details for those books. Unfortunately, cannot offer the same for the books in this list that were suggested to me.
What are some of your favorite books with happy queer characters? Give me more suggestions in the comments!
Posted in featured, General Book Talk•Tagged alyssa cole, amy rose capetta, austin chant, bury your gays, david levithan, happily ever after, happy endings, katherine locke, kheryn callender, kit mallory, laura ambrose, lgbt, mk england, queer rep, rebecca podos, tragic gays•2 Comments on Tired of Stories With Tragic Gays? Have Some with Happy Gays!
Thank you for this post! I too hate this excess of tragic queer stories. It’s often for the benefit of a cis character and that makes me even angrier. Or, it’s treated as little more than a plot device and given NO care whatsoever, which, WHAT EVEN?!
This is a great post with some books I’ve got on my list and some I didn’t. Do you know if Once Ghosted, Twice Shy can be read on it’s own? It’s part of a series, IIRC, and I think that’s why I haven’t read it yet. I did start Like Water and I hadn’t realized that the LI was enby! Maybe that just hasn’t come up yet or I missed it, but it’s a really good story, so hopefully I can get back to it because I was really enjoying it (curse obligations!).