LGBT and Awards
Over at Dear Author, they're having a fascinating discussion about awards for LGBT books. In an ideal world, the sexual orientation of the main characters of a book wouldn't matter, only that the book was well written. Unfortunately, this is not the world we live in, and the truth is that LGBT books get passed over all the time for something more traditional. Sarah F suggests book awards (especially romance awards) have a separate category for LGBT books to give them a fair shot, especially those written by authors recognized as being straight, since they're ineligible to win any of the Lambda Literary Awards.
My favourite comment is by Liz Mc, who I feel brings up a really great point:
...while I understand Sarah’s point that Inspirational is “political” category, I think YA is a more politically useful comparison for those who want to advocate for an LGBT RITA award. The Inspy parallel runs the risk of saying, “You bigots have your award, so we we should get yours” (which may be true, but isn’t persuasive). YA, like m/m or f/f romance, is a category that contains all romance sub-genres (paranormal, historical, contemporary, etc). What they have in common is a particular trait of their characters, age or sexuality. And it is a trait that will affect the romance-teenagers falling in love face different issues from adults, and in a society like ours, sadly LGBT people face some different issues from straight ones.
So what do you think? Should LGBT have a separate category in the book awards? Or should they be judged along with other book of the same genre (ie: historical, paranormal, etc)?
My favourite comment is by Liz Mc, who I feel brings up a really great point:
...while I understand Sarah’s point that Inspirational is “political” category, I think YA is a more politically useful comparison for those who want to advocate for an LGBT RITA award. The Inspy parallel runs the risk of saying, “You bigots have your award, so we we should get yours” (which may be true, but isn’t persuasive). YA, like m/m or f/f romance, is a category that contains all romance sub-genres (paranormal, historical, contemporary, etc). What they have in common is a particular trait of their characters, age or sexuality. And it is a trait that will affect the romance-teenagers falling in love face different issues from adults, and in a society like ours, sadly LGBT people face some different issues from straight ones.
So what do you think? Should LGBT have a separate category in the book awards? Or should they be judged along with other book of the same genre (ie: historical, paranormal, etc)?