Pride on Every Page: Author Guest Post by Sarah Prager, author of RAINBOW REVOLUTIONARIES

How LGBTQ+ Representation in Books Changed My Life
by Sarah Prager

I realized I was a girl who liked girls when my friend came out to me as bi the summer before high school. It almost hadn’t occurred to me as an option before she came out to me. Once it clicked that liking girls was a thing, and after some soul searching, angsty journaling, and dating that bi friend for one month (I was sure we would get married and was heartbroken when she dumped me), I came out to myself as a lesbian at the age of fourteen.

I struggled to give up the idea that I would grow up to get married and have kids. This was the early 2000s, before a single state had legalized same-sex marriage. I knew I wanted marriage and a family, but if I admitted to myself I was a lesbian, that wouldn’t be possible, as far as I knew.

As the saying goes, you can’t be what you can’t see. I didn’t have enough LGBTQ+ representation in my life to understand that I could be queer. I didn’t have any married lesbian role models to let me know that lesbians could get married. Those lessons from twenty years ago stick with me today when I think about writing books that create that representation so that LGBTQ+ youth get a clearer picture of who they can become.

I owe my career to the availability of LGBTQ+ history books in my high school library and a high school history teacher who let his students choose to write a research paper on any topic that interested us. When I was seeking community and connection as one of the only out LGBTQ+ students at my school, I turned to books. There were no books written for young adults on LGBTQ+ history when I was a young adult, but reading the books for adults in researching that high school paper changed my life.

It led me to find the ancient Greek poet Sappho who wrote about her love for other women and let me know that someone else had put what I was feeling into words. I read about Juana Inés de la Cruz, a Mexican champion of education for women, who showed me that I could be an advocate. I learned about Josephine Baker, a French-American performer, who adopted 13 children and showed me that a queer woman could be a mom. These women all helped me feel connected to a community before I ever went to a Pride parade.

Now I’m married with two kids and am committed to today’s middle and high schoolers seeing the representation that meant so much to me at that age. My hope is that my new book, Rainbow Revolutionaries: 50 LGBTQ+ People Who Made History, will show youth they can grow up to be artists, athletes, inventors, politicians, or doctors just like the people in the book.

I’m happy to be partnering with public libraries like Boston’s to put on a series of online presentations this June about the heroes of LGBTQ+ history from the book. You can find information about these free virtual events on my website’s calendar or my Facebook page.

This June we won’t be taking to the streets for the first year since the first Pride in 1970, but that doesn’t mean we won’t be in community. When we can share our stories, whether through books or online events, we’re together. Libraries are part of the community making sure Pride goes on through their virtual programming and I’m grateful to them for that… and how they first led me to find my community twenty years ago.

About the Author

Sarah Prager is the creator of the Quist mobile app, a free resource for iOS and Android devices about LGBTQ+ history. In addition to her first book Queer, There, and Everywhere, Prager's writing has been published in The Social Media Monthly, Huffington Post, Hartford Courant, Unanchor, Gay Life, and various blogs. She has been a guest on HuffPost Live, the Michelangelo Signorile Show on Sirius XM Progress Radio, and The List on ABC2. She lives with her wife and their child in Massachusetts.

Visit her on Facebook: @sarahmprager

Visit her on Twitter: @sarah_prager

Visit her on Instagram: @sarahpragerbooks