If your school years went anything like mine, then it is worryingly likely
that you were pretty much taught nothing about LGBTQ+
history, people, scientists, writers, politicians... anyone.
Now this is not just important for people who are LGBTQ+ themselves
to see people that they can relate to
doing things important in the world.
I think it's also important just for everyone to know that LGBTQ+ people are part of all aspects of our lives.
So with that in mind, this is the first in a little mini series of videos highlighting LGBTQ+ people
in a number of different areas of life.
The other videos will highlight people who worked as scientists, artists, sportspeople, politicians, musicians, activists...
Or who were pioneers in some way.
So look out for them coming soon!
But first on to the writers!
I want to begin with one of the most iconic queer writers in history:
Oscar Wilde.
Now, you would definitely be familiar with Oscar Wilde's work.
He wrote plays like A Woman Of No Importance, The Importance Of Being Earnest,
and the novel, The Picture Of Dorian Gray.
Wilde's work often had a biting social commentary to it,
especially in terms of gender and class.
I'm going to talk about this in another video,
but often it's difficult to pinpoint sexuality or gender onto a historical figure.
However, tragically with Oscar Wilde, this is something we can do all too easily.
Because of his romantic and sexual relationships with other men,
He was brought to trial for gross indecency and sentenced to two years hard labour,
which was the maximum penalty at the time.
Because of the society's attitude towards his sexuality,
this bright and brilliant man who had produced some of the best plays,
I think, ever written in England,
he died, impoverished.
After trying and failing to reunite with the man that he loved.
The second person I want to talk about is one of my favourite poets of all time:
Wilfred Owen.
He was one of the "War Poets" from the First World War.
Essentially, poets who wrote about the war in a way that it had never been written about before.
A way that criticized war, a way that described it as something that wasn't incredible, and brave and patriotic,
but that was controlled by an elite who never even fought in the field.
Again, you almost certainly know this poet's work.
He wrote Dulce Et Decorum Est, and Anthem for Doomed Youth,
among many other war poems.
A shift in the quality of his poetry came after he was taken to a hospital called Craiglockhart.
This was to treat PTSD or shell-shock.
Many soldiers went there, including at the time Siegfried Sassoon, another war poet.
You can actually see original manuscripts with edits made by Owen and Sassoon on Owen's work.
It's really fascinating and you should definitely look those up.
If you learnt about him in class, you probably would have talked a lot about the idea of war and anti-war poetry,
but you may not have talked about his sexuality.
And there are a couple of poems you probably wouldn't have studied, which made this slightly more obvious.
There was one about dog tags,
which has the image of: if I'm to die, I will give you my dog tags and they will lay over your heart,
so everytime your heart beats, it will be like you're kissing my name.
Which... is very gay, guys. It's very gay.
Wilfried Owen sadly died before the war had ended,
and there's in fact a kind of legend around him,
that his family was told as the bells tolled for armistice,
that, as other people realized that the war was over,
his family was being told that he had died.
It's incredibly tragic and I feel it could have been fascinating to see more of the work he could have produced,
and then to see his sentiments after he was away from the battle fields.
And number three, we'll be going somewhere a little more positive,
to Leslie Feinberg.
Now, she is less of a reach in terms of "mainstream literature",
so you probably won't have studied her in school,
but she wrote things like Stone Butch Blues, and Transgender Warriors.
Essentially, she sort of laid the groundwork for discussions of non-binary identities,
and the relationship between sexuality and gender, talked about pronouns a lot,
was just an incredibly interesting human being.
She described herself as a butch lesbian, and a transgender activist.
Even if it might not be on your syllabus, Stone Butch Blues is a must-read if you want to look at discussions of
class and gender and sexuality.
Number four, it's another writer who wrote about the intersections of identity along sexuality, and this time race and ethnicity.
It's James Baldwin.
Before the Gay Liberation Movement even started,
Baldwin is writing books like Giovanni's Room, which has explicit relationships between queer men
and explores the intricacies and intimacies of their private lives
in a way that few people had done before.
James Baldwin was an incredible spokesperson for the Civil Rights Movement in America
to the point where Time Magazine put him on the front cover of their issue discussing Birmingham, Alabama.
Whereas a lot of artists in this video have done their political work as it were
within their writing itself, Baldwin was, more often than not, there in person.
He was and continues to be an inspiration for many well-known writers,
both in a literary sense and a political one.
Including Toni Morrison.
And number five,
in each of these videos I'm going to be including someone who was nominated by somebody on Twitter.
This person was nominated by Ruby Rowan.
It is Juno Dawson.
I'm so happy that someone nominated Juno, I think that she's a fantastic addition to this list.
She's written books like This Book is Gay, which is a fantastic resource about
LGBTQ+ stuff hat has been in a lot of schools,
which I think is wild and incredible and really pioneering.
She has a book out at the moment, The Gender Games,
which I think its slogan is something like: "The problems with being a man and a woman, from someone who has been both".
It's just a really, really incredible writer, and I'm so excited to see what other stuff she has coming up in the future.
Juno also wrote some articles and pieces for magazines online,
so you can check those out as well,
and has been or is going to be on, depending on when this video goes out,
an episode of Banging Bookclub, which is also very cool!
So hope you enoyed that list.
If you have any recommendations of amazing LGBTQ+ writers,
then leave them in the comments below.
If you'd like to help support me make these videos,
I'm going to leave a link to my Patreon in the description below
along with links to all my social media, so you can find me all over the internet.
And until I see you next time, bye!