enough is enough

I spent some time this evening thinking about the recent suicide of Tyler Clemente, a student at Rutgers University who was cyber-bullied and shamed by his idiot roommate.  I had seen updates on Facebook listing other gay teen victims, and I knew I wanted to post something with the word "enough."  And then I thought about the list we made of nearly 60 MG & YA novels written by black authors this year—how many of those books spoke to the realities of queer youth?  I haven't read them all, but judging from the summaries on Amazon, I don't think any LGBTQ teens are represented in those books.  They're invisible in our books, and seemingly disposable in our society.  Queer youth need to see themselves reflected positively in the world around them.  I really admire the It Gets Better project and hope more PoC will make video testimonials that show how diverse the LGBTQ community is so that *all* our teens know they deserve and can have the future they want.