Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology by Amy Sonnie
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I worked through Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology in two days. Published in 2000, some of the material was a little dated, but what struck me even more was how it seems like absolutely nothing has changed. Bullying seems to have grown worse, not better, and though there are now more LGBTQ clubs for teenagers, queer youth are still going through so many of the same struggles. I saw the concept of home, or lack of, again and again throughout the writing. The feeling of displacement was event in so much of the work.
While this was an interesting read, and a good book to have out there in the world, it seemed very poorly edited. There were more writers and artists included that seemed to thrown in not so much more skill, but for their ethnic or cultural background. Not to say that a multicultural approach isn't necessary (because it is), but it seemed like the editor was more concerned about how many different ethnic descriptors she could squeeze into one book, than on the actual quality of the work.
I hope to see more works like this in the future. We need to hear what today's marginalized teenagers and young adults are thinking and feeling to help us move towards better solutions and overall change. I also hope that many of these young artists and authors survived, learned that things to actually get better.
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