The Letter Q: Queer Writers' Notes to their Younger Selves, edited by Sarah Moon; Scholastic, $17.99
While we are all at the mercy of time and tide, wouldn't it be great to create a time capsule from the present day intended for our younger selves to receive? Imparting the wisdom of age and experience to a naive, innocent, budding queer boy or girl (who happens to be us!) is genius in hindsight, and so goes the inspiration for Brooklyn editor and teacher Sarah Moon's wonderfully affecting literary project, The Letter Q: Queer Writers' Notes to their Younger Selves.
The book, assisted by actor and contributing editor James Lecesne (his short film Trevor won an Academy Award), will be instructive reading material for the younger gay set eager to know more in-depth factoids about the popular contributing authors, and to know how their lives were changed both positively (there are many giddy, humorous entries) and negatively (some write grimly about suicide attempts in moments of confused desperation) by acknowledging their homosexuality.
The anthology incorporates letters from 64 well-known, award-winning LGBT authors, poets, and varied personalities who are writing to their younger selves offering all forms of cautionary advice, celebratory news about the future of gays and lesbians, and grim deterrence from the desperate measures many authors have taken to either end or permanently alter their young impressionable lives. Recognizable names are scattered everywhere in these pages: Michael Cunningham urges his young-boy self to "worry less" and "have faith in the fact that your sexual identity, which sometimes seems to you like an impediment, is one of your greatest gifts." Author Christopher Rice tells his youthful self "to take yourself less seriously," even on days when "self-awareness can feel like guzzling sand." Double Lambda Award-winning San Francisco author Jewelle Gomez tells her 10-year-old self she will become a "colored, lesbian, feminist writer – sorry, nothing to be done about that – so just breathe." Soon-to-be Santa Fe, New Mexico resident Armistead Maupin contributes memories of the male image on a copy of Demigods magazine that had "so undone you" as a boy and will become a great source of future amusement when framed and hung on the kitchen wall as an adult.
Sections of graphic comics punctuate the anthology as well. Jane's World creator Paige Braddock counsels herself with advice not to "follow the herd" or "be afraid to take chances." Portland graphic artist Erika Moen's one-page cartoon illustrates the importance of loving her 14-year-old self "freely, without the prison of rules that labels create." And popular gay cartoonist Eric Orner returns to a backyard barbecue before his high school graduation to tell himself that everything he'd been going through now and in the future will all be "worth it."
Allusions to the "It Gets Better" video campaign will be obvious, but that reference shouldn't distract from the importance of this imaginative effort. Both this book and that uplifting, star-studded mission are life-positive and extremely important experimental projects for young people at odds with their sexuality or stuck in a place they can no longer comfortably call home. What's even better: half of the royalties from The Letter Q book sales will go toward support for The Trevor Project, the humanitarian organization dedicated to preventing LGBTQ suicide.