Romance is not the obvious place to explore the difficulties faced by gay teachers and students. All the more reason, says Marianne K. Martin, to do so.
After all, “fictional characters, like real people, need to react to plausible, relevant life situations … I base many of the situations and challenges that I use in my stories on personal experiences and those of others I know or have met. That people (and characters) find love within those parameters, or in spite of them, is a fact of real life. Love for my characters is the silver lining–hopeful, reassuring, and empowering.”
Mirrors, now available in a new edition from Bywater Books, was first published in 2001. It tells the story of Jean Carson, who falls in love with her best friend. So far, so good—except Jean is a teacher. And gay teachers don’t have the same job security as their straight counterparts. They didn’t in 2001; they don’t now in 2010. Says Marianne, who was herself once a teacher: “I wish … I could say that gay teachers in all districts have the same job security as their straight counterparts. But sadly, I can not.”
Nor is life easy for gay students. Jean suspects that one of her students is bullied because she is a lesbian, but she dares not offer support–a problem that continues to face many teachers today. Again Marianne says, “I wish I could say that since I wrote Mirrors school districts across the country have universally adopted policies and put procedures in place to protect all students, both straight and gay, from bullying and harassment.” And again, she cannot.
In fact, “teachers can still be fired for being gay, they are still afraid to counsel gay students, and harassment and bullying of gay students is still being ignored.”
Marianne, though, refuses to be depressed. She points out that there has been progress, and that some schools have welcomed the Gay/Straight Alliance. Trouble is, others refuse to allow it at all, and Marianne explains what this means—it’s up to you whether to laugh or cry: “I have recently spoken at a school where it took the students a long time to find a faculty member who would sponsor their GSA club because teachers feared that it would be assumed that they were gay and that their job would be in jeopardy. A straight teacher finally stepped up as a sponsor and the club existed until a new principal shut it down. The students and sponsor had to fight for it to be reinstated and had to change its name to Diversity Club in order to do so. The next time I spoke to the club there were a couple of students there who had snuck in from a neighboring school where a GSA was not allowed.”
Marianne’s use of romance to explore such issues starts to look like a form of confidence, even defiance: “… the struggle to overcome many of the challenges in my stories goes on–and my characters find that love is not possible ‘only if’, it is possible ‘even though’.”
Trackbacks/Pingbacks