As I write this, it has been more than ten years since the first edition of Am I Blue? Coming out from the Silence was published in the United States. The book came into being during a highly public time for gays and lesbians in this country. A man named Bill Clinton had promised, if he was elected president, to reverse the standard military policy of casting out anyone in any of the services found to be homosexual. 

While the promise wasn’t kept on the same terms it was made once President Clinton was in office, its having been made at all caused people to sit up and notice lesbians and gays. The mere fact of our existence suddenly became public knowledge, openly, honestly, in a way it hadn’t been before. Stories about that promise, about discrimination, about us began to appear on the front page of newspapers across this country, day after day after day. So this collection, conceived in a time of an it’s-all-right-as-long-as-we-don’t-talk-about-it hush, came out to a society that had finally begun talking.

None of us involved with this book could have imagined a warmer reception than the one given to Am I Blue? It received starred reviews and awards and made lists of the best books of the year. But the greatest honor it could have been given were the letters that began to come in.

Though the book was published for an audience of teens, many of the first letters came from adults. They came from adults who remembered being young and gay and deeply ashamed of the person they had found themselves to be.  The letters talked about the healing they had found for their own young selves in these stories. 

But the most moving letter of all came from a thirteen-year-old girl. She had read Am I Blue? and while she wasn’t yet certain about her own sexuality, she had decided that it was the most important book she had ever read. She thought everyone ought to read it. She was Jewish, and she and a friend had recently had their bat mitzvah, a coming of age ceremony for Jewish teens. When young people go through this ceremony, their family and community respond with gifts of money. However, the money they receive is not to be used for themselves, but for some charity of their choosing. 

These girls had decided that they wanted to buy copies of Am I Blue?, as many as their gift money would allow, paste a notice in the front saying how important the book was and asking the recipient to read it and pass it on, and then distribute books to their friends and acquaintances. I put them in touch with the publisher, and their bat mitzvah project was underway.

I have never had a stronger affirmation for a book I was part of.

I began my introduction to this collection when it first came out by saying, “Ten years ago, an anthology of short stories on gay and lesbian themes probably would not have been considered by any major young adult publisher. It is my dream that ten years from now such an anthology will not be needed ...”

Next time,