The Full Spectrum: A New Generation of Writing about Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, and Other Identities (review)

Forty young adults between the ages of thirteen and twenty-three have exposed themselves on the pages of this "queerthology" of personal essays and poems, culled from hundreds of offerings sent to a website set up by the editors. Through the writers' eyes, readers see the reactions of family, friends, teachers, and even doctors to teens who find themselves attracted to the "wrong" sex, trapped in the wrong body, or generally looking for understanding. Hope rises in these resilient youth, who are finding their way to what they see as their truth, expressed through voices raw, funny, lonely, sometimes profane, and often anguished. Readers will be disappointed that there's no information on the contributors either in the book or the associated website, and the essays' cumulative density makes the collection best suited to a sequential rather than a single-sitting reading; nonetheless, GLBTQ and other gay-friendly teens will embrace this volume eagerly and appreciate the hard-won self-knowledge of the contributors. There have been other gay/lesbian anthologies, such as Sutton's Hearing Us Out (BCCB 11/94) and Heron's Two Teenagers in Twenty (BCCB 7/94), but this is the first to push existing boundaries to include the "trans" set—transgendered, transsexual, transitioning—making this a welcome addition to GLBTQ collections everywhere.