Spelled The Way It Sounds

elliottmarshal:

“Annie On My Mind” By Nancy Garden 

This groundbreaking book, first published in 1982, is the story of two teenage girls whose friendship blossoms into love and who, despite pressures from family and school that threaten their relationship, promise to be true to each other and their feelings. 

Of the author and the book, the Margaret A. Edwards Award committee said, “Nancy Garden has the distinction of being the first author for young adults to create a lesbian love story with a positive ending. Using a fluid, readable style, Garden opens a window through which readers can find courage to be true to themselves.” 

This book absolutely, positively, without question changed my life.

I got it out of the library in—what, tenth grade?—because I was that little snot that read all the banned books that were put up during Banned Books Month. And it shocked me all the way down to my little closeted heart because that was me, there, on the page. I had never been so close to a pair of characters. I had never cried so hard I had to put down the book because I could not see it through my tears, never been literally unable to re-read it because the hurt was still too near, too fresh. I didn’t re-read it for six more years, and when I did I cried my eyes out all over again. This is the book I hid under my mattress, read under the covers late at night so that no one would know—the book that I would someday stand up in Children’s Lit class in front of all my friends and my professor and say after two long minutes of no one saying anything about the only LGBT novel we read all year, This book changed me. This book made me who I am.

This is the first book that broke my heart. 

This is the book that saved me.

(Source: cureelliott, via fyeahqueervintage)