Dear Reader, Love Author: Nora Neus
Dear Reader,
I remember the exact moment I first let myself actually think that I might be queer. I was on a downtown A train early on a Sunday morning in 2017, skipping church to go to the Brooklyn Book Festival. I couldn’t figure out why I, as an adult, was so emotionally invested in the young adult book I was reading. It followed a young boy, deeply involved in his own church community as he realized that he was gay and fell in love for the first time.
Was it possible that I was queer, too?
I burst into tears right as the train barreled under the East River, lights flickering and someone snoring next to me.
In the summer of 2017, I whole-heartedly believed I was straight. I was working as a news producer for Anderson Cooper at CNN and the insane news cycle early in the first Trump administration actually meant the few moments when I wasn’t at work, there was nothing to do. No homework, no way to prepare other than steel yourself to walk into a newsroom in the afternoon and find out a classroom full of children had been killed or a hurricane had devastated an entire town.
So in my free morning hours before my afternoon-to-evening shift, I read. It was the first time reading for fun since before college, when school reading became the first, second and last item on my to-do list. I soon rediscovered my teenage love of young adult books, at first embarrassed to be reading “kids books.”
But I devoured those books, working my way through the current popular YA novels, which happened to be full of queer love stories at the time. I read Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda and The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli, They Both Die At the End by Adam Silvera, The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee, and You Know Me Well by Nina LaCour and David Levithan. I gravitated toward these queer love stories without understanding why.
But it was one book that ruptured my carefully constructed walls of logic around my own sexuality and let the light in: Autoboyography by Christina Lauren. I found myself deeply rooting for the closeted, Christian, queer character, Sebastian. His self-monologue was eerily similar to my own repressed thoughts: he wanted to do the “right” thing in the eyes of God more than he thought he deserved to be happy and in love. When I was presented with that dubious logic in the form of a character’s thoughts, it was easy to poke holes. I wanted to take Sebastian by the shoulders and yell that God did love him and wanted him to be happy and loved and he didn’t have to make a choice between the two!
It was on that train ride to Brooklyn, going to a festival centered around my newly rediscovered hobby, when I had that urge. And the next thought was a bright ray of light: if I believed so strongly that God would feel that way about Sebastian, a fictional character, then theoretically wouldn’t He feel that way about me, too? Not that I was queer myself, but…
As soon as I gave myself permission to think the words, they came immediately.
Was it possible I was queer?
It was through these YA books, these fictional stories of kids much younger than I which I felt a little ashamed to be reading as an adult, that I finally saw parts of myself I had buried so deep they were a secret even to myself.
Too often, YA gets a bad rap. Detractors call YA books “junk food” or “fluff.” But these books saved me, and I’m not alone as an adult reader of YA. A recent study found that more than a quarter of YA readers are over 28 years old.
That’s what YA-detractors don’t understand—it’s not just teens who could benefit from books focused on the theme of self-discovery, of figuring out who you are and what you want and what kind of life you’re trying to build for yourself. Those themes aren’t just applicable to teenagers, but are for any readers of any age. What if we all truly believed we were on the precipice of the rest of our lives, and the actions we take now matter? What if we were all still trying to be the best version of our future selves, and giving ourselves the space to ask ourselves who that even would be?
I plan to keep reading YA books even now that I’m in my 30s. And I wish I could go back and tell my 23-year-old self that someday, I’d be a YA author myself, living in Brooklyn, married to the love of my life, with the cutest golden retriever in the world. Life gets better.
If the idea of introspection and asking these questions of yourselves is frightening… then you should probably pick up a YA book and see that you’re not alone.
Love,
Nora Neus
Seventeen-year-old Helena “Nell” Cusack came to New York this summer looking for a story—a real story. She dreams of one day writing hard-hitting articles for the New York Chronicle, but so far she’s only managed to land a job as a lowly society reporter. That is, until Alice Austen strolls into her life, an audacious street photographer who encourages Nell to shake up polite society…and maybe also take a chance on love.
When her best friend, Lucia, is injured while working in a garment factory, Nell is determined to crack the story wide open. Posing as a seamstress, she reports on the conditions from the inside, making a name for herself as the Chronicle’s first ever stunt girl. But as Nell’s reporting gains momentum, so do the objections of those who oppose her. Will Nell continue to seek justice—even if it hurts her in the end?
Based on real-life stunt girl Nell Nelson and photographer Alice Austen, this tenderly drawn narrative is about bringing buried stories to light and the bravery of first love.