By Kim Flowers. $13.50; Queerteen Press; 194 pages
In the age of "It Gets Better" videos and flourishing gay-straight alliances, Kim Flowers' YA novel, The Divide Book 1: Uprising, paints a bleak picture of the future for the next queer generation.
This science-fiction novel takes place after the Second Civil War, when a U.S. political party called the Family Protection Movement established The Divide, walls that sequester LGBTQ citizens in designated communities and protect "normal" people from exposure to homosexuality.
Seventeen-year-old Serenity lives in a "normal" community in the Midwest. Serenity lives in fear of taking the government-issued Normal Verification Test at age 18, when her lesbian identity will be revealed and she will be forcibly removed from the only community she has ever known. Seeking queer teens like her, Serenity hacks into an illegal gay chat room and meets Dawn, a young lesbian living in Gay Community 17. When Serenity begins sneaking into the community to visit Dawn, she joins the Human Equality Organization, a rebel group that aims to bring down the Divide for good.
Serenity's statement that "joining a secret rebellion against the government seems less dangerous than telling my mom and dad I'm a lesbian" will likely strike a chord with queer teens in homophobic families. Her struggle to reconcile her faith in God with the teachings of a church that condemns homosexuality addresses teens in religious communities.
But while The Divide speaks to some queer youth, the book might alienate others. Flowers conveniently imagines a future in which racism no longer exists to keep the focus on homophobia. In a conversation with teens from Gay Community 17, Serenity employs the tunnel-vision rhetoric of today's white gay organizers when she says, "But if people used to think different skin was bad and now no one cares … maybe someday everyone will think it's weird that anyone ever made us live in gay communities." The notion that gay rights are the new civil rights denies intersections between racism and homophobia, and dismisses racism as a social issue that has already been overcome.
The Divide has the potential to bring LGBTQ stories to new audiences through science fiction. Perhaps future books in the series will address multiple forms of oppression, showing young readers that equality is not and never will be a single-group issue.