The "Bury Your Gays" Trope by Toby O'Hara

I’ve found that even in literature written by queer authors, there are seldom happy endings for the queer characters. The history of queer characters being buried for censorship or cheap affect has created a norm in media, a norm that all authors seem to feel the need to adhere to. Adding queerness is often treated like adding a terminal diagnosis that’ll drive the rest of their character arcs into the nearest lake. Straight characters, on the contrary, get closure at the end of their stories. Sure, terrible things happen between start and finish, but these struggles typically amount to something. The character is changed, their situation is changed, their fate is changed. The closure in non meet-cute genre queer novels is typically death. The trope insists that the world is always hateful and unfair, even when we could all use a little hope and optimism in our lives. 

Well-lauded queer books like Hanya Yanigahara’s A Little Life unfortunately perpetrate this. I first read A Little Life in my junior year of high school, and I wept like a child whilst reading the final pages of it. Despite it being a very effective tearjerker, I would’ve given anything for it to end differently. The message it sends is not good for young, queer readers. The main character, Jude, endured all the cruelty in the world, and it was the author’s choice to give him the end that she did—that is to say, she didn’t have to do that. Queer people often go through bad things, survive bad things, and persevere despite these bad things. I don’t care for a story that says that perseverance is futile. Perseverance should be rewarded, especially if you only mean to punish it for the sake of an emotional reaction. Books that reward perseverance and empower their queer protagonists are golden to me!

Three queer YA novels/series that don’t fall under the bury your gays trope are: Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Cycle and The Dreamer trilogy, and Gabe Cole Novoa’s The Wicked Bargain. I recommend these if you like reading about queer characters whose queerness isn’t necessarily the crux of their struggles, and if you like fantasy without the same level of grittiness as the equally-as-awesome Andrew Joseph White’s works. It makes me glad to read books where queer characters are treated all the same and where they’re able to shine despite the doom that often befalls them. It’s nice to slip into a book where you can remember that the world doesn’t have to be hateful and unfair, because it’s no fault of queerness that bad things happen to queer people. There’s no shortage of books full of queer suffering. This pride month, I’d sure like to find some more queer books that don’t feel so bleak nor that bury their gays. If any fellow queer readers and writers find themselves feeling similarly, I beg of you…be the change!