Publishing agents pressure YA authors to mainstream their characters

[firecat]

deirdre asked me to signal-boost this article written by Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith, published in Rose Fox's Publisher's Weekly blog. They were moved to write this article when an (unnamed) agent offered to sign them if they removed a gay character from their YA novel.

http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/genreville/?p=1519

Excerpt:

This isn’t about that specific agent; we’d gotten other rewrite requests before this one. Previous agents had also offered to take a second look if we did rewrites… including cutting the viewpoint of Yuki, the gay character. We wondered if that was because of his sexual orientation, but since the agents didn’t say it out loud, we could only wonder. (We were also told that it is absolutely unacceptable in YA for a boy to consensually date two girls, but that it would be okay if he was cheating and lying. And we wonder if some agents were put off because none of our POV characters are white.)
...
We are avoiding names because we don’t want this story to be about one agent who spoke more bluntly than others whose objections were more indirectly expressed. Naming names can make it too easy to target a lone “villain,” who can be blamed and scolded until everyone feels that the matter has been satisfactorily dealt with.

Forcing all major characters in YA novels into a straight white mold is a widespread, systemic problem which requires long-term, consistent action.

When we privately discussed our encounter with the agent, we heard from other writers whose prospective agents made altering a character’s minority identity—sexual orientation, race, disability—a condition of representation. But other than Jessica Verday, who refused to change a character’s gender in a short story on an editor’s request, few writers have come forward for fear of being blacklisted.

The article also includes links to the following annotated lists:

• YA sf/fantasy with main or major LGBTQ characters
  
• An annotated list of YA sf/fantasy with protagonists of color, Part I: Author surnames A – L.
• An annotated list of YA sf/fantasy with protagonists of color,Part II: Author surnames M – Z.

Comments

[outlier_lynn]

Was this unexpected? Agents what books that they can sell to publishers who want books they can sell. And nearly every business is risk adverse. I would be greatly surprised if there were any agents looking for anything other than "tried and true" story telling.