Review: Serving Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning Teens: A How-To-Do-It Manual for Librarians by Hillias J. Martin, Jr. and James R. Murdock

Abstract

Serving Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning Teens: A How-To-Do-It Manual for Librarians by Hillias J. Martin, Jr. and James R. Murdock. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc., 2007. 215 pp. ISBN 1-55570-566-9. “Today, when queer teens come to the library or search its catalog online, what do they want to find? In a word: themselves,” write Hillias J. Martin, Jr. and James R. Murdock, authors of the newest title in Neal-Schuman’s series, How-To- Do-It-Manual for Librarians (Martin & Murdock 2007, p. 19). With surprising efficiency, Martin and Murdock compendiously tackle the often complicated role of the library in helping queer teens. They offer concise and innovative suggestions for handling challenging situations, such as the placement of books, patron privacy, negotiating parents’ questions, and more. The manual includes a well organized, annotated guide of more than 50 fiction, non-fiction and multimedia works and more than 30 programming ideas to provide a welcoming environment for all teens, many of which envision new ways to connect queer teens and the library. More attention could have been paid to the needs of double minorities (queer people of color)—especially as self-identification and representation is central to the authors’ endeavor—but the fact that they address these issues at all is a long overdue breakthrough. Martin and Murdock present a manual richly shaped by sympathy for the difficulties of queer adolescence that is clarified to extraordinary success. There is no lack of evidence for the haunting difficulties queer teens face or for the desperate role of the library in serving queer teens. The authors cite numerous studies attesting to these difficulties. For example, the National Mental Health Association finds that “nearly 80 percent of high school students report that LGBTQ students are bullied in their school” (Martin & Murdock, 2007, p. 13). According to the Human Rights Watch report titled Hatred in the Hallways, Gay youth spend an inordinate amount of energy plotting how to get safely to and from school, how to avoid the hallways when other students are present so they can avoid slurs and shoves, how to cut gym class to escape being beaten up —in short how to become invisible so they will not be verbally and physically attacked. Too often, students have little energy left to learn (Human Rights Watch, 2001). Additionally, Martin and Murdock find that as a result of prejudice and phobia, queer teens are four times more likely to attempt suicide and account for one-third of successful suicides (Frankowski, 2004; Safren and Heimberg 1999). One can understand the sympathy, or perhaps the empathy, that motivates Martin and Murdock’s manual, partly born out of these statistics, which will not astonish anyone attuned to the way our society denies queer lives. The statistics