What was it like being young and gay during the closeted 1950s, the exuberant beginnings of the modern gay rights movement in the 1970s, or the frightening outbreak of HIV and AIDS in the 1980s? In this unique history, Nancy Garden uses both fact and fiction to explore just what it has meant to be young and gay in America during the last fifty years. For each decade from the 1950s on, she discusses in an essay the social and political events that shaped the lives of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people during that era. Then, in two short stories, she explores the emotional experiences of young gay people coming of age during those times, giving vivid insight into what it really felt like. Hear Us Out! is a comprehensive and rich account of gay life, both public and private, from one of the pioneers of young adult lesbian and gay literature.
Author
A versatile writer, Nancy Garden has published books for children as well as for teens, nonfiction as well as fiction. But her novel Annie on My Mind, the story of two high school girls who fall in love with each other, has brought her more attention than she wanted when it was burned in front of the Kansas City School Board building in 1993 and banned from school library shelves in Olathe, Kansas, as well as other school districts. A group of high school students and their parents in Olathe had to sue the school board in federal district court in order to get the book back on the library shelves. Today the book is as controversial as ever, in spite of its being viewed by many as one of the most important books written for teens in the past forty years. In 2003 the American Library Association gave the Margaret A. Edwards Award to Nancy Garden for lifetime achievement. In Remembrance: Nancy Garden
