GLBTQ collection: Geography Club

This is a novel written for young adults that teaches about how hard it can sometimes be to figure out how you fit into the world. The story is set in a smaller sized town, in the heartland of the USA. This wholesome place has a town preacher active in making himself heard and not a lot of diversity to respond back. The story is told from the eyes of a boy named Russel who is struggling to find a place for the personality that people see and the person he hides inside fearing it could ruin his life. Russel is gay and until this novel thought he was the only one in the whole town. Throughout the story he finds courage to come out to friends and together with the help of friends old and new they form a club where they can get together and safely speak about the struggles they all face feeling they cannot be true to themselves around other people. This book would be great inspiration for students who often feel like they have trouble fitting in.
As a piece of diverse text this book does a good job of breaking many stereotypes that could be held about those who identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. The gay boys we meet range the spectrum from smart nerds to baseball players breaking the stereotype that gay men are effeminate all the time. They do make the one lesbian character a female athlete but her girl friend is a bisexual, who also happens to be the smartest girl at the school. The way they add this diversity struck me as more realistic in the way they admitted all of them had nothing really in common except that they were not strictly heterosexual people. This could be a great way to introduce the idea to students who hold this stereotype of “gay” meaning a certain personality, but it also helps more readers to find a character to which they might identify on a personal level. In looking at the novel I do not find a large diversity in race nor do I find racial stereotypes so as a piece of diverse text referring to sexual orientations it is a very good work but it does not offer much on other groups that are often missing from other literature. This book could be taught in high school classrooms but because of some awkward moments and sexuality I feel that some middle school students would not be prepared to cover it in a class setting. Despite the inclusion of kissing moments and other mild sexuality I feel that this book would really help many high school and middle school students who struggle with themselves and give them the courage to realize that making yourself happy will always feel better than faking it to be popular.

Hartinger, Brent. Geography Club. 1st. New York City: HarperCollins, 2003.