“Covering” Contemporary Queer Fiction

[Natasha]

"Covering" Contemporary Queer Fiction

http://www.afterellen.com/Print/2008/9/coveringqueerfiction?page=0%2C0
9/8/2008

At first glance, Sarah Hall's Daughters of the North — a gripping tale of women fighting a repressive government in dystopian near-future Britain — and Jennifer Cody Epstein's The Painter From Shanghai — a debut novel about Chinese post-Impressionist painter Pan Yuliang — have little in common beyond their authors' skill.

Look again: both have bisexual heroines, and include same-sex love affairs in their plots.

But you can't tell that from reading the backs of the books. In fact, if you stumbled on either one in your local library or an online bookstore, you might have no idea they have any queer content.

Lesbian and bisexual readers are used to their lives being invisible in pop culture. But the tremendous surge in visibility of the last two decades has not bypassed bookshelves, and many books with LGBT subjects have had out-and-proud jackets.