All Out: The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens throughout the Ages

by Saundra Mitchell

Hardcover, 2018

Status

Available

Call number

PS 509 .H57 A45 2018

Genres

Collection

LGBTQ Iowa Archives & LIbrary

Publication

Harlequin Teen (2018), Edition: Original, 368 pages

Description

Historical Fiction. Young Adult Fiction. Young Adult Literature. LGBTQIA+ (Fiction.) HTML:Take a journey through time and genres to discover stories where queer teens live, love, and shape the world around them. Seventeen young adult authors across the queer spectrum have come together to create a collection of beautifully written diverse historical fiction for teens. From a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood set in war-torn 1870s Mexico featuring a transgender soldier...to two girls falling in love while mourning the death of Kurt Cobain...to forbidden love in a sixteenth-century Spanish convent...and an asexual girl discovering her identity amid the 1970s roller-disco scene, All Out tells a diverse range of stories across cultures, time periods, and identities, shedding light on an area of history often ignored or forgotten. "Readers searching for positive, nuanced, and authentic queer representation�??or just a darn good selection of stories�??need look no further than this superb collection." �??Kirkus Reviews, starred review Featuring original stories from: Malinda Lo Mackenzi Lee Robin Talley Kody Keplinger Elliot Wake Anna-Marie McLemore Shaun David Hutchinson Dahlia Adler Tess Sharpe Kate Scelsa Natalie C. Parker Sara Farizan Nilah Magruder Tessa Gratton Tehlor Kay Mejia Alex Sanchez Scott Tracey Read the entire set of companion anthologies featuring queer teens in the past, present, and future! All Out: The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens throughout the Ages Out Now: Queer We Go Again! Out There: Into the Queer New Yonder (coming soon!)… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member lycomayflower

Does what it says on the tin, really. This is a collection of seventeen stories by LGBTQ YA authors about LGBTQ teens at different points during history. Some of them pull on/retell legends, others are set at very particular moments in history (one story is set in the days after Kurt Cobain's

suicide, for instance), and others are simply in a historical setting. Nice diversity of setting, time periods, and racial and ethnic representation as well as within the LGBTQ letters as well. Any anthology will have stories a reader likes more than others. I especially loved "The Dresser and the Chambermaid," "New Year," "Molly's Lips," "Every Shade of Red," and "Walking after Midnight" and recommend the whole collection.

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LibraryThing member CassieWinters

I finally forced myself to read the last few pages of this. I was stuck at 92% for way too long with only one story left to read. Tonight I decided to just get it done and can say that this overall collection is enjoyable. As with any collection of short stories, some work better than others, but

overall this a solid collection. I would highly recommend it for someone looking for a historical slant to some diverse stories.

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LibraryThing member cavernism

This made my heart so happy - reading about queer love in all its many forms through the ages was fantastic. I only knocked it down one star because several stories felt more like beginnings to longer tales, and when they ended I felt so unsatisfied! It was also jarring to switch from one story to

the next, since they're all in such different eras, but such is the beauty of an anthology. Space these stories out for a dose of queer sweetness - especially recommended if you're working your way through a heavy/long book.

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LibraryThing member jennybeast

Like any short story collection, there are highs and lows in this book -- star studded cast of authors, awesome subject matter, but unfortunately a lot of what I would consider to be kind of weak stories. I recognize that I am too old to be the intended audience, however, and I also recognize that

we need more queer/trans/questioning stories just across the board, and I liked that so many of these had (perhaps unrealistic) happy endings. And there are a few really great stories in here as well. So I'm just not going to rate this at all -- the great stories are sufficiently great, the poor stories are still within a genre that needs more light. I'm going to stay neutral and let it be.

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LibraryThing member ibazel

I found this collection to be very uneven, and think it could have benefited from more editorial oversight to make it more cohesive. I found it jarring to go back and forth between historical fiction and historical-based fantasy, and thought that many of the fantasy stories were trying to do more

worldbuilding than they had space for in a short story, at the expense of developing characters and plot. In addition, the vast majority of stories in this collection are set in America or western Europe in the last 300 years, which was disappointing in an anthology subtitled "throughout the ages".

Out of the fantasy stories my favorites were by Anna-Marie McLemore and Tehlor Kay Mejia; both did a good job of limiting the scope of plot to something appropriate for a short story, and both drew their fantasy elements from the culture and time period they were set in. Out of the historical fiction stories my favorite was Malinda Lo's, which created a very strong sense of place and time, and ended on a satisfyingly open note.

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