My recent post about Polly Cameron, author/illustrator of I Can't Said the Ant, shared some things about Cameron's life that I found when looking her up for the post, including the fact that she spent most of her life in a relationship with another woman, which as far as I can tell is not widely known (though I don't think she's exactly a household name in the children's book world in general).
Star Tribune book editor Laurie Hertzel recently ran a brief review of a biography of Louise Fitzhugh, author (and illustrator) of the famous children's novel Harriet the Spy. The biography's title is Sometimes You Have to Lie, and it appears that part of Fitzhugh's lie related to her sexuality. Hertzel writes,
Fitzhugh was tiny, pixie-like and adorable, alluring to both men and women (but she preferred women). Her revolving door of lovers is dizzying, and while she settles down from time to time, no relationship lasts.
Fitzhugh [was] intensely private [...] she left behind few letters or journals from which to draw and only allowed two photographs of herself to be published during her lifetime....
All of which made me think of Fitzhugh's sequel to Harriet, which is called The Long Secret. That's not what the book's eponymous secret is, but still. As a reader, it makes me wonder if there wasn't a bit of signaling going on.
In her review, Hertzel mentions that Fitzhugh illustrated a book called Suzuki Beane with writer Sandra Scoppettone, another author for young people who later came out as a lesbian in the 1970s. I've had a copy of that book sitting in my home office, which I've been meaning to write about here for several years, though I've never gotten around to it.
(It's a 1962 paperback that I found at the Montana Valley Book Store in Alberton, Montana, while taking Daughter Number Three-Point-One to college on the West Coast. What a place!)
It was first published in 1961, so I guess that means Suzuki would be about 65 years old now, if she were a real person. I wonder what happened after she and her friend Henry Martin hit the road, running away from the constraints of their square and/or beatnik parents?
I've been a fan of Scoppettone's teen theater novel Trying Hard to Hear You since I was a teenager myself. It may have been one of the first books I read that had a major gay character in it, and it also deals with racism in what seemed like a fairly sophisticated way (to me, at least) back in the mid-1970s.
Thinking of these intersecting authors got me thinking of others who might also have known them.
Margaret Wise Brown, author of Goodnight Moon and many other well-known books, is another prominent mid-20th century children's book-world figure whose sexuality would have raised eyebrows during her time (or maybe it did, I'm not sure how well-known that aspect of her life was). There are several biographies written about her, so probably that answer exists. She also lived in Greenwich Village (like Fitzhugh and Scoppettone), in a little house that can still be seen.
Lorraine Hansberry, author of Raisin in the Sun, lived in Harlem for a time and then later in the Hudson Valley, somewhere north of where Polly Cameron and her partner lived. Hansberry's sexuality is covered pretty well in Imani Perry's Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry. She, of course, was not writing for children or young adults, but I wondered if any of these women encountered each other in the closeted circles of the New York area during that time period of the 1950s and ’60s, given that they were all connected to the literary world in one way or another.
Overall, I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but I felt a resonance in the coincidence of Hertzel's Fitzhugh write-up, running just after I was looking into Cameron. And then there was the connection to Scoppettone and Greenwich Village, which made me think of Wise Brown. And then I remembered Hansberry from having read Perry's book not long ago.
It was one of those moments when your brain makes connections, whether they're real or not.
6 comments:
There were a whole lot of LGB children's writers and artists -- Arnold Lobel, Moaurice Sendak, Tomie dePaola, a bit later on Trina Schart Hyman...I'm sure there were more. Somebody could probably write a book. Alison Lurie for choice, except she just passed away.
I guess I was thinking of women - not that they/we are necessarily more closeted, especially then, but it kind of seems like it. I didn't know about Trina Schart Hyman! Another favorite of mine: https://daughternumberthree.blogspot.com/2011/02/gregor-meet-judith-and-trina.html
I tend to think of the women as being slightly less closeted, but what do I know. And I adore TSH; we had a subscription to Cricket in the 80s and she did all the wonderful margin illustrations. Everything she did is amazing.
Maybe not more closeted in their families or close connections, but I was thinking of being in the mid-20th century and having to fear for your work life. Women might feel more vulnerable than men. But who knows. All had something to fear from homophobia, for sure.
Yes indeed, and for such a ridiculously long time. I was in high school, in California, in the late 80s/early 90s, and I don't know what would have happened if anybody came out then, but it wouldn't have been good. Everybody waited until college (at least), when it got much easier.
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