Week 14 Prompt

I would advocate for shelving Urban Fiction separately from general fiction, but leaving LGBTQ fiction intershelved with other fiction.

Reason 1: Urban Fiction is a genre, while LGBTQ Fiction refers to the identity of the author writing it. Of course, LGBTQ authors will tend to explore issues related to their own experience in their writing, but these aspects of identity exist independent from genre. Urban Fiction should be separated from General Fiction for the same reason that mysteries should; readers tend to read and enjoy books from specific genres, and shelving books by general genre categories makes them easier to find and browse.

Reason 2: It is impractical to try to separate the shelving location for books based on the identity of their author or the presence of LGBTQ-related stories. Where should you draw the line about what qualifies a book to be “LGBTQ Fiction”? Is it the presence of one queer character? Is it whether the author has publicly come out as queer? Does it include homoerotic undertones in literary classics? Whatever criteria is used will be too inclusive for some readers and too exclusive for others. Shelving by genre is not always a straightforward process either, but it is much easier than trying to shelve based on identity because you can make certain assumptions about the readers looking for books in the genre that you can’t make otherwise. With Urban Fiction, there are general settings, story types, character archetypes, and physical indicators (like cover art and publisher) that can be used to distinguish the books.

Reason 3: Intershelving LGBTQ Fiction normalizes LGBTQ experiences. By cordoning off LGBTQ stories and media, we “other” it and label it as deviant in some way from the larger collection of “normal” fiction. If we intend to work toward a more just society in which people are not stigmatized for seeking out certain types of information or simply being a certain way, we must work to normalize inclusion of experiences different from the majority. I still think, however, that it would be helpful to have a way to direct readers who are specifically interested in books relating to gender, sexuality, and identity to books that would interest them, so I would encourage the library to begin adding a subject heading like “Gender, Sexuality, and Identity” to the OPAC records for any books whose content addresses those issues in one form or another. This will also aid readers’ advisory librarians in their work as they look for titles appropriate to readers questioning their gender or challenging social structures.