In 2021 my son approached me with a concern after he attended his middle school Gay-Straight Aliance (GSA) meeting. He said that one of his friends was complaining about how their entire school library only had 5 books representing the LGBTQ+ community. The student, an eighth grader, had read all 5 books twice and didn't know where else to find new titles. As a straight male my son had never considered the idea of not seeing a reflection of himself in a book and this upset him. I tried to explain that for someone like his moms this was pretty standard, but he wanted to do something about it. I started doing some research and I came across a statistic that floored me: LGBTQ+ youth are 4 times more likely to attempt suicide than their peers. As a member of the LGBTQ+ community I knew suicide rates were high, but I never imagined they were this high. This immediately made me think about the students in my son's GSA group. If you feel rejected by parents, teachers, family, friends, and neighbors, where do you find hope? I knew we needed to put more positivity in the lives of these students so I put together a website with a list of book titles that kids could use as a resource. We created bookmarks with the website address and handed them out to the members of his GSA club, but these were still just kids without the funds needed to buy their own books. If these books weren't in their libraries, what difference did knowing the books existed make? I raised the funds, and we donated 10 new books to the school library. Today, Positively Empowered by Literature is a nonprofit organization designed to introduce inspiring LGBTQ+ literature to parents, teachers, teens and young adults. We continue to purchase books for school and classroom libraries. We also work with school LGBTQ+ clubs and organizations to provide access to empowering literature with the hope that we are able to give courage to youth who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender and promote an understanding that life is worth living because the world is full of possibility, you just need to keep breathing. Board of Directors |