B-

All Out

All Out: The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens throughout the Ages is a fun YA fictional anthology. I enjoyed the variety of the stories and the variety of representation, although I was sorry to see no bisexual representation (if I missed it, let me know!). Multiple ethnic, racial, and cultural backgrounds are represented and there are a couple of asexual stories in addition to the LGBT stories, which I was thrilled about since asexual relationships are so rarely explored in fiction.

In my experience, romance short stories are very difficult to pull off because there’s no time for a relationship to develop. Most of these stories deal with that by depicting the very beginning of a relationship and ending on that note – a first kiss, for example. In addition, most of these stories are romances and end either happily or, in one occasion, on a cliffhanger.

All of them are pretty solid (some more than others), but a few stand out:

“Walking After Midnight” by Kody Keplinger, set in upstate New York in 1952, depicts a single night in a small town where a former child movie star, now a young woman who can’t get movie roles, meets a resident of the town who is instantly star-struck. The movie star’s craving for stability meets the small-town girl’s need for change in a sweet, though fleeting, romance. Structurally it does a great job of delivering a satisfying story in a small space.

“New Year” by Malinda Lo is set in San Francisco in 1955. It doesn’t have a romance; instead, a young Chinese-American woman starts to make sense of her sexuality. While the story structure is messy, it tackles immigration, assimilation versus preserving one’s culture, the contributions of women to the space race, and the gender-bending world of San Francisco’s nightlife. I wanted this to be much longer than it was.

“Every Shade of Red” by Elliot Wake is a very unusual, erotic, and touching Robin Hood story set in England in the late Fourteenth Century. It left me longing for a book-length treatment, especially this is the story that ends on a cliffhanger.

Alas, two stories in particular, “Healing Rosa” and “The Coven,” deal with mental illness in ways I found troubling, suggesting that a single magical encounter or spell can heal severe depression and PTSD. I found this to be not only wishful thinking but also dangerous and diminishing, just as I would find it dangerous if a single doctor’s visit was depicted as curing serious mental health issues.

This anthology is ambitious and it doesn’t quite rise to its ambitions. I’ve yet to find a romance anthology that works across the board, because a love story is so difficult to convey in a small space. I was disappointed that no bisexuals (that I recall) were represented in the anthology. This is a serious omission. However, I appreciated the different time periods, the varied representation, and especially the positive depictions of people who are romantic asexuals alongside positive portrayals of people who are lesbian, gay, and transgender.

– Carrie S

Take a journey through time and genres and discover a past where queer figures live, love and shape the world around them. Seventeen of the best 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, forbidden love in a sixteenth-century Spanish convent or 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.