For me, the process of creating a collection of books and other materials for the library was a very personal and enriching process. I chose the topic of estrangement as it has been something that has affected me, my mental health and my studies this year. Before experiencing it myself, I didn’t know much about it which is why I hope that my collection will be informative to people interested in learning more about it. While my estrangement wasn’t caused by my queer identity, I found out in my research that many LGBTQ+ people become estranged from their family members, whether by disownment or personal choices. Through the variety of material that I have selected, I hope that my collection will serve as a space for discussions and reflections of estrangement in which people can learn more about estranged LGBTQ+ people and their experiences. You can view the curation on this webpage.
One of the things that I noticed in my research and search for appropriate materials was that many non-fiction books and guides focus on reconciliation and position it as the ultimate goal of all estranged people. This was especially prevalent when I was looking for videos to include in my collection. I made an effort to exclude materials such as these for several reasons. First, I didn’t want to include mental health/self help guides in general; instead I have included the websites of multiple charities and organisations for if people want to look into those. Second, I believe that reconciliation is a very personal choice to make and I didn’t want to make assumptions about people’s situations or circumstances. I also feel that recommending reconciliation, especially to people who may be estranged for their own safety, is a dismissive and dangerous idea. With this in mind, I attempted to find materials which acknowledged that estrangement is a multifaceted experience which, though it can be isolating, is the right choice made by many people to keep them safe from family members. I do acknowledge, however, that several of the materials in my collection do end in reconciliation.
While looking for materials both within and outside of the university library, I noticed that there is limited content out there about estrangement for LGBTQ+ people. There is especially very little archival and historical information and material, though it is undoubtable that estrangement would have occurred to many LGBTQ+ people in the past and to this day. This is demonstrated through the charities which I found, such as Galop, which focus particularly on LGBTQ+ people and their experiences of domestic abuse. As a whole, the topic of estrangement as experienced by LGBTQ+ people is a newly researched, and as such an underresearched, topic. For my collection I elected to include some journal articles that have done research on estrangement in higher education because they discuss challenges faced by many estranged and independent students regardless of their identity.
Something that you might notice in my collection is the proliferation of Young Adult fiction primarily written in the past two decades. This is because LGBTQ+ fiction as a genre rapidly expanded in these years. Furthermore, many of the books are Young Adult because of the difficulty I had in finding adult fiction which focused on LGBTQ+ people and their relationships with their family members. Additionally, in my research I noticed several tropes which kept cropping up in books, many of which included the death of a family member or the estranged protagonist having to engage with their estranged family members in some way. I attempted to include as few of these tropes as possible, except where books have been empathetic towards the protagonist and the complexity of the situations at hand.
From the beginning of my curation back in June, I was interested in including graphic novels and other visual materials such as videos and zines. While it has been challenging to find materials such as those which focused on my topic, I found several graphic novels which were suitable for my curation. I also included online databases about LGBTQ+ culture, such as an online archive of historical LGBTQ+ badges used for activism and awareness, and several zines which are available for downloading if people are interested. I also found some videos about the topic which I hope have made my collection more accessible for people.
In my collection I have included a variety of memoirs and autobiographies by predominantly LGBTQ+ people, though a few authors are cishet. I managed to find a good amount of memoirs, possibly because estrangement is a topic which is well-suited to being written about from the perspective of those who have experienced it. I was happy to include them as I wanted to share LGBTQ+ experiences from the perspective of LGBTQ+ people. I think it is important to note that multiple of the memoirs are by celebrities, possibly because of the popularity of the celebrity memoir genre.
I wouldn’t have been able to curate my collection without the help of the university library staff. I would like to thank Antonio, David, Kirsty and Ilka for assisting me throughout the weekly meetings, especially with finding materials. Thank you to Kenny and the rest of the purchasing team who helped me in the acquiring of new materials. For the LibGuide and the reading list, I have Steph and Siobhan to thank for that, as I was using software I had never used before! I’d also like to thank Ned for posting all of the social media updates I made and helping me hype up my collection to the public. Thank you to everyone else in the library who helped me put my collection together and Paul for taking most of the photos in this post. This has been a wonderful summer and a wonderful experience and I’m so happy with all of the work that I have done with the library.
In the future, I am excited for my collection to move onto the new bookshelf in the library for years to come and for all the people who will interact and engage with it. I hope that my collection helps to raise awareness of estranged LGBTQ+ people and the challenges and difficulties we face and that more people will become aware of the intersectionality of being LGBTQ+ and estranged. I encourage you to explore and engage with the materials on offer in my collection and I hope you learn something new through them. Thank you for reading and for being part of my curation journey!
