Two Hoots lands 'inclusive' account of LGBTQ+ activism from Roberts

Macmillan Children's Books imprint Two Hoots has landed an "accessible and inclusive" account of LGTBQ+ activism from David Roberts.

Suzanne Carnell, publisher, bought world rights to We Are Your Children: A History of LGBTQ+ Activism from Christine Isteed at Artist Partners. The book will be published in the UK as a colour hardback for readers aged 12 and over in summer 2022. This will also be 50 years since the first official UK Gay Pride rally was held in London, on 1st July 1972.

The publisher said: "We Are Your Children focuses on major events in the last 50 years of the 20th century from the UK and US. David looks at the secret slang adopted by gay Londoners in the 1960s, the Stonewall Uprising, the first Gay Pride rally, and the dazzling story of drag and the ballroom scene. Celebrating the rich diversity of the movement, well-known activists feature alongside less familiar names: Harvey Milk, Alan Turing, Crystal LaBeija, Ernestine Eckstein, Bobbi Campbell, Sylvia Rivera, Justin Fashanu and Lani Ka’ahumanu."

Roberts said: “As a teenager in the 1980s discovering I was gay felt like the worst thing in the world. It certainly wasn’t something I felt encouraged to be proud of, quite the opposite, in fact.

“I’ve always been hooked on history. I love nothing more than learning the stories of people’s lives. However, growing up I can’t remember a single instance of being presented with a story of a queer person rising above the restraints and stigma that society dumped on them to live the life they wanted to live. Yet there are hundreds of such stories and they are funny, heartbreaking, frustrating and most of all empowering. I think about myself aged 13 and I wonder how differently I might have felt accepting my gay self with pride by knowing the names and stories of the people who fought for my right to do so. I’m so excited to share these stories with a new generation of young people, celebrating their own queer identities or those of their friends and families. LGBTQ+ history is everybody’s history.”

Carnell added: “David and I have been talking about this book since we published his award-winning Suffragette: The Battle for Equality. His careful research and flair for storytelling in both words and exquisite illustration creates a fascinating, moving, often shocking but ultimately inspiring account of some key moments and personalities in the story of queer activism during the second half of the 20th century. David is passionate about bringing the history of the LGBT+ fight for equality to a young contemporary audience and I am so proud to be working with him on the project, and to be publishing this important book.”