User:Jessicatung/sandbox

Being bold is important on Wikipedia.

I believe there are more to talk about in depth of the LGBTQ related issues in her works. Thus, I plan to add more details about her works in the comics and also her work in writing in TV shows mentioned in wikipedia. Hopefully, I can find reliable sources that talks about her works more.

Sources

Bendix, Trish. "Ariel Schrag on 'Adam,' Queer Identities and Writing for ‘The L Word’ " - Page 1 of 2." AfterEllen. AfterEllen, 20 Nov. 2016. Web. 03 Mar. 2017.

Seggel, Heather. "Ariel Schrag: On Her New Novel ‘Adam,’ Writing for ‘The L Word,’..." Lambda Literary. N.p., 02 Aug. 2014. Web. 02 Mar. 2017.

I want to add information about Schrag's book, Adam because there are no information about it on her Wikipedia page.

Below is my draft.

The book Adam is a story following a sixteen years old straight boy (white cisgender) growing up. In the story, the boy comes to New York City to live with his older sister for the summer. Because of his sister being a LGBTQ advocate, he gets the chance to experience what the LGBTQ community is like. During his stay, he finds himself liking an older woman he met. He claims to be female to male transgender just to be able to date the woman.

The experience of the queer community in New York City , surrounded by friends that are going through female to male transitions, and even personally dated a transgender woman influence Ariel Schrag significantly on why she wrote the book, Adam. When first creating the character Adam, Schrag imagined him as an older man. The inspiration behind it came from Schrag’s co-worker Adam Rapp when she was writing for the show, The L Word. Rapp was the only man in the writing group while the rest were lesbians. Rapp is a straight cisgender man, Shrag wondered what he had to bring to a writing group on a Lesbian TV series. Shrag found herself imagining Rapp as a cis gender man going to gay bars trying to blend in as a trans man to collect data for writing. She found this thought funny and interesting and thought she should write a novel about it. The more Shrag thought about the idea she realized an adult man should know that doing something as such would be in poor taste. Shrag then decided the character should be a teenager whose intentions for such actions would come from love. Schrag’s personal experience with friends is one of the inspirations that make her want to write the novel in Adam’s perspective. A straight friend of Schrag's envy about how amazing it is to have the LGBTQ community there for you inspired her. Schrag thinks about how people would misunderstand things by looking at a situation only in either a good or bad way without considering a gray area. Her friend focuses on how great it is to have a community supporting you but not the issues queer people face on a daily basis is just one example. It has surprised Schrag how a lot of people only read the introduction of the book and stop reading further because they felt offended and uncomfrotable by the topics the book talks about. Responding to people's reaction, Schrag explains that she wants to write something unique and different. Something that people get to explore the unfamiliar because that is what makes things alluring. In the book, Schrag shows a lot of topics that happens in the LGBTQ community but have not been included much in books, comics and so on. For example, in a scene where different groups of people are talking about their opinions on legalizing same sex marriage, Schrag includes a group of queer people disagreeing with the idea of gay marriage. Schrag decides to present the sex scenes in the book explicitly and intimately with descriptions of body parts rather than quickly passing through in most of the novels. Novels have the power to make it intimate to the readers. She thinks cutting out or not addressing enough of these important moments shows incompletion. Especially for her book being that the topics are about gender, sex and sexuality.

An intriguing thing Schrag finds in writing novels differing to comics and TV shows is that every reader will visualize descriptions in the book differently. Schrag believes the environments and characters one pictures connect with their personal experiences in real life and that’s how readers can feel more intimate with the story. Schrag hopes to provide a story that is realistic and as genuine as possible. Schrag uses conversations she personally heard or experienced, to achieve the authenticity she desires but also provides different opinions on the problems she touches in the book. Schrag shares that one of the character in the book, Gillan is inspired by Constance McMillen. McMillen is a teenager who was prohibited to have a girl as her date to prom in Mississippi. Schrag finds the story of the girl intriguing and wonders what the future will be like for McMillen considering she came out as a lesbian at an early age.