Reviews

Proud is an anthology of short stories and art by queer YA creators, both established and emerging. Compiled by Juno Dawson, the range of styles featured in these twelve stories is as broad as the identities represented within them. There's poetry, fantasy, romance, tragedy, sport, comedy, magic realism, music, Dungeons & Dragons, activism and a lesbian retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in an American high school.

Something, I'm sure you'd agree, for everyone.

Cythia So's "The Phoenix's Fault" - in which a Chinese lantern-maker's daughter follows her phoenix to world of possibility - and Moira Fowley-Doyle's "Love Poems To The City" - a magical-realist not-love story set in Dublin during the build up to the Marriage Equality referendum - were the stand outs for me. David Levithan's "As The Philadelphia Queer Youth Choir Sings Katie Perry's 'Firework'..." was one of the more stylistically interesting pieces - internal monologues of each of the members of the titular choir while they performed, flitting back and forth between characters with each paragraph. And as a music obsessive, I related strongly to Tanya Byrne's protagonist in "Almost Certain", and her use of music as a force for creating community and healing (it also helped that this story was set in my local city!).

I really enjoyed this collection, and have already been recommending it to my students.

nevermoregothic's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful inspiring medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

3.0

Content Warnings

eloohna's review against another edition

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5.0

It is everything I hoped and wanted it to be.

What an amazing anthology of short stories about the struggles faced by the LGBTQ+ community. It really should become a mandatory read to fight ignorance regarding that subject among the world population.

redsilva95's review against another edition

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3.0

"We fight on. We, as LGBTQ+ authors, know how important it is to see ourselves in stories. If we live in stories, it means we live in the real world too. We are claiming space, claiming our oxygen. Since the dawn of time, we have been told in a litany of ways that we are 'less-than', 'out of the ordinary', 'abnormal', 'subnormal', or plain 'different'. We are none of those things. We are gloriously ourselves, and we show the world our glory during Pride.
That is why Pride is both party and protest. It's noisy, it's colorful, it's glittery and it's very, very visible. It's a statement to the whole wide world that we are here, we celebrate our varied and diverse culture; our history; our struggles."

I really liked what this anthology has to offer: a collection of 12 short stories written and illustrated by LGBTQIAP+ people. There's plenty of diverse representation in here and it's glorious. As it happens with every collection, there are some in which you connect and love more than others. Unfortunately, I found many of the stories in here to be just "okay". Either they felt too rushed or the writing style didn't click with me.

You will find in here a sapphic retelling of Pride & Prejudice, a queer sports team, a group of teenagers fighting for equality, among many other tales that fits the theme of LGBTQIAP+ pride. My favorites were the ones written by Simon James Green, Kay Staples, David Levithan and Dean Atta (this last one is a beautiful and very emotional poem that got me teary-eyed).

nickthebooktoker's review against another edition

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funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective fast-paced

Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

bluelilyleest's review against another edition

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4.0

“Proud” is a collection of poetry, short stories and artwork made by and for queer people. I finished the anthology in two days, and although I did not enjoy every story equally, I did read it from cover to cover. I grew up making up these kinds of stories in my head, living them out or searching for them in small remote communities on the internet. Now when books like this are being published, my heart swells with joy and hope. We’re here, we’re being written and read, and we’re proud

pewterwolf's review against another edition

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5.0

Review taken from The Pewter Wolf. Book was gifted by UK publisher, Stripes, in exchange for an honest review/reaction

PROUD is an anthology of stories, poetry and illustrations from the top LGBTQIA+ authors, illustartors and fresh talent, each giving their own reaction to the theme of Pride.

There isn’t much else I can say. So, thoughts on this are thus…

I loved this collection. I knew I would, but it surprised me how much I loved and enjoyed the collection. Even the stories I didn’t particularly enjoy compared to others made me go “This is great!”. Plus, an anthology like this isn’t going to be please everyone with every story so I knew that as I was going in, but it was a surprise the level of talent was so high!

I would love to talk about each story and poem individually but I think I just want to give a few stories a shout out as I loved them and want you guys to know about them: “Penguins” by Simon James Green (because I love his writing), “Almost Certain” by Tanya Byrne (I love how this story tackled anxiety and demetria) and the four stories from the fresh talent whose stories were from an open call out : “On the Run” by Kay Staples, “The Phoenix’s Fault” by Cynthia So, “I Hate Darcy Pemberley” by Kameron White and “The Other Team” by Michael Lee Richardson. Each of these could be turned into novels and would be great reading (I especially think The Other Team would work great as a novel as the characters were messy and complex social/private lives and I would read this messiness up!)

I do feel like I need to point one niggle out, which isn’t a negative but as someone who doesn’t read contemporary fiction often, I noticed this. But, out of this collection, all bar one story were contemporary and while this isn’t a problem, it would have been nice to have more variety in genres - fantasy, sci-fi, historical, spy thriller, crime.

But, barring that, I loved this collection and can’t wait to force this into people’s hands.

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