‘Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda’ by Becky Albertalli

Best-selling YA author Becky Albertalli rocked the publishing world on August 31 with a blog post on Medium in which she came out as bisexual. The post, titled “I Know I’m Late,” responded to multiple accusations that she was profiting off of the LGBTQ+ community. Ever since Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda became a surprise hit in April 2015, Albertalli has been trolled by the #ownvoices movement, which contends that authors should only tell stories about communities to which they personally belong. When the book became the hit movie Love, Simon in 2018, the pressure increased. People wanted to know how this married mother from Atlanta knew enough to write such an insightful book about the closet.

Well, now we know, and the book reads even better for it. The novel’s insights into what closeted individuals go through deepens now that we understand that Albertalli’s personal experience is in between the lines.

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