I was feeling nostalgic this month and decided to re-read Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden (she/her), one of the first queer books I ever read. My ability to remember specific plot details is notoriously bad, so it was almost like reading it for the first time. I am pleased to report, it did not disappoint!
Originally published in 1982, Annie on My Mind was one of the first young adult novels to feature queer female characters in a positive light. The book is told in flashbacks. Present-day Eliza “Liza” Winthrop is a freshman at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who is struggling to process a traumatic event that happened involving her first love, Annie Kenyon. It is November, and Annie has been writing Liza letters since the summer, but Liza hasn’t answered Annie in several months.
The flashbacks begin the prior year: November of Liza and Annie’s senior year of high school. Liza, an aspiring architect, attends Foster Academy, a private school in Brooklyn Heights where she is student council president. Annie, a gifted singer with strong Italian roots, attends a public school in Manhattan. Liza and Annie meet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art on a rainy November afternoon. Their connection is instantaneous. Over the next few months, their love story unfolds. No one knows who they truly are to each other, and, for a time, they seem untouchable. But we know from present-day Liza that storm clouds are on the horizon.
Even though the book was published over forty years ago, it still really resonated for me. Garden captured the feeling of two young women falling in love perfectly. The combination of exhilaration and fear. Shedding your old life and being propelled into a new one. Everything suddenly coming into sharp focus.
I really appreciated that Garden wrote Liza as a young woman who had some level of understanding about her privilege. Liza’s family is significantly wealthier than Annie’s family, and Garden even included an emotional conversation between Liza and Annie about money. At various points, Liza also comments upon the whiteness and privilege in her Brooklyn Heights community and the diversity in a neighboring community. She also recalls conversations where her father defended gay, Black, and Latine people. Given the age of this book, this was particularly refreshing to read.
Garden was an American writer of fiction for children and young adults. She is best known for Annie on My Mind, which was critically acclaimed but attracted controversy because of its queer characters. The dedication page of Annie on My Mind reads “For all of us.” Garden previously stated, “I wrote [Annie on My Mind] to give solace to young gay people, to let them know they were not alone, that they could be happy and well adjusted and also to let heterosexual kids know that we gay people aren’t monsters[.]” Garden passed away in 2014.
After reading this book again, I still really like it, and think that young queer women should read it as a rite of passage. Although some aspects might not be current (no computers, cell phones, or social media?!), the themes of resiliency, pride, and visibility are timeless. At one point, Liza is describing the experience of reading gay books, magazines, and newspapers: “I felt as if I were meeting part of myself in the gay people I read about. Gradually, I began to feel calmer inside, more complete and sure of myself[.]” That’s still how queer books make me feel.
Trigger warnings for homophobia.
Raquel R. Rivera (she/her/ella) is a Latina lawyer and lady lover from New Jersey. She is in a lifelong love affair with books and earned countless free personal pan pizzas from the Pizza Hut BOOK IT! program as a kid to prove it.
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