The Fights That Make Us
The author’s previous middle-grade novels, including the Little Rebels Award winner Proud of Me, have contemporary settings, featuring LGBTQ+ characters at their heart. This story begins in the present where readers meet Jesse, who is non-binary. Following the death of their mother’s cousin Lisa, about whom Jesse knew very little, they discover Lisa’s 1987/1988 diary in a box also containing artefacts such as a music mixtape and a copy of Spare Rib magazine. As they read the diary, Jesse quickly realises that Lisa was a lesbian who became estranged from her family, and this enables the exploration of parallels between today and the 1980s when Section 28 became law – “prohibiting the promotion by local authorities of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”.
As Jesse and their friend Simran find out more about this law—which was not repealed until 2003—and the difficult situations for LGBTQ+ people surrounding it, and read Lisa’s personal story, they decide that they will make this the focus of a school history project set by a favourite teacher, who encourages her class to consider who writes history and who gets left out.
When a change of teacher means that Jesse and Simran are not able to pursue their project in school, they find a way to bring together people and the information they have found with the help of Maz and Leo at the Over the Rainbow café and bookshop, a space where they feel at ease.
While many characters are shocked that this law existed, and many attitudes have changed, it is apparent that prejudices manifested towards non-binary and transgender people today are similar to those towards gays and lesbians in the 1980s. As one of the characters says, ‘Without telling our history, people forget it and let bad things happen again and again.’
