Find lesbian grandmothers who inspired children’s books | books

A search is on for two lesbian grandmothers who inspired a new children’s book after a chance encounter with a pantomime lady at Blackpool Pride.

The women, whose names were not known, attended a reading by popular artist Mama Ji in 2021, and complained to her about the lack of diversity in young adult literature.

Mama G said she was reading children’s books in Blackpool Winter Gardens when she asked the women if there were any books by lesbian grandmothers.

The question left her confused. “I was like, ‘No. I don’t actually think I’ve ever seen lesbian grandmothers in a story, not even as a supporting character,'” she said. “It’s very hard to find yourself represented in books,” one woman, looking disappointed, told her.

The conversation prompted Mama G, whose real name is Robert Pierce, to write a children’s picture book in which two older gay women are “front and center of change.”

The book, The World’s Most Proud Bird, will be published on July 1, and Mama G wants to dedicate it to the couple who inspired it – but first she must track them down.

However, despite weeks of appeals on social media, radio and newspapers, their identity remains a mystery. “I don’t have their names, I don’t even know if they’re from Blackpool, maybe they were visiting,” Mama G said, comparing the social media campaign to the search for a missing person.

The women are described as being around 5 feet 6 inches tall with short hair, one with “loose salt and pepper curls”, and possibly wearing jeans and striped T-shirts when they meet Mama G in 2021.

Despite spending nearly two decades advocating for diversity in family storytelling, Mama G said the conversation with women was a “wake-up call.” “These two women have an uphill battle when it comes to representation because they are a minority within a minority, and that really stuck with me,” she said.

“The visibility of lesbians is much lower than that of gay men in the media in general. The visibility of older LGBT people is much lower than that of children or young adults who identify as gay.”

A 2022 US study found that although the number of LGBTQ+ books for children had increased significantly since 2000, those characters were rarely the main protagonists and that some groups, such as intersex people, were “entirely absent”.

The film is about an ordinary white bird, named Gilbert, who longs to express his true identity and stumbles into a pride parade, where he discovers that true colors don’t have to live outside.

The main characters are two gay grandfathers who educate Gilbert and their granddaughter about what the colors of the rainbow flag mean to them.

Mama G, who will perform in Edinburgh this summer, said a lack of diversity in children’s books remained a problem, despite the efforts of a number of smaller authors and publishers.

She said publishers told her they “weren’t comfortable” releasing her first book, Oh Yes Me!, about a boy who lives in a gray world but learns how to make it shine, because “it could be seen as a story about the gay community.”

The book, published in 2023 and titled “The World’s Most Proud Bird,” was picked up by smaller, independent companies.

Mama G said that major publishers have turned away from books that celebrate diversity because of their profit margins and that “there is a lot of pushback against the community.

“I think in order to get diverse books published, you have to look at small publishers because they are in a better position to take risks,” she said. “I’m excited to see what happens with this book — and I hope that if we find queer grandmothers, they’ll be proud to be a part of it.”