Openly Straight

by Bill Konigsberg

Overview

The award-winning novel about being out, being proud, and being ready for something else... now in paperback.

The award-winning novel about being out, being proud, and being ready for something else. Pre-order the companion novel Honestly Ben now (out 3/28/17)!

Rafe is a normal teenager from Boulder, Colorado. He plays soccer. He's won skiing prizes. He likes to write.

And, oh yeah, he's gay. He's been out since 8th grade, and he isn't teased, and he goes to other high schools and talks about tolerance and stuff. And while that's important, all Rafe really wants is to just be a regular guy. Not that GAY guy. To have it be a part of who he is, but not the headline, every single time.

So when he transfers to an all-boys' boarding school in New England, he decides to keep his sexuality a secret -- not so much going back in the closet as starting over with a clean slate. But then he sees a classmate breaking down. He meets a teacher who challenges him to write his story. And most of all, he falls in love with Ben... who doesn't even know that love is possible.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780545798655
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	04/28/2015
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	55,269
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Bill Konigsberg is the author of six books for young adults, which have won awards including the Stonewall Book Award, the Sid Fleischman Award for Humor, and the Lambda Literary Award. Bill lives with his husband, Chuck, and their two Labradoodles, Mabel and Buford. Please visit him online at billkonigsberg.com and @billkonigsberg.

Read an Excerpt

As I stuffed my second empty duffel bag into the dorm closet, I decided on a shower, since I smelled like my expiration date had come and gone weeks ago. A guy zoomed by the doorway, then I heard the footsteps slow and stop.
“Hey, guy,” he said. “We're gettin' a game going downstairs, do you . . . holy Jesus!”
“What?” I said.
“You look just like Schroeder.”
“From Peanuts?”
“What? No. This kid. Graduated last year. You could be his brother. I'm the first to tell you that?” the guy said, revealing a flawless set of pearly, white teeth.
I smiled back, dazzled by him. I hoped I wasn't blushing. “You're the first to tell me anything. You're the first person I've met here.”
“You're kidding. Well, we're playing touch football, could use another player or two,” he said. “You comin'?”
“Um, sure,” I said. Showering could definitely wait.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Openly Straight:

Winner of the Sid Fleischman Award for Humor
YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults Selection
Lambda Literary Award Finalist

"Konigsberg's lovely novel invites us to walk with Rafe through his season of assumed identity and his costly emergence into honesty. It's beautiful. It's a story of salvation." -- The New York Times Book Review

* "Lambda Literary Award-winner Konigsberg has written an exceptionally intelligent, thought-provoking, coming-of-age novel about the labels people apply to us and that we, perversely, apply to ourselves... Openly Straight is altogether one of the best gay-themed novels of the last ten years.” -- Booklist, starred review
* "Readers and discussion groups looking for new and deeper ways to think about what it means to live honestly in a world that sorts by labels will find this fresh and evocative." -- The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, starred review
"For a thought-provoking, creative, twenty-first-century take on the coming-out story, look no further." -- The Horn Book Magazine

From the Publisher

Characters have worn masks and wrestled with the consequences, in works as similar but divergent as Twelfth Night and There's Something About Mary. Openly Straight is a thoughtful, modern spin on that venerable device, and it works because of Rafe…Rafe feels real. He's convincingly teenage. He's smart but never too articulate. He's searching but not always finding what he thinks he's looking for…Konigsberg's lovely novel invites us to walk with Rafe through his season of assumed identity and his costly emergence into honesty. It's beautiful. It's a story of salvation.

The New York Times Book Review - Jeff Chu

Konigsberg (Out of the Pocket) raises compelling questions about stereotyping and self-actualization through the story of openly gay high school junior Rafe Goldberg. Though Rafe has a supportive family and community in progressive Boulder, Co., he still feels stifled by being known as "the gay kid." In order to try to live a "label-free life," Rafe transfers to an East Coast boarding school with the intention of keeping his sexuality a secret ("The only way I would actually lie was if I were asked directly, ‘Are you gay?' "). At school, Rafe is quickly befriended by a group of jocks, and even kissed by a girl at a party, but he begins to question his experiment when his feelings for a friend develop into something more. Introspective essays Rafe composes about his life for a writing seminar seem overly scripted, and the plot becomes predictable long before Rafe faces a crisis of conscience. Even so, Rafe's story about seeking a different kind of acceptance should spur readers to rethink sexual identity and what it means to be "out." Ages 14–up. Agent: Linda Epstein, Jennifer DeChiara Literary Agency. (June)

Publishers Weekly

★ 12/01/2017
Gr 9 Up—While high school jock Rafe is okay with being gay, he's tired of being the go-to LGBT celebrity in his supportive Colorado town. He transfers to an East Coast all-boys school where he pretends to be straight. But his regular guy act crumbles when he falls for an intense, handsome classmate. Rafe realizes his desire to avoid labels is destroying his chance for an emotionally honest relationship. Throughout, Konigsberg threads a winning humor that helps to mellow a tendency toward earnestness. Narrator Pete Cross is the ideal voice for this story, as he delivers age-appropriate characterizations with verve and nuance. VERDICT Recommended for high school and public libraries.—Kelly Sinclair, Temple Public Library, TX

School Library Journal

Going back into the closet isn't as easy as it seems. Coloradan Rafe Goldberg has always been the token gay kid. He's been out since eighth grade. His parents and community are totally supportive, and his mom is president of his Boulder-area chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. On the outside, Rafe seems fine, but on the inside, he's looking for change, which comes with the opportunity to reinvent himself at the prestigious Natick Academy in Massachusetts. There for his junior year, Rafe cloaks his gayness in order to be just like one of the other guys. He hangs out with the jocks, playing soccer and football, and gets exactly what he wants--until he starts to fall for one of his new best straight friends. Konigsberg's latest (Out Of the Pocket, 2008) might sound like fluff, but it actually works as a complicated, poignant story of a teenage boy trying on a new skin. Rafe's exploration happens in reverse of the traditional coming-out story, and his motives, observations and feelings are captured in mini-essays he pens for his creative-writing professor, who then provides him with life-coach–like feedback on both his decisions and his writing skills. These snippets feel prescriptive, but the rest moves swiftly as Rafe tries to cover his feelings and fit in with his new friends. An eye-opening story of wish fulfillment. (Fiction. 13 & up)

Kirkus Reviews

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