Having grown up in rural Tipperary, where was completely unaware of any LGBT+ people or even the fact that there was a community somewhere, stories and words were often more real than my own life.
One book which made a particular impact on me was Ash, by Melinda Lo - a dark, gothic novel which retells the story of Cinderella through the lens of an Irish-influenced mythology. It had a bisexual central character who ends up in a Prince Charming-like happily-ever-after with a woman.
In the same way that the fairytales we read as children pronounce everything they discuss to be completely true, this book treated the romance between two women as something totally ordinary. Except that gingerbread houses don’t really exist in our world and women kissing do. This seemed revolutionary to me.
Recently I’ve been thinking about all the information that was left out of the Irish curriculum. Did you know Roger Casement was LGBT+? And Kathleen Lynn? And in English class, the writers Bishop and Dickinson? The list goes on. What else did we learn in school that directly pertained to us that we were completely ignorant of?