Surviving a Pandemic

Surviving a Pandemic Heather Snell One could argue that children's and young adult texts were more important than ever for young people sequestered in their family homes following the outbreak of COVID-19. The imaginary worlds offered up by books, films, TV shows, and video games, not to mention the plethora of stories authored by young people themselves, no doubt provided ample opportunity for escape from boredom, cabin fever, the frustration of emergency remote learning, and, in many cases, intolerable living conditions. Such cultural texts were possibly succour for young people whose experience of the family home bears more resemblance to an adult horror film than the romantic scenes of family bliss that appear in many children's picture books. In a piece re-blogged on Bully Bloggers—"the queer bully pulpit you never dreamed of…"—feminist theorist Sophie Lewis comments favourably on the mutual aid that sometimes proliferated in the wake of the pandemic, but she problematizes the privileging of the home as a site of refuge and safety in a neo-liberal capitalist context in which many are either trapped in unsafe, domestic spaces. The rise in domestic violence during the pandemic and attempts on the part of initiatives such as Moms 4 Housing in Oakland, California, to secure self-isolation spaces for those who lacked it during lockdown laid bare in unforeseen ways the implications of being without a safe home. The contradiction between the peculiarly American idea of home as a family idyll—the characteristics of which include "the mystification of the couple form; the romanticization of kinship; and the sanitization of the fundamentally unsafe space that is private property" (Lewis)—has clashed spectacularly with the brute realities of the home since COVID-19 arrived in North America in March. The home is a space in which power is unevenly distributed according to gender, sexual orientation, and other registers of identity. Exacerbating these politics are the ableist, elitist, and racist systems that are frequently perceived to exist outside of the home but which actually penetrate it deeply, and often in violent ways. During pandemic lockdowns, it has become clear that those most susceptible to violence within the home are "[q]ueer and feminized people, especially very old and very young ones" (Lewis). Texts and cultures may mean little [End Page 1] when surviving difficult quarantine conditions is the number-one priority. The pandemic has simultaneously highlighted the importance of the kind of meaning-making we associate with culture and suggested their inadequacy for redressing the oppressive institutions in which people are embedded. It is true, of course, that one can always choose virtual worlds when safe spaces are unavailable in the real world. The internet has proven to be a lifeline for many people throughout the pandemic. Returning for a moment to Lewis's blog piece, remote interaction may have proven to be especially important for young people who identify as queer. For lesbian, bisexual, gay, trans, and other queer youth, virtual connection can mean the difference between feeling isolated and feeling supported. As the proliferation of hashtags designed to fill gaps in support for LGBTQ youth sequestered in homophobic homes on TikTok attests, feeling loved and supported became doubly important during quarantine. Many young people archived their experiences of being the only queer person in heteronormative households, and of having to pretend to be straight, under hashtags including #homophobichousehold and #homophobicfamilymembers. Young people who do not necessarily identify as queer used the TikTok platform to send messages of love and support to queer youth sequestered in homophobic households under hashtag series such as: #lgbt #queer #foryou. Virtual connection has proven to be equally important for racialized young people in 2020, who, in the wake of the murder of Breonna Taylor—a Black woman who was shot in her Louisville home while in bed on 13 March—received a harsh reminder that the home is not necessarily synonymous with safety for them either. The murder of Ahmaud Arbery at the hands of Gregory and Travis McMichael while jogging on 23 February had already functioned as a stark reminder that even when engaging in physical activity outside the home, safety is not guaranteed for Black people...

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