Are there any interviews from after Maurice Sendak came out publicly where he talks about what it was like being a gay children’s book creator in community with other gay children’s book creators in a time when none of them could share that with their fans?

idk feels like everything I read at the time focused on his having a 50 year marriage nobody outside his inner circle knew about, & that’s certainly a big semi-closeted artist mood, but maybe we missed an opportunity to ask more about the midcentury book gay community.

This is one reason I have so little patience with the closet as a binary concept. It’s rare for celebrity coming outs to actually be news to those who know them irl. & it’s normal for the rest of us to be known in some spaces & not in others too.

Sometimes that’s a matter of safety or survival, & sometimes is just practicality, or feeling indifferent about your coworkers knowing your pronouns, because work is whatever.

& like, what are the people you’re out to before you’re “officially out,” chopped liver? Vibrant communities have always been forged by people who weren’t able to present themselves fully outside those communities.

Anyway. Mostly I just hope every day is the day I’ll stumble upon a treasure trove of Maurice Sendak’s lovely cantankerous voice telling the world what Louise Fitzhugh was really like. Cuz you know there gotta be stories.

I just wonder how much we limit the public’s understanding of how queerness really functions when we focus our queer histories on hidden relationships & unrequited desires & neglect to describe the intimacy & complexity of covert queer communities.

This goes for our queer present & our queer fictions, too. More stories about queer friendships, plz.