'Love is a human right': Vancouver writer disrupts anti-gay regimes with romance
Credit to Author: Harrison Mooney| Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2020 06:02:25 +0000
Like many black artists in Vancouver, Robert Joseph Greene tends to get a lot of phone calls during Black History Month. But his story is a little different.
“I get the most requests for interviews in February because I’m a romantic writer,” the B.C.-based author and activist explained.
Greene, one of Canada’s few dedicated male romantic writers, will be giving a lecture at UBC’s Green College on Tuesday, titled How to Teach Love. It’s a topic borne of Greene’s particular area of expertise: the Vancouver author has been working to redefine love on the world stage for the last 10 years, following the publication of his short story anthologies Gay Icon Classics of the World (2011) and Gay Icon Classics of the World II (2012).
“I want people to learn from my stories that love is a human right,” said Greene.
Both volumes of Gay Icon Classics of the World feature short stories centred on same-sex romances, set in countries controlled by some of the world’s most anti-gay regimes.
“There was a goal there to write specifically toward homophobic cultures and address them,” he said.
The Blue Door, a story from Greene’s second collection about a young Russian prince who comes out, was widely used as a protest against gay propaganda laws enacted in 2013, and still serves as the name for a pro-LGBTQ lobbying group in Russia. After a Russian activist was arrested for reading the story in front of a library, Greene became the face of gay propaganda in the Russian media.
“What they took from that is, this westerner, this person, is trying to make our children gay,” said Greene, who was inundated with hate mail and death threats as a result.
The controversy reached all the way to the United Nations, which worked with the Vancouver author on a Moscow Times op-ed condemning Russia’s anti-gay laws in 2013.
A year later, Greene became involved in the fight to legalize same-sex marriage in Taiwan after being approached by a group seeking to use his short story, The Red Rheum, in their efforts to destigmatize gay literature in the country.
“They really wanted to load on the Internet as many positive stories of Chinese culture that were pro-gay as possible, and they were really having a dickens of a time doing that,” said Greene.
Same-sex marriage became legal in Taiwan in 2019.
Change has been slower to reach Iran, where few feel comfortable coming out. But the community is there, as is a market for Greene’s writing. After Persian love story The Game of Nard prompted interest from Iranian men, Greene’s publisher worked to set up a covert way for the books to reach the community.
“We were approached by a group in North Vancouver who wanted to be able to allow Iranians to buy books by Icon Empire Press in a back-channel operation that would circumvent Iranian censors,” Greene said.
Greene noted that each of these instances was extraordinary because his books are not published in Persian, Mandarin, or Russian. But love transcends language, even if Greene only writes about it in English.
His works have been translated into German, however, and Greene notes that he now sells more books in German than in English — a quirk owed to a 2013 scandal in which one of Germany’s largest booksellers dropped the author’s books in 2013, citing their devotion to traditional, Catholic values.
The stance sparked a major outcry from the German media and the public, increasing Greene’s profile and sparking book sales in the country. The bookseller has since changed its stance.
Greene recalled when he was just starting out in the late ’90s and facing rejection after rejection from editors who felt gay men weren’t interested in “fluffy love story fairytales.” But the writer, who is now working to have his work taught in universities, has proved them wrong. The last 10 years have shown the Vancouver author that there is an audience for his writing, especially in those places that insist, and work to ensure, that there isn’t.
“The need to feel prideful of who you are is very important,” Greene said.
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