Just in the aftermath of the Pride, news arrives that perhaps will displease some Italian politician particularly active these days on issues of sexual identity, if it reaches him / her; but it will be necessary to deal with it even on the right, both in Italy and when they go to rallies in Spain. In the United States, where even supremacism and sovereignists are not joking at all, there is a boom in books that can be classified in the LGBT category, that is the world and homosexual and transsexual themes. This is certified by the research institute NPD BookScan, which dictates the law regarding the book market. And the data that refer only to the field of fiction (therefore not essays or works on political, ideological, scientific or militant topics), say something new and perhaps unexpected: in 2021 sales of 5 million copies were totaled.
It seems nothing, if we compare them to the over 405 million of last year for the entire “fiction” sector, but it is exactly double compared to 2020; while as regards the current year there is already an increase of almost 30 per cent in May. In other words, the narrative attributable to the LGBT sector (both those for children, both the one defined as YA, that is young adults, and finally that for adults) has come out of a niche and is rapidly expanding. Something like this, but we are in sensations or in any case in unsystematic reflections, obviously also happens in Europe – and in Italy – but the American data accurately photograph a phenomenon that has historically been underestimated for a long time.
They certify it, moreover, in a situation where the attack by the most fundamentalist right on the books that deal with or in any case approach these issues becomes more and more insistent. There is not only the cancel culture, considered left-wing. There is also opposing pressure on schools and libraries. These attacks are often scattered (therefore nothing new on the Western front) and sometimes they fail, as happened recently for a campaign by the “Moms for liberty” group: they tried to convince public and school libraries to accept books as gifts anti-LGBT, but despite a great deal of activism, the matter ended in a flop. Is there a relationship between the two phenomena, the editorial one and the ideological political one? Perhaps not of cause and effect, but there is no doubt that these campaigns, let’s say a little bigoted, have meanwhile brought luck to the adversaries. Someone warn the Italian “Moms”. And maybe the Meloni.