Of course it is very limiting to be labeled a lesbian or queer writer. We live in a homophobic culture, and even people who aren't hateful per se assume they won't get anything from a queer book.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Few writers in history have ever been 'politically correct' (a notion that rapidly changes in any case), and there's no reason to imagine that gay writers will ever suit their readers, especially since that readership is splintered into ghettos within ghettos.
Lots of my writing can be accurately called lesbian, but I myself am queer and date people of all genders.
Perhaps no other body of literature is as subject to political pressures from within the community as gay fiction.
When I first started to write, I was aware of being queer, but I didn't write about it. Queer poems would probably not have been accepted by the editors I sent them to.
Nobody in France would ever say 'He's a Jewish novelist' or 'She's a black novelist,' even though people do write about those subjects. It would look absurd to a French person to go into a bookstore and see a 'Gay Studies' section.
I don't buy into the idea that an Irish writer should write about Ireland, or a gay writer should write about being gay.
When I started, there was more of a cultural assumption that many readers would find gay characters irrelevant or repugnant.
Not every gay person recites poetry or has read Keats. You can get readers through anything if the characters are complicated. You can't dismiss Josey Wales' quite liberal worldview.
Gay writers now have both a sense of history and the fables that allows them to dwell in the realms of the ridiculous and at the same time talk seriously about things.
A straight writer can write a gay novel and not worry about it, and a gay novelist can write about straight people.