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Disparities don't always lead to despair: A review of growing into resilience: Sexual and gender minority youth in Canada,

The future for sexual and gender minority (SGM) youth is a promising one, given the requisite supports, in Growing Into Resilience: Sexual and Gender Minority Youth in Canada, written by Andr e Grace and in collaboration with Kristopher Wells for the second half of the volume. Bucking a trend in the literature that focuses solely on the disproportionate rates of mental and physical health disorders for SGM, Grace and Wells acknowledge the existence of these health disparities as a means to foreground the oft-overlooked flipside to this reality. That flipside is that many SGM folks overcome the strains of marginalization and stigmatization, emerging to lead productive lives as self-actualized individuals. The work illuminates a significant and far more holistic characterization of the dynamic between personal and social challenges and resilience. SGM youth advocates, policy makers, researchers, and educators will find generative material in this volume, which examines how resilience can be fostered from the micro level (e.g., engagement of SGM youth in gay–straight alliances) to macro-level ideologies and policies. Readers will become familiar with significant cultural and political events in Canada that impacted SGM individuals, such as the authors’ in-depth analysis of Marc Hall’s request to bring a same-sex date to prom at his Catholic high school, which resulted in an escalating dialogue regarding institutional versus individual rights. Grace and Wells move between broader, contextual forces and idiographic representations of SGM youth in order to tell a comprehensive story of youth resilience. Most poignantly, the voices of SGM youth, expressed through 10 “intertexts” that punctuate the book, evidence hope for the future. These short intertexts are based upon the experiences of youth leaders and attendees at Camp fYrefly, a leadership camp for SGM youth founded by the authors in 2004 that provides a critical learning space for “campers to be, become, and belong” (p. 96). That is not to say that these intertexts paint a rosy picture of the world; rather, they stand as testaments to the strength of these young people in the face of tremendous adversity. This adversity emanates from all around them and can particularly be seen from their families, schools, and faith communities. Camp fYrefly features prominently within these intertexts as a place and community that enables these youth to thrive despite adversities. As one camp youth leader, QC, indicates, “I think for queer people in general, or the world in general, the trick is leaving behind the idea that we are alone. We need to connect with the idea that we are all a part of something” (p. 105).