Q&A: Author Rebecca Bendheim Shares Return to Gordon School for Day of (No) Silence

Rebecca Bendheim speaks at Gordon School’s Day of (No) Silence. Photo courtesy of Gordon School

On April 10, the Gordon School in East Providence welcomed students, families, faculty and staff to participate in its annual Day of (No) Silence. Originally coined as Day of Silence in the 90s, the nationally recognized demonstration encouraged students to protest the harassment of and discrimination against LGBTQ+ people in schools. Every April, students would go through the school day without speaking before ending the day with a Breaking the Silence rally where they could bring attention to ways in which their school and community can be more inclusive. In 2024, however, the event name was updated to Day of (No) Silence as a means of opposing the current attempted erasure of LGBTQ+ people from public life. For this year’s event, Gordon School invited Rebecca Bendheim, a former student turned published author, to come speak to current students and join them in celebrating LGBTQ+ visibility at the school. We caught up with her to learn more about her return to her alma mater, her new middle grade queer novel, the importance of representation in media, and her advocacy work with anti-book bans.

Are you from Rhode Island originally?

I lived in Connecticut till I was ten and then we moved to Barrington for my dad’s job. I always consider myself a Rhode Islander because that’s where I feel like my formative years were, including when I was at Gordon School.

It seems like The Gordon School has remained a big part of your life.

I’ve spent a lot of time at Gordon over the years, and not just as a student. After graduating, I would go back for ‘Grandfriends’ Day’ as my little sisters’ ‘grandfriend.’ Then in my journey to becoming a writer, I moved home with my parents a few times to focusing on writing or getting an agent, and substitute teaching at Gordon was able to hold me over financially.

And then something really cool that Gordon does is invite former students to speak at graduation and share their life experiences. They invited me back in 2019, which was extra cool because I had been co-president when I was in eighth grade in 2009. So, I gave a graduation speech in eighth grade and then I gave another one ten years later.

A slide from Rebecca’s presentation. Photo courtesy of Gordon School

How full circle! 

That eighth-grade graduation speech was the first time I felt like my writing was celebrated by a wider audience. I didn’t have the best grades growing up. I have ADHD, so a lot of times I would struggle with projects and assignments. But I worked for a very long time on my graduation speech with my eighth-grade teacher, Mr. Burnstein. When I finally got to do it in front of everyone, I got a lot of compliments on my writing. That was when I realized how much I loved not only writing for myself but also writing for an audience. Getting invited back as a speaker felt like this amazing full circle moment. And then getting to go back again more recently, but in the context of having my first novel published, was amazing.

Tell me about going back for Day of (No) Silence this past April. Do you remember it from your time in school?

I’ve been trying to remember; I think we had an assembly back then. Gordon was still ahead of its time for 2006–2009, but [the event] was not what it is today. I was just so amazed with how well they did with it. It was incredible to see how supportive, open, accepting and celebratory an environment Gordon has become for queer students and queer families. They have so many queer faculty and students feel so comfortable. It’s been really cool to see a non-binary fifth grader treated normally and no one’s questioning their pronouns. Everyone’s just focusing on the amazing potential they have as a student and as a community member.

Photo courtesy of Gordon School

Were there any standout moments from that day?

There was one moment at the end of the day after they had a pride parade — which was just so sweet — when I went to the middle school basement where I had my first Gordon advisory in sixth grade. I’ve been trying to be an author for a long time, and I started tearing up a little bit because I was thinking about how far I’ve come, and how far the school has come. I’ve been experiencing a lot of negativity around my book, unfortunately, and getting to spend an entire day in a place that celebrates queerness as a beautiful fact of life was just so special to me.

Being in that room took me back to my sixth-grade self and just how worried I was about my future. My best friend had convinced me to have a crush on a guy in the advisory. I was so nervous about needing to have a crush on a guy and I just remember feeling so alone. It made me emotional thinking about all those kids now who don’t have to feel like that — they get to feel celebrated from the start.

Photo via Penguin Books

Speaking of navigating young queer hood and crushes, tell me more about your new middle grade book, When You’re Brave Enough.

It’s set on the East Side of Providence. I didn’t grow up there, but because I went to Gordon and later to Moses Brown for a year, I always loved the area. I feel like my middle school years were defined by walking around Wayland Square, so I wanted my main character to live there. The Crook Point Bridge is a big fixture in the book: I used to hang out there when I was younger, and so I have my main character spend a lot of time there and it has a lot of significance in the story. She feels like she’s not being a teenager correctly, like she’s behind her peers. She compares herself a lot to the bridge, where the bridge next to has cars zooming by and going towards something while she feels stuck. She doesn’t know what she wants or who she is.

[Editor’s note: For a full synopsis, click here.]

I would also love to hear more about your advocacy work with Authors Against Book Bans.

I now live in Austin, Texas, so the Capitol Building is right there, and I’ve gotten to testify at some of the State Board of Education meetings, which are open to the public. Right now, they’re trying to make literary lists of required reading for every grade. But there are only six novels per year in the upper grades, which basically means that teachers can’t teach books that they choose [outside of the literary lists]. I’ve been advocating for teachers to have more choice because I think it’s so important for teachers to be passionate about what they’re teaching, and for kids to have the opportunity to read books that better fit with their identity. Especially here in Texas, we have a large Latino population and those literary lists have very few books by Latino authors. I’m very passionate about seeing yourself in a book and seeing other people’s identities — using books and media in general to really understand the world around you and have empathy for everyone.

Can you share a little more about some of the struggles you’ve run into with your own book?

A lot of districts in Texas have policies where you can’t have books with gay or trans characters in any of their schools. My book’s main character is lesbian, and I have a non-binary side character, so my book would not be allowed. That also means that my school visits are pretty limited to private schools. I have some other queer author friends here, and they’ve said they used to have quite a lot of school visits, but they’ve almost completely dried up here in Texas. It’s just so wild.

It’s wild to hear — sometimes I feel so sheltered from things like that being in Rhode Island.

Rhode Island actually has one of the best anti-book ban laws of any state. I was on a call with [my publisher] Penguin, and they were talking about Rhode Island and how amazing their anti-book ban stuff is. Rhode Island should be proud. I was super proud — I was in the big Penguin Zoom call chat like, ‘Hey, I’m from Rhode Island!’

Tour stop at books on the square in Providence. Photo by Bruce Bendheim

That’s awesome, I’m proud of us, too. 

Right? But back to your original question, I recently posted about the creation of my book cover. Penguin had asked if I had any notes, and I said, ‘Can you not have [the main characters] holding hands on the cover?’ I had taught sixth grade here in Texas for three years and knew a lot of my students wouldn’t feel comfortable carrying that around. Not even just because it’s gay — they just don’t want people to see them reading anything about crushes. But I also told Penguin I would still like to signal to queer kids that it is a queer book. Like, if you clock it, you clock it, but subtle enough that it wouldn’t out a kid to their parents or friends. I made a video about the process, and it got somewhere around 500,000 views, but eventually it fell into the wrong hands. For about two weeks I was getting death threats and comments calling me a child abuser.

Oh my God, I’m so sorry you went through that. 

I was really scared for a little bit because I was about to have my book launch event and I didn’t want to put anyone in danger. Thankfully, Authors Against Book Bans has some really good support and Penguin has a whole document for how to deal with these situations, because so many authors deal with this. Luckily, [the online hate] has died down, but it’s just made me realize what we’re up against. Yes, some of the commenters were probably bots, but some are real people. I’ve seen these people at state board meetings. They stand up and they testify saying these books are inappropriate. My book is for kids eight to twelve. Yes, it talks about a first kiss, but my favorite movie growing up was The Little Mermaid and there’s a whole song dedicated to kissing. It’s such a double standard.

I find it hard to understand why some people think it’s so inappropriate for kids to know about queerness. I did my critical thesis in graduate school on queer middle grade books and I learned that the average age for a kid to realize they’re queer or trans is early adolescence. Kids are going to know about it whether they read these books or not. [Not having representation or access] is going to cause more mental health issues because they will feel alone rather than understanding themselves or others and realizing that it’s okay. A lot of them are being told that who they are is inappropriate, which isn’t true. It just makes me super passionate about putting more queer books out there for this age group.

After all the hurdles you’ve been dealing with, I can only imagine how gratifying it must have been to see kids’ response to When You’re Brave Enough.

It’s been incredible. I started this book in 2020, so it was just so amazing to talk to actual kids who read it and loved it and got the messages that I was hoping they would get. At Gordon, there was a group of fifth graders who had already read the book before I visited. It had only come out a few days before and it was just so cool to hear them talk about the characters like they were real people. I worked with an artist to make stickers with each character’s face and their pride flag and it was so cool seeing [the students] be so excited to get the stickers, whether they personally identified with the character or were supporting their friends. It made me really happy to see them get excited about that representation.

Photo courtesy of Gordon School

How can people help ensure that representation make it to the right hands?

Everything helps. Sales, requesting it at libraries, or even just leaving a review on Amazon and Goodreads. I think my biggest goal is just getting this book to kids and teens. So even if you know any kids and teens, or any schools, teachers, librarians or queer centers that you could donate the book to. And it doesn’t need to be my book! There are a lot of great queer middle grade books and graphic novels that are out and that are coming out, but there are fewer being published now than there were in, say, 2023. So, any way you can support the books, get them past the gatekeepers and prove to publishers that these books are wanted. Some of my recommendations are The Queen Bees of Tybee County by Kyle Casey, Ollie In Between by Jess Callans, The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang, How It All Ends by Emma Hunsinger and Molly’s Tuxedo by Vicki Johnson.

Did I see you also have another book in the works?

Yes, it’s called How to Take a Risk and it’s about an adrenaline junkie twelve-year-old named Reagan. She’s in the summer between sixth and seventh grade and there’s a ton of change happening. Her mom is pregnant after a past miscarriage and her best friend Zander, has developed a crush on her and wants to date. But while she’s super brave when it comes to physical things like skateboarding, she really struggles to face her emotions and be vulnerable. So, she starts doing riskier and scarier physical challenges to avoid facing them. It gets to the point where it becomes dangerous and she must face them in the end. It’s set to publish next spring!

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Helena Foulkes and Rebecca Bendheim at Books on the Square. Bruce Bendheim

I just wanted to say how much my Rhode Island community showed up for my Books on the Square event in April. It was such an awesome crowd. Helena Foulkes, who’s running for governor, stopped by as did a bunch of my old Gordon teachers. The teacher who helped me with my eighth-grade graduation speech, Gabe Burnstein, was the event moderator, which was so awesome. And it was just cool to be at that store.  I used to go in there all the time in middle school, so it was surreal to be there promoting my own book. It was just a really special event, and I’m just super grateful for the community I have in Rhode Island.

To learn more about Rebecca and her books, visit rebeccabendheim.com. To Learn more about Gordon School, visit gordonschool.org.