The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of antigay bias and suicidal ideation.

Sonora Reyes writes from lived experience as a queer, Mexican American alum of a private Catholic high school, and that vantage point is central to the novel. Reyes’s experience as one of few students of color at their school re-emerges when Yami notes that Slayton’s courtyard contains “like a dozen kids” of color among hundreds of white students (30). Reyes also participated in their school’s obligatory confession services and remembers being told, as Yami is, that gay relationships violated doctrine. By fictionalizing those moments, Reyes turns personal history into a broader commentary on how theology can be weaponized against LGBTQ+ youth. Their creation of #QPOCChat on Twitter echoes the novel’s interest in The Importance of Supportive Communities. The result is a protagonist who is not a stand-in but a conduit; Reyes distills a decade of personal growth and online activism into the single fraught semester that changes Yami’s life. Understanding that autobiographical throughline clarifies why the novel privileges interiority over plot twists and why it insists, by the final chapter, that being seen is as urgent as being safe.