Harriet the Spy, an animated young girl who spied on her friends and family, wrote nasty things about them in her journal, wore “boys” clothing, and saw no problem at all with her boldness.Harriet’s sexuality was not discussed in the book, but it was 1964, five years before the Stonewall uprising.
At that time, mainstream LGBTQ young adult books (like 2012’s The Miseducation of Cameron Post, for example) were more or less figments of the queer imagination.Related: The Prom is saving the world one lesbian at a timeInstead, queer kid heroes had to come in different, more concealed packages.Fitzhugh, herself, was a lesbian, and thus, many have speculated that she wrote Harriet as a queer character — someone who was different from those around.