Gay teen fiction

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Brent Hartinger's Geography Club, which is about gay teenagers, was rejected 17 times before publication.
Brent Hartinger's Geography Club, which is about gay teenagers, was rejected 17 times before publication. [1]

Gay teen fiction is a subgenre that overlaps with LGBT literature and young adult literature. This article covers books about gay and bisexual teenage characters who are male.

See also: Lesbian teen fiction

Contents

[edit] History

[edit] Early books

The genre of young adult literature is usually considered to begin with Maureen Daly's Seventeenth Summer, which was published in 1942. A Library Quarterly article by Christine Jenkins, an associate professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, states that approximately 100 gay young adult novels have been published since 1969. [2]

Because gay young adult novels often center upon problems that gay teen characters encounter because of their homosexuality, these books are often classified as examples of the "problem novel" genre that first appeared in 1967, examples of which were S. E. Hinton's The Outsiders and Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War.[2]

[edit] Recent books

Despite the apparent wider acceptance of these novels, publishing them can be difficult. Geography Club, about a high school gay support group, was rejected 17 times before it was published. Author Brent Hartinger said, "Editors told my agent again and again that there was no market for a book like this, and all my agent's agent-friends told her she was wasting her time on a gay teen book." [1]

[edit] Audience

The audience for such books includes both teens and adults, according to Sharyn November, a senior editor at Viking Children's Books/Puffin, who observes that "young adult used to mean books aimed at readers between the ages 16 and 21," but some of these books are now "reaching the 14 plus crowd and ideally crossing over to the adult market," although gay young adult novels are also aimed at children as young as twelve years old.

[edit] Themes

USA Today reported that, "No longer do gay young adult novels simply ask, "Am I gay?" Now they explore how to navigate in the journey for love."[2]

David Levithan's Boy Meets Boy goes beyond the coming out story, featuring characters who have never struggled with their homosexuality.
David Levithan's Boy Meets Boy goes beyond the coming out story, featuring characters who have never struggled with their homosexuality.

Contemporary gay young adult novels typically involve a teenage protagonist (often fourteen years old), teen issues (especially those related to a homosexual identity), and the first-person point of view. These novels have come to deal with a variety of gay-related issues and themes.

[edit] Complete list

[edit] Printz Award

Another indication, some say, that gay young adult novels have gained wider acceptance in recent years is the fact that, since 1999, four gay-themed books, or books with gay secondary characters, have won the Young Adult Library Services Association's Michael L. Printz Awards.

This award, named for a Topeka, Kansas school librarian and sponsored by Booklist, a publication of the American Library Association, is given in recognition of a work that demonstrates literary excellence in young adult literature.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Warn, Sarah. "Interview with Brent Hartinger, Author of Geography Club", AfterEllen.com, June 2003. Retrieved on March 1, 2007.
  2. ^ a b c Donahue, Deirdre. "Books give honest portrayal of growing up gay", USA Today, June 28, 2001. Retrieved on February 28, 2007.

[edit] External links

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