I believe classics are recognized as “classics” more quickly in the queer YA fiction world because they speak to specific experiences of young queer people more explicitly and truthfully than anything that only approaches queerness through subtext. There are still book burnings and bannings and general no-fun types screaming at teens exploring their sexualities. In addition, LGBTQ+ fiction in the young adult world is still largely focused on the cis girls and boys.Īlthough it feels like large strides have been made in the world of queer young adult fiction, it is still an incredibly small sector of the publishing world writ large. Malinda Lo has a great piece on the struggles of F/F versus M/M as a reader and a writer, with the most recent statistics about representation of queer women specifically in YA fiction. Queer women are still in a bit of a deficit compared to men, and it’s only recently that nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people are front and center in the young adult world. In recent years, there has been a lot of movement for queer YA narratives in publishing.
Before young adult was even a viable publishing category, the history of queer literature was under attack from people determined to erase the existence of queer narratives. Hinton would have a problem with that interpretation. Although I can read the tenderness of the boys in The Outsiders through a queer lens, S.E. Though there are many novels with characters historically interpreted as queer, panic and pearl-clutching about introducing children to gay thoughts has meant we’ve had a slow start to building a queer YA classics canon. Classic queer young adult novels are something of a more recent phenomenon.
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