Notes on an Anxious Genre: Queer Young Adult Literature and Culture

Abstract

This chapter traces the emergence of queer themes and characters in young adult literature, as well as critical commentary on queer YA, to demonstrate how anxiety is the affective form that best characterizes this subgenre of children’s literature. Mason argues that, in the long tradition of children’s literature criticism, queer YA criticism functions as an illuminating index of anxieties about how adults address queer youth. This chapter draws on sociological work on adolescence, as well as psychoanalytic theorists Adam Phillips and Julia Kristeva, to illustrate how adolescence and young adult literature are themselves the products of adult anxiety. Anxiety characterizes the affective economy through which queer young adult literature circulates, Mason argues, while itself evincing a queer temporality that places delay and forward-oriented growth in tension with one another. Overall, Mason demonstrates the utility of children’s literature and its theories for thinking more broadly about adult concerns and anxieties.