Gay Male Teen Fiction
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.
The genre of young adult literature is usually considered to begin with Maureen Daly's Seventeenth Summer, which was published in 1942. Seventeenth Summer is often accredited with starting young adult literature because it was one of the first adolescent problem novels. Critics trace the origin of the “new realism” or "problem novel" in teen fiction to the period from 1967 through 1969, during which S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, Ann Head’s Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones, Paul Zindel’s The Pigman, and other pivotal titles were published. These young adult novels were characterized by candor, unidealized characters and settings, colloquial and realistic language, and plots that portrayed realistic problems faced by contemporary young adults that did not necessarily find resolution in a happy ending. 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.
Read more about Gay Male Teen Fiction: History, Audience, Themes, Recognition, List of Gay Male Teen Novels
Famous quotes containing the words gay, male, teen and/or fiction:
“San Francisco is where gay fantasies come true, and the problem the city presents is whether, after all, we wanted these particular dreams to be fulfilled—or would we have preferred others? Did we know what price these dreams would exact? Did we anticipate the ways in which, vivid and continuous, they would unsuit us for the business of daily life? Or should our notion of daily life itself be transformed?”
—Edmund White (b. 1940)
“It is well within the order of things
That man should listen when his mate sings;
But the true male never yet walked
Who liked to listen when his mate talked.”
—Anna Wickham (1884–1947)
“Children ... after a certain age do not welcome parental advice. Occasionally, they may listen to another adult, which is why perhaps people should switch children with their neighbors and friends for a while in the teen years!”
—Marian Wright Edelman (20th century)
“The purpose of a work of fiction is to appeal to the lingering after-effects in the reader’s mind as differing from, say, the purpose of oratory or philosophy which respectively leave people in a fighting or thoughtful mood.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)