From heterosexualisation to memorialisation: queer history and moral maturation in Young Adult literature about the AIDS crisis

Abstract

This article interrogates the representation of AIDS-related deaths of gay men in Young Adult (YA) literature. As Eric Tribunella argues, traumatic loss is integral to the ideological work of narratives for young readers; death is often a catalyst for heteronormative maturation in an adolescent subject. The first YA novels about the AIDS-related deaths of gay men focused on securing the heterosexual development of an adolescent onlooker amidst an attacked masculinity, rather than memorialising queer loss. New YA novels about those deaths–examples of AIDS Crisis Revisitation, a term used by Alexandra Juhasz and Theodore Kerr to describe a renewed cultural investment in the start of the crisis–move from a pedagogy of heterosexualisation to a politics of memorialisation. By using queer melancholia theory to interpret the changing role of traumatic loss across these representations of the AIDS-related deaths of gay men, this article examines the changing signification of queer grief in the maturation narratives that typify YA literature.