Ten Years of Young Adult Literature

The protagonist of Felix Ever After is a trans-boy who explores their relationship with gender and sexuality, eventually identifying as a demi boy. The exploration of gender, for all its complexity is often written as a very monolithic experience—more often than not ending with transitioning. Felix Ever After thus begins where most stories end, showing that negotiating with gender is an ever-evolving dynamic process. In an interview with Bitch Media, author Kacen Callender speaks about this process. “I think that a lot of stories show people who decide that they know their identity immediately, and while this can be realistic for some, it isn’t for others. It isn’t always so clean-cut. I wanted to show that it’s okay to question and requestion identity (and that you don’t even have to land on a label at all if you don’t want to), especially because this is a common, realistic experience that we don’t often get to see portrayed.”

Queer YA in the last decade

The decade of 2010 has definitely belonged to LGBTQ+ Young Adult literature coming into the mainstream. Between 2011 and 2020, the number of books with LGBTQ+ protagonists went up by over 200%. This increase has largely been fuelled by the investment into queer fiction by the Big 5 and other major publishing houses, who seem to primarily have made the investment after the US Supreme Court legalised same-sex marriage all over the country.

And yet, when I took a look at Goodreads’ Top 20 YA Fiction novels of the last decade, I found there to only be marginal increase in the probability of coming across a novel with a queer protagonists, most of which is not consistent over the decade. 2 out of the 20 most popular books of 2011 featured a queer protagonist. While the number increased to 7 in 2020, the increase over time is largely inconsistent. For instance, the probability of a book featuring a queer protagonist in 2019 still stands at 10%—the same as in 2011.

How popular queer literature deals with the question of representation

Young Adult novels have generally been regarded as the more “progressive” form of literature given its audience. In the 21st century, it has meant that they are closely linked to the internet discourse, and many current debates and evolutions in language and culture are reflected in them. Representation, therefore, is one of the central issues to Young Adult Fiction. Often, these novels deal with issues and terminology, and ideas that have barely made it to media at large. Felix Ever After is the perfect example of this phenomenon. To track how popular YA Fiction has kept up with the intersectionality debate i.e. how race, gender and sexuality come together in the characters, I analysed the queer protagonists of the most popular books featured in the Goodreads YA list. A protagonist was understood to be any characters that is mentioned by name or is explicitly referred to in the official blurb of the book, and features prominently in the course of the novel. I specifically also looked at Young Adult Contemporary books, since I wanted to see how real-world ideas and debates are reflected in the literature that is writing about today.

For most of the last decade—and before that—queer protagonists have been predominantly white. Or to put it better, the question of sexuality has been explored mostly in white communities. 50% of all protagonists analysed were white. The second best number is Latinx protagonists which make up a little over 10% of the lead characters. However, over the decade, the demographic has become more diverse. Abida Jagirdar’s ‘The Henna Wars’ features a South-Asian Muslim protagonist, exploring homosexuality in diaspora population that often has strict cultural laws governing it. The 2020 Goodreads Choice Awards Winner Elizabeth Acevedo’s Clap When You Land features a lesbian protagonist, without her sexuality being a focal point of the story.

The Young Adult fiction dataset also serves as a great data point into the ever-expanding sensibilities on sexuality. While the first half of the decade featured predominantly characters that were gay, lesbian, or bisexual, the last half saw representation of multiple diverse sexualities. Felicity Montague from The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy (2018) is an asexual protagonist, Mack from You Should See Me In a Crown (2020) is Sapphic. Sexuality rarely ever is a static, one-way street, and young adult novels are actively representing that.

Arguably the only area where YA novels have remained largely unresponsive is the evolving gender spectrum. The gender spectrum continues to remain binary, with 80% of all queer YA protagonists being cis-gender. Trans characters make up a mere 6% of all LBGTQ+ characters in the most popular queer YA literature of the last decade.

Identities in real life are rarely monolithic. And perhaps not every identity needs exploration at the same time, but it is important to recognize these intersections exist outside of sociological debates and in real people. Corrine Duyvis is the author of On The Edge of Gone, a young adult novel with a protagonist who is disabled and bisexual. Talking about her book in an interview with Disability with Kid Lit she says, “Amara’s bisexuality developed naturally as I plotted the story. I did wonder whether readers might perceive it as “too much” or “unrealistic”, but I squashed that down. I’m disabled and bisexual, there’s nothing unrealistic about me, you know? I think it’s important to show those intersections, because they’re a reality for so many people, yet they’re often scoffed at. It’s not about ticking boxes, it’s about showing reality. I am not the deviation. I am the norm in my own life.”