Coming out after coming out : the changing trajectory of the coming-out narrative in twenty-first century young adult and new adult texts

Abstract

LGBTQ+ literature of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries has been preoccupied with the personalised politics of coming out of the homosexual closet. Beginning with David Levithan's Boy Meets Boy in 2003, Young Adult and New Adult texts have begun to approach the coming-out narrative with greater scepticism. This thesis seeks to understand the ways in which the coming-out narrative of the twentieth century has changed in the twenty-first century, focusing on Young Adult and New Adult texts. Through an analysis of Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda (2015) by Becky Albertalli, Carry On (2015) and Wayward Son (2019) by Rainbow Rowell, Boy Meets Boy (2003) by David Levithan, the Captive Prince trilogy (2015-2016) by C. S. Pacat and Welcome to Night Vale (2012-present) by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, this thesis addresses the changing nature of the coming-out narrative, its diminishing significance, and some of the ways in which the coming- out narrative's endurance can be seen as having a deleterious effect on LGBTQ+ people. These contemporary texts examine often displace elements of the coming-out narrative structure onto other categories of difference and propose alternatives to the coming-out narrative. In exploring the possibility of the post-coming-out narrative, this thesis establishes an understanding of the three key elements of any coming-out narrative: secrecy and disclosure, a navigation of a dual insider/outsider status, and the initiator figure. Rather than pose legitimate challenges to the heteronormativity that necessitates LGBTQ+ characters' comings out, however, contemporary texts such as Carry On and Wayward Son bury their heteronormative assumptions in subtextual elements or displace them onto another category of difference such as vampirism. In leaving heteronormativity and, in some cases, homophobia intact, these texts are ultimately not transformative of the coming-out narrative. Moreover, by sublimating these phobic elements in otherwise anti-phobic texts, this thesis argues that stereotypical and homophobic assumptions about LGBTQ+ people and youth prevail in contemporary fiction.

Date of Award	2021
Original language	English