An antinovel is any experimental work of fiction that avoids the familiar conventions of the novel, and instead establishes its own conventions.
Origin of the term
The term ("anti-roman" in French) was brought into modern literary discourse by the French philosopher and critic Jean-Paul Sartre in his introduction to Nathalie Sarraute's 1948 work Portrait d’un inconnu (Portrait of a Man Unknown). However the term "anti-roman" (anti-novel) had been used by Charles Sorel in 1633 to describe the parodic nature of his prose fiction Le Berger extravagant.
Characteristics
The
antinovel usually fragments and distorts the experience of its
characters, presenting events outside of chronological order and
attempting to disrupt the idea of characters with unified and stable
personalities. Some principal features of antinovels include lack of
obvious plot, minimal development of character, variations in time
sequence, experiments with vocabulary and syntax, and alternative
endings and beginnings. Extreme features may include detachable or blank pages, drawings, and hieroglyphs.
History
Although the term is most commonly applied to the French nouveau roman of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, similar traits can be found much further back in literary history. One example is Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy,
a seemingly autobiographical novel that barely makes it as far as the
title character's birth thanks to numerous digressions and a rejection
of linear chronology.
Aron Kibédi Varga has suggested that the novel in fact began as an antinovel, since the first novels such as Don Quixote subverted their form even as they were constructing the form of the novel.
It was however in the postwar decades that the term first came into critical and general prominence. To C. P. Snow,
the antinovel appeared as "an expression of that nihilism that fills
the vacuum created by the withdrawal of positive directives for living",
and as an ignoble scene in which "the characters buzz about sluggishly
like winter flies".
More technically however, its distinctive feature was the anti-mimetic
and self-reflective drawing of attention to its own fictionality, a parodic anti-realistic element. Paradoxically, such anti-conventionalism would eventually come to form a distinctive convention of its own.
Lesbian literature is a subgenre of literature addressing lesbian themes. It includes poetry, plays, fiction addressing lesbian characters, and non-fiction about lesbian-interest topics.
Lesbian literature includes works by lesbian authors, as well as
lesbian-themed works by heterosexual authors. Even works by lesbian
writers that do not deal with lesbian themes are still often considered
lesbian literature. Works by heterosexual writers which treat lesbian
themes only in passing, on the other hand, are not often regarded as
lesbian literature.
The fundamental work of lesbian literature is the poetry of Sappho of Lesbos.
From various ancient writings, historians have gathered that a group of
young women were left in Sappho's charge for their instruction or
cultural edification.
Not much of Sappho's poetry remains, but that which does demonstrates
the topics she wrote about: women's daily lives, their relationships,
and rituals. She focused on the beauty of women and proclaimed her love
for girls.
Certain works have established historical or artistic importance,
and the world of lesbian fiction continues to grow and change as time
goes on. Until recently, contemporary lesbian literature has been
centered around several small, exclusively lesbian presses, as well as
online fandoms.
However, since the new millennium began, many lesbian presses have
branched out to include the works of trans men and women, gay and
bisexual voices, and other queer works not represented by the mainstream
press. Additionally, novels with lesbian themes and characters have
become more accepted in mainstream publishing.
In the early 19th century, Chinese poet Wu Tsao gained popularity for her lesbian love poems. Her songs, according to poet Kenneth Rexroth, were "sung all over China".
Though lesbian literature had not yet evolved as a distinct genre
in English in the 19th century, lesbian writers like the essayist and
supernatural fiction writer Vernon Lee sometimes hinted at lesbian subtexts in their work or, like Lee's lover Amy Levy, wrote love poems to women using the voice of a heterosexual man. Others wrote, but kept their writing secret. Beginning in 1806, English landowner and mountaineer Anne Lister
kept extensive diaries for 34 years, which included details of her
lesbian relationships and seductions, with the lesbian sections written
in secret code. The diaries were not published until the 1980s. In 2010, they were the basis for a BBC television production, The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister.
Twenty-first century writer and editor Susan Koppelman compiled an anthology titled Two Friends and Other 19th-century American Lesbian Stories: by American Women Writers, which includes stories by Constance Fenimore Woolson, Octave Thanet, Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman, Kate Chopin and Sarah Orne Jewett
that were originally published in periodicals of their time. Of these
stories, which range "from the explicit to inferentially lesbian",
Koppelman said, "I recognize these stories as stories about women loving
women in the variety of romantic ways that we wouldn't even have to
struggle to define if we were talking about men and women loving each
other."
Since the 1970s, scholars of lesbian literature have analyzed as
lesbian relationships that would not have been labeled as such in the
19th century due to different conceptions of intimacy and sexuality. For
example, Christina Rossetti's 1862 poem "Goblin Market" has been widely read as a narrative of lesbianism, even though it attempts to paint itself as a narrative of sisterly love. Scholars have also seen lesbian potential in characters such as Marian Halcombe in Wilkie Collins's 1859 novel The Woman in White.
Marian is described as masculine and unattractive, and her motivation
throughout the story is her love for her half-sister, Laura Fairlie.
Additionally, scholars have engaged in queer readings of the novels of Charlotte Brontë, particularly Shirley and Villette,
in which the female main characters engage in close or even obsessive
relationships with other women. Some have even speculated that Brontë
herself may have been in love with her friend Ellen Nussey; Vita Sackville-West called the letters between the two "love letters pure and simple."
Scholars have similarly speculated on whether the 19th-century poet Emily Dickinson
might have been in love with her sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert, a
possibility that encourages queer readings of Dickinson's many love
poems.
Michael Field was the pseudonym used by two British women, Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper, who wrote poetry and verse-dramas
together. Bradley was Cooper's aunt, and the two lived together as
lovers from the 1870s to their deaths in 1913 and 1914. Their poetry
often took their love as its subject, and they also wrote a book of
poems for their dog, Whym Chow.
Certain canonical male authors of the 19th century also incorporated
lesbian themes into their work. At the beginning of the century, Samuel Taylor Coleridge published his unfinished narrative poem "Christabel".
Scholars have interpreted the interactions in this poem between the
titular character and a stranger named Geraldine as having lesbian
implications. Algernon Charles Swinburne became known for subject matter that was considered scandalous, including lesbianism and sadomasochism. In 1866, he published Poems and Ballads, which contained the poems "Anactoria" and "Sapphics" concerning Sappho of Lesbos and dealing explicitly with lesbian content. Finally, Henry James portrayed a Boston marriage,
considered an early form of lesbian relationship, between the feminist
characters Olive Chancellor and Verena Tarrant in his 1886 novel The Bostonians.
One of the more explicitly lesbian works of the 19th century is the GothicnovellaCarmilla, by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, first published in serial form in 1871-72. Considered a precursor to and an inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula, Carmilla
tells the story of the relationship between the innocent Laura and the
vampire Carmilla, whose sucking of Laura's blood is clearly linked to an
erotic attraction to Laura. This story has inspired many other works
that take advantage of the trope of the lesbian vampire. It was also adapted into a YouTube webseries of the same name beginning in 2014.
The first novel in the English language recognised as having a lesbian theme is The Well of Loneliness (1928) by Radclyffe Hall,
which a British court found obscene because it defended "unnatural
practices between women". The book was banned in Britain for decades;
this is in the context of the similar censorship of Lady Chatterley's Lover, which also had a theme of transgressive female sexuality, albeit heterosexual. In the United States, The Well of Loneliness survived legal challenges in New York and the U.S. Customs Court.
In 1923, Elsa Gidlow, born in England, published the first volume of openly lesbian love poetry in the United States, titled On a Grey Thread.
In the early 20th century, an increasingly visible lesbian community in Paris centered on literary salons hosted by French lesbians as well as expatriates like Nathalie Barney and Gertrude Stein, who produced lesbian-themed works in French and English, including Nightwood by Djuna Barnes, Idyll Saphique by Liane de Pougy, poetry by Renee Vivien, Barney's own epigrams, poetry, and several works by Stein. Radclyffe Hall also spent time in Paris at Barney's salon and modeled one of her characters in The Well of Loneliness after her.
Japanese writer Nobuko Yoshiya
was an important early 20th century author of stories about intense
romance between young women, though her writing was accepted in
mainstream culture because none of the relationships were consummated.
Virginia Woolf's 1928 novel of a high-spirited gender-bending poet who lives for centuries, Orlando, which was said to be based on her lover, Vita Sackville-West, was re-examined in the 1970s as a 'subversive' lesbian text.
During the Weimar Republic,
not only did lesbian social life flourish in Germany, especially in
Berlin, but lesbian literature also emerged. Pioneering magazines such
as Die Freundin, Die BIF, and Frauenliebe,
which were founded specifically for a lesbian audience, provided
platforms for common lesbian women to express themselves in literature.
Although the literary level was rarely high, the authors succeeded in
presenting lesbian lifestyles as utopias, thus offering opportunities
for identification and affirmation of one's own identity. Especially Selli Engler stands out among the dozens of authors who wrote for magazines.
Other examples of 1920s lesbian literature include poems by Amy Lowell about her partner of over a decade Ada Dwyer Russell. Lowell wanted to dedicate her books to Dwyer who refused as they had to hide the nature of their relationship except for one time in a non-poetry book in which Lowell wrote, "To A.D.R., This, and all my books. A.L." Examples of these love poems to Dwyer include the Taxi, Absence,: xxi In a Garden, Madonna of the Evening Flowers, Opal, and Aubade. Lowell admitted to John Livingston Lowes that Dwyer was the subject of her series of romantic poems titled "Two Speak Together".
Lowell's poems about Dwyer have been called the most explicit and
elegant lesbian love poetry during the time between the ancient Sappho and poets of the 1970s.
Unfortunately, most of the primary document romantic letters of
communication between the two were destroyed by Dwyer at Lowell's
request, leaving much unknown about the details of their life together.
Most American literature of the 1930s, 40s, and early 50s
presented lesbian life as tragedy, ending with either the suicide of the
lesbian character or her conversion to heterosexuality. This was required so that the authorities did not declare the literature obscene. This would generally be achieved by placing the death or conversion in the last chapter or even paragraph. For example, The Stone Wall, a lesbian autobiography with an unhappy ending, was published in 1930 under the pseudonym Mary Casal. It was one of the first lesbian autobiographies. Yet as early as 1939, Frances V. Rummell, an educator and a teacher of French at Stephens College, published the first explicitly lesbian autobiography in which two women end up happily together, titled Diana: A Strange Autobiography.
This autobiography was published with a note saying, "The publishers
wish it expressly understood that this is a true story, the first of its
kind ever offered to the general reading public". However, literary critics have since called the autobiography 'fictional'.
Jane Bowles' only novel, Two Serious Ladies,
published in 1943, told the story of a romance between an upper class
woman and a prostitute in a run-down Panamanian port town.
1950 to 1970: Pulp fiction and beyond
Lesbian fiction in English saw a huge explosion in interest with the advent of the dime-store or pulp fiction novel. Lesbian pulp fiction became its own distinct category of fiction in the 1950s and 60s, although a significant number of authors of this genre were men using either a male or female pen name. Tereska Torrès is credited with writing the first lesbian pulp novel, Women's Barracks, a fictionalized story about women in the Free French Forces during World War II. The 1950 book sold 2 million copies in its first five years of publication. One notable female author of lesbian pulp fiction, who came out later in life as a lesbian, was Ann Bannon, who created the Beebo Brinker series.
The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith, considered the first lesbian novel with a happy ending,
was groundbreaking for being the first where neither of the two women
has a nervous breakdown, dies tragically, faces a lonely and desolate
future, commits suicide, or returns to being with a male. The manuscript was rejected by Highsmith's publisher Harper & Brothers and published in hardcover by Coward-McCann in 1952 under the pseudonym "Claire Morgan", followed by the Bantam Books lesbian pulp fiction paperback in 1953. The paperback editions sold almost 1 million copies. In 1990, it was republished by Bloomsbury under Highmith's own name with the title changed to Carol (the novel was adapted as the 2015 film of same name).
In the 1950s, parts of French author Violette leDuc's novel Ravages were censored because they contained explicit lesbian passages. The deleted passages were published in the 1960s as Therese and Isabelle and made into the 1968 film of same title.
Jane Rule's Desert of the Heart was able to break out of the pulp fiction category when it was published as a hardback by Macmillan Canada
in 1964. Several publishers turned it down beforehand however, with one
telling Rule, "If this book isn't pornographic, what's the point of
printing it?...if you can write in the dirty parts we'll take it but
otherwise no". The novel was loosely adapted into the 1985 film Desert Hearts.
When publishing her novel Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing in 1965, the novelist May Sarton
feared that writing openly about lesbianism would lead to a diminution
of the previously established value of her work. "The fear of
homosexuality is so great that it took courage to write Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing,"
she said, "to write a novel about a woman homosexual who is not a sex
maniac, a drunkard, a drug-taker, or in any way repulsive, to portray a
homosexual who is neither pitiable nor disgusting, without
sentimentality ..."
The first English contemporary novelist to come out as a lesbian was Maureen Duffy, whose 1966 book Microcosm explored the subcultures of lesbian bars.
1970 to the present: Second wave feminism, mainstream acceptance, and diversification
After the birth of an explicitly gay and lesbian literature in
the 1970s, the following decades saw a tremendous rise in its
production. While gay male novels
had more crossover appeal and often became mid-list sellers in
mainstream publishing houses; lesbian literature, depending on smaller
presses, developed smaller but 'respectable' audiences. In the 1980s, with the advent of sex-positive feminism, a few lesbian literary magazines began to specialize in more explicitly erotic work, such as On Our Backs, a satirical reference to the feminist 1970s magazine, Off Our Backs. The 1988 founding of the Lambda Literary Award, with several lesbian categories, helped increase the visibility of LGBT literature.
In the 1980s and 90s, lesbian literature diversified into genre
literature, including fantasy, mystery, science fiction, romance,
graphic novels, and young adult.
In 1983, Anita Cornwell wrote the first published collection of essays by an African-American lesbian, Black Lesbian in White America, published by Naiad Press.
The influence of late 20th century feminism and greater
acceptance of LGBT work was felt in Mexico, with the emergence of
lesbian poets Nancy Cardenas, Magaly Alabau, Mercedes Roffe, and others. In Argentina and Uruguay, Alejandra Pizarnik and Cristina Peri Rossi combined lesbian eroticism with artistic and sociopolitical concerns in their work.
After an almost complete silence in the 1960's, lesbian literature in
Germany grew quickly again as a result of the new lesbian movement in
the 1970's and 1980's. Important early renowned voices were Johanna Moosdorf, Marlene Stenten, and Christa Reinig, while the most influential works were Verena StefansHäutungen (1975) and Luise F. PuschsSonja (1980).
In the 21st century, lesbian literature has emerged as a genre in Arabic speaking countries, with some novels, like Ana Hiya Anti (I Am You) by Elham Mansour, achieving best-seller status. This century has also brought more attention to African literary works and authors, such as Cameroonian novelist Frieda Ekotto and Ghanaian writer Ama Ata Aido.
As literature including lesbian characters and relationships has
become more accepted in mainstream Western society, some writers and
literary critics have questioned why there needs to be a separate
category for lesbian literature at all. "I've never understood why
straight fiction is supposed to be for everyone, but anything with a gay
character or that includes gay experience is only for queers," said Jeanette Winterson, author of the best-selling 1985 novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Others have stressed the continuing need for LGBT-themed literature, especially for younger LGBT readers.
Young adult fiction
1970s
In Ruby (1976) by Rosa Guy,
the main character is a girl from the West Indies. The novel tells the
story of her relationship with another girl. Other young adult novels
with lesbian characters and themes that were published during this time
include Happy Endings Are All Alike (1978) by Sandra Scoppettone.
According to the author, it "barely got reviewed and when it did it
wasn't good", unlike Scoppettone's novel about gay boys, which was
better received.
Frequent themes in books published during the 1970s are that
homosexuality is a "phase", or that there are no "happy endings" for gay
people, and that they generally lead a difficult life.
The School Library Journal reported:
Throughout the 1970s, there was, on
average, a single young adult title per year dealing with gay issues.
Although many of these early books were well written—and well
reviewed—gay characters were at best a sidekick or foil for the straight
protagonist and at worst a victim who would face violence, injury, or
death (fatal traffic accidents were commonplace). Young protagonists who
worried that they might be gay would invariably conclude that their
same-sex attraction was simply a temporary stage in the journey toward
heterosexual adulthood.
Judy Blume
has been cited as a catalyst in the 1970s for an increase in inclusion
of "taboo" topics in children's literature, which include homosexuality.
1980s
Annie on My Mind (1982) by Nancy Garden
tells the story of two high school girls who fall in love. The novel,
which has never been out of print, was a step forward for homosexuality
in young adult literature.
It was published in hardback and by a major press. In the book,
homosexuality is seen as something permanent and to be explored, not
"fixed."
In Kansas, a minister led a public burning of Annie on My Mind following a controversy after it was donated to a school library.
1990s
During this decade the number of lesbian-themed young adult novels published rose. Nancy Garden published two novels with lesbian protagonists, Lark in the Morning (1991) and Good Moon Rising, and received positive sales and reviews. In 1994, M.E. Kerr published Deliver Us From Evie, about a boy with a lesbian sister, which was well received by the public. Other books published during this decade include Dive (1996) by Stacey Donovan, The Necessary Hunger (1997) by Nina Revoyr, The House You Pass On the Way (1997) by Jacqueline Woodson, Girl Walking Backwards (1998) by Bett Williams (who intended the novel for an adult audience though it was popular among teens), Hard Love (1999) by Ellen Wittlinger and Dare Truth or Promise (1999) by Paula Boock.
2000s
The 1990s
represented a turning point for young adult novels that explored lesbian
issues, and since 2000, a flood of such books has reached the market.
The public attitude towards lesbian themes in young adult literature has
grown more accepting.
In 2000, the School Library Journal included Annie on My Mind in its list of the top 100 most influential books of the century.
In the past, most books portrayed gay people as "living isolated
lives, out of context with the reality of an amazingly active
community." Today, books also show gay characters not as stigmatized and separate.
There are fewer books about female homosexuality than male homosexuality,
and even fewer books on bisexuality are published. Despite the fact
that availability of books with teen lesbian and bisexual themes has
increased since the 1960s, books with non-white characters are still
difficult to find. One exception is the 2021 young adult novel, Last Night at the Telegraph Club, which describes the coming-of-age of a teenage daughter of Chinese immigrants in 1950's San Francisco.
Publishers
The first lesbian publisher devoted to publishing lesbian and feminist books was Daughters, Inc. in Plainfield, Vermont, which published Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown in 1973. Naiad Press, followed, which published the seminal lesbian romance novel Curious Wine (1983) by Katherine V. Forrest and many other books. The press closed in 2003 after 31 years. Naiad co-founder Barbara Grier handed off her books and operation to a newly established press, Bella Books. Established in 2001, Bella Books acquired the Naiad Press backlist, including the majority of works by Jane Rule and all the works of Karin Kallmaker. Their catalogue includes over 300 titles of lesbian romance, lesbian mystery and erotica.
As of 2023, the current largest publishers of lesbian fiction are Bella Books, Bold Strokes Books, Bywater Books, and Flashpoint Publications, which acquired Regal Crest Enterprises (RCE) in January 2021.[citation needed]
Flashpoint Publications/RCE has a catalog of lesbian romance, lesbian
mystery, some erotica, sci-fi, fantasy, and sagas currently exceeding
150 works.
Bold Strokes Books, established in 2005, publishes lesbian and gay male
mystery, thrillers, sci-fi, adventure, and other LGBT genre books, with
a catalog including 130 titles. Alyson Books specialized in LGBT authors and published a number of lesbian titles.
Transgender literature is a collective term used to designate
the literary production that addresses, has been written by or portrays
people of diverse gender identity.
History
Representations
in literature of transgender people have existed for millennia, with
the earliest instance probably being the book Metamorphoses, by the Roman poet Ovid. In the twentieth century, it is notable that the novel Orlando (1928), by Virginia Woolf, is considered one of the first transgender novels in English and whose plot follows a bisexual poet that changes gender from male to female and lives for hundreds of years.
Nonetheless, apart from Orlando, the twentieth century saw
the appearance of other fiction works with transgender characters that
saw commercial success. Among them is Myra Breckinridge (1968), a satirical novel written by Gore Vidal that follows a trans woman hellbent on world domination and bringing down patriarchy. The book sold more than two million copies after publication, but was panned by critics.
The emergence of transgender literature as a distinct branch of LGBT literature
took place in the 2010s, when the number of fiction works focused on
the topic saw a pronounced growth and diversification, which was
accompanied by a greater academic and general interest in the area and a
process of differentiation with the rest of LGBT literature. This gave
rise to a trend that saw more books being written by transgender authors
whose main intended audience were transgender people.
Among the best known works of Spanish trans literature are: Hell Has No Limits, a novel by José Donoso
published in 1966 whose protagonist is Manuela, a trans woman who lives
with her daughter in a deteriorated town called El Olivo; Cobra (1972), by Cuban writer Severo Sarduy, that uses an experimental narration to tell the story of a transvestite who wants to transform her body; and Kiss of the Spider Woman (1976), a novel by Manuel Puig
in which a young revolutionary called Valentín shares a cell with
Molina, who is presented as a gay man but who during their conversations
implies that his identity might be of a transgender woman, as its shown
in the next passage:
– Are all homosexuals like that? –
No, there are others that fall in love among themselves. Me and my
friends are women. We don't like those little games, those are things
homosexuals do. We are normal women that have sex with men.
In recent years, many books in Spanish with transgender protagonists have garnered commercial and critical success. In Argentina, one of the most famous examples is Las malas (2019), by Camila Sosa Villada, which won the prestigious Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize. The novel, inspired by the youth of the author where she narrates the lives of a group of transgender prostitutes working in the city of Córdoba,
became a critical and commercial sensation, with more than eight
editions in Argentina alone and translations to many languages in the
first year of publication. From recent Ecuadorian literature, one example is Gabriel(a) (2019), by Raúl Vallejo Corral,
a novel which won the Miguel Donoso Pareja Prize with the story of a
transgender woman that falls in love with an executive and faces a
discriminatory society in her attempt to become a journalist.
In children's literature
According to a 2015 NPR
story, hundreds of books featuring transgender characters have been
published since 2000. Although a vast majority of them tend to be
targeted to a teenage audience, these publications also consist of
picture books for younger children.
Transgender teenage girl Jazz Jennings co-authored a 2014 children's book called I Am Jazz about her experience discovering her identity. Scholastic Books published Alex Gino's George in 2015, about a transgender girl, Melissa, who everyone else knows as George. Unable to find books with transgender characters to explain her father's transition to her children, Australian author Jess Walton created the 2016 children's book Introducing Teddy with illustrator Dougal MacPherson to assist children in understanding gender fluidity. Additional books listed by The Horn Book Magazine include:
Jess, Chunk, and the Road Trip to Infinity (2016) by Kristin Elizabeth Clark
Look Past (2016) by Eric Devine
If I Was Your Girl (2016) by Meredith Russo
Lizard Radio (2015) by Pat Schmatz
Beast (2016) by Brie Spangler
The Art of Being Normal (2016) by Lisa Williamson
In the past few years, transgender women have been finding publishers
for their own picture books written for transgender kids. Some of these
books include:
A Princess of Great Daring (2015) written by Tobi Hill-Meyer, illustrated by Elenore Toczynski
Super Power Baby Shower (2017) written by Tobi Hill-Meyer and Fay Onyx, illustrated by Janine Carrington
He wants to be a princess (2019) written and illustrated by Nicky Brookes
From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea (2017) written by Kai Cheng Thom, illustrated by Kai Yun Ching & Wai-Yant Li
The Girl from the Stars (2016) written and illustrated by Amy Heart
The Sisters from the Stars (2018) written and illustrated by Amy Heart
Because
the social acceptance of homosexuality has varied in many world
cultures throughout history, LGBT literature has covered a vast array of
themes and concepts. LGBT individuals have often turned to literature
as a source of validation, understanding, and beautification of same-sex
attraction. In contexts where homosexuality has been perceived
negatively, LGBT literature may also document the psychological stresses
and alienation suffered by those experiencing prejudice, legal
discrimination, AIDS, self-loathing, bullying, violence, religious condemnation, denial, suicide, persecution, and other such obstacles.
Themes of love between individuals of the same gender are found
in a variety of ancient texts throughout the world. The ancient Greeks,
in particular, explored the theme on a variety of different levels in
such works as Plato's Symposium.
Many mythologies
and religious narratives include stories of romantic affection or
sexuality between men or feature divine actions that result in changes
in gender. These myths have been interpreted as forms of LGBT expression
and modern conceptions of sexuality and gender have been applied to
them. Myths have been used by individual cultures, in part, to explain
and validate their particular social institutions or to explain the
cause of transgender identity or homosexuality.
Though Homer did not explicitly portray the heroes Achilles and Patroclus as homosexual lovers in his 8th-century BC Trojan War epic, the Iliad, later ancient authors presented the intense relationship as such. In his 5th-century BC lost tragedy The Myrmidons, Aeschylus
casts Achilles and Patroclus as pederastic lovers. In a surviving
fragment of the play, Achilles speaks of "our frequent kisses" and a
"devout union of the thighs". Plato does the same in his Symposium (385–370 BC); the speaker Phaedrus
cites Aeschylus and holds Achilles up as an example of how people will
be more brave and even sacrifice themselves for their lovers. In his oration Against Timarchus, Aeschines
argues that though Homer "hides their love and avoids giving a name to
their friendship", Homer assumed that educated readers would understand
the "exceeding greatness of their affection". Plato's Symposium also includes a creation myth that explains homo- and heterosexuality (Aristophanes speech) and celebrates the pederastic tradition and erotic love between men (Pausanias speech), as does another of his dialogues, Phaedrus.
The tradition of pederasty in ancient Greece (as early as 650 BC) and later the acceptance of limited homosexuality in ancient Rome infused an awareness of male-male attraction and sex into ancient poetry. In the second of Virgil's Eclogues (1st century BC), the shepherd Corydon proclaims his love for the boy Alexis. Some of the erotic poetry of Catullus in the same century is directed at other men (Carmen 48, 50, and 99), and in a wedding hymn (Carmen 61) he portrays a male concubine about to be supplanted by his master's future wife. The first line of his infamous invectiveCarmen 16
— which has been called "one of the filthiest expressions ever written
in Latin—or in any other language, for that matter" — contains explicit
homosexual sex acts.
The Satyricon by Petronius
is a Latin work of fiction detailing the misadventures of Encolpius and
his lover, a handsome and promiscuous sixteen-year-old servant boy
named Giton. Written in the 1st century AD during the reign of Nero, it is the earliest known text of its kind depicting homosexuality.
In the celebrated Japanese work The Tale of Genji, written by Murasaki Shikibu in the early 11th century, the title character Hikaru Genji is rejected by the lady Utsusemi
in chapter 3 and instead sleeps with her young brother: "Genji pulled
the boy down beside him ... Genji, for his part, or so one is informed,
found the boy more attractive than his chilly sister."
Several medieval European works contain references to homosexuality, such as in Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron or Lanval, a French lai, in which the knight Lanval is accused by Guinevere of having "no desire for women". Others include homosexual themes, like Yde et Olive.
18th and 19th centuries
The era known as the Age of Enlightenment
(the 1650s to the 1780s) gave rise to, in part, a general challenge to
the traditional doctrines of society in Western Europe. A particular
interest in the Classical era of Greece and Rome "as a model for
contemporary life" put the Greek appreciation of nudity, the male form
and male friendship (and the inevitable homoerotic overtones) into art
and literature.
It was common for gay authors at this time to include allusions to
Greek mythological characters as a code that homosexual readers would
recognize.
Gay men of the period "commonly understood ancient Greece and Rome to
be societies where homosexual relationships were tolerated and even
encouraged", and references to those cultures might identify an author
or book's sympathy with gay readers and gay themes but probably be
overlooked by straight readers.
Despite the "increased visibility of queer behavior" and prospering
networks of male prostitution in cities like Paris and London,
homosexual activity had been outlawed in England (and by extension, the
United States) as early as the Buggery Act 1533.
Across much of Europe in the 1700s and 1800s, the legal punishment for
sodomy was death, making it dangerous to publish or distribute anything
with overt gay themes. James Jenkins of Valancourt Books noted:
These sorts of coded, subtextual
ways of writing about homosexuality were often necessary, since up until
the 1950s British authors could be prosecuted for writing openly about
homosexuality, and in the U.S., authors and publishers could also face
legal action and suppression of their books, not to mention social or
moral condemnation that might end an author's career.
Many early Gothic fiction authors, like Matthew Lewis, William Thomas Beckford and Francis Lathom,
were homosexual, and would sublimate these themes and express them in
more acceptable forms, using transgressive genres like Gothic and horror
fiction. The title character of Lewis's The Monk
(1796) falls in love with young novice Rosario, and though Rosario is
later revealed to be a woman named Matilda, the gay subtext is clear. A similar situation occurs in Charles Maturin's The Fatal Revenge
(1807) when the valet Cyprian asks his master, Ippolito, to kiss him as
though he were Ippolito's lover; later Cyprian is also revealed to be a
woman. In Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), the close friendship between a young monk and a new novice is scrutinized as potentially "too like love". Sheridan Le Fanu's novella Carmilla (1872) was the first lesbian vampire story, and influenced Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). Stoker's novel has its own homoerotic aspects, as when Count Dracula warns off the female vampires and claims Jonathan Harker, saying "This man belongs to me!"
A Year in Arcadia: Kyllenion (1805) by Augustus, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg is "the earliest known novel that centers on an explicitly male-male love affair".
Set in ancient Greece, the German novel features several
couples—including a homosexual one—falling in love, overcoming obstacles
and living happily ever after. The Romantic movement
gaining momentum at the end of the 18th century allowed men to "express
deep affection for each other", and the motif of ancient Greece as "a
utopia of male-male love" was an acceptable vehicle to reflect this, but
some of Duke August's contemporaries felt that his characters "stepped
over the bounds of manly affection into unseemly eroticism." The first American gay novel was Joseph and His Friend: A Story of Pennsylvania (1870) by Bayard Taylor, the story of a newly engaged young man who finds himself instead falling in love with another man.
Robert K. Martin called it "quite explicit in its adoption of a
political stance toward homosexuality" and notes that the character
Philip "argues for the 'rights' of those 'who cannot shape themselves
according to the common-place pattern of society.'" Henry Blake Fuller's 1898 play, At St. Judas's, and 1919 novel, Bertram Cope's Year, are noted as among the earliest published American works in literature on the theme of homosexual relationships.
The new "atmosphere of frankness" created by the Enlightenment sparked the production of pornography like John Cleland's infamous Fanny Hill (1749), which features a rare graphic scene of male homosexual sex. Published anonymously a century later, The Sins of the Cities of the Plain (1881) and Teleny, or The Reverse of the Medal
(1893) are two of the earliest pieces of English-language pornography
to explicitly and near-exclusively concern homosexuality. The Sins of the Cities of the Plain is about a male prostitute, and set in London around the time of the Cleveland Street Scandal and the Oscar Wilde trials. Teleny,
chronicling a passionate affair between a Frenchman and a Hungarian
pianist, is often attributed to a collaborative effort by Wilde and some
of his contemporaries. Wilde's more mainstream The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) still shocked readers with its sensuality and overtly homosexual characters. Drew Banks called Dorian Gray a groundbreaking gay character because he was "one of the first in a long list of hedonistic fellows whose homosexual tendencies secured a terrible fate." The French realist Émile Zola in his novel Nana
(1880) depicted, along with a wide variety of heterosexual couplings
and some lesbian scenes, a single homosexual character, Labordette.
Paris theater society and the demi-monde are long accustomed to
his presence and role as go-between; he knows all the women, escorts
them, and runs errands for them. He is "a parasite, with even a touch of
pimp", but also a more sympathetic figure than most of the men, as much
a moral coward as them but physically brave and not a stereotype.
By the 20th century, discussion of homosexuality became more open and
society's understanding of it evolved. A number of novels with
explicitly gay themes and characters began to appear in the domain of
mainstream or art literature.
Nobel Prize-winner André Gide's semi-autobiographical novel The Immoralist (1902) finds a newly married man reawakened by his attraction to a series of young Arab boys. Though Bayard Taylor's Joseph and His Friend (1870) had been the first American gay novel, Edward Prime-Stevenson's Imre: A Memorandum
(1906) was the first in which the homosexual couple were happy and
united at the end. Initially published privately under the pseudonym
"Xavier Mayne", it tells the story of a British aristocrat and a
Hungarian soldier whose new friendship turns into love. In Thomas Mann's 1912 novella Death in Venice, a tightly wound, aging writer finds himself increasingly infatuated with a young Polish boy. Marcel Proust's serialized novel In Search of Lost Time (1913–1927) and Gide's The Counterfeiters (1925) also explore homosexual themes.
British author E.M. Forster
earned a prominent reputation as a novelist while concealing his own
homosexuality from the broader British public. In 1913–14, he privately
penned Maurice,
a bildungsroman that follows a young, upper-middle-class man through
the self-discovery of his own attraction to other men, two
relationships, and his interactions with an often uncomprehending or
hostile society. The book is notable for its affirming tone and happy
ending. "A happy ending was imperative", wrote Forster, "I was
determined that in fiction anyway, two men should fall in love and
remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows ... Happiness is
its keynote." The book was not published until 1971, after Forster's death. William J. Mann said of the novel, "[Alec Scudder of Maurice
was] a refreshingly unapologetic young gay man who was not an effete
Oscar Wilde aristocrat, but rather a working class, masculine, ordinary
guy ... an example of the working class teaching the privileged class
about honesty and authenticity — a bit of a stereotype now, but back
then quite extraordinary."
In Germany in 1920, Erwin von Busse
published a collection of short stories about erotic encounters between
men using the pseudonym Granand. Promptly banned for "indecency", it
was not republished until 1993 and only appeared in an English
translation as Berlin Garden of Erotic Delights in 2022.
Blair Niles's Strange Brother (1931), about the platonic relationship between a heterosexual woman and a gay man in New York City in the late 1920s and early 1930s, is an early, objective exploration of homosexual issues during the Harlem Renaissance. Though praised for its journalistic approach, sympathetic nature and promotion of tolerance and compassion, the novel has been numbered among a group of early gay novels that is "cast in the form of a tragic melodrama" and, according to editor and author Anthony Slide, illustrates the "basic assumption that gay characters in literature must come to a tragic end." "Smoke, Lilies, and Jade" by gay author and artist Richard Bruce Nugent,
published in 1926, was the first short story by an African-American
writer openly addressing his homosexuality. Written in a modernist
stream-of-consciousness style, its subject matter was bisexuality and
interracial male desire.
Forman Brown's 1933 novel Better Angel, published under the pseudonym Richard Meeker, is an early novel which describes a gay lifestyle without condemning it. Christopher Carey called it "the first homosexual novel with a truly happy ending". Slide names only four familiar gay novels of the first half of the 20th century in English: Djuna Barnes' Nightwood (1936), Carson McCullers' Reflections in a Golden Eye (1941), Truman Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948) and Gore Vidal's The City and the Pillar (1948). In John O'Hara's 1935 novel BUtterfield 8,
the principal female character Gloria Wondrous has a friend Ann Paul,
who in school "was suspect because of a couple of crushes which ... her
former schoolmates were too free about calling Lesbian, and Gloria did
not think so". Gloria speculates that "there was a little of that in
practically all women", considers her own experience with women making
passes, and rejects her own theory.
The story of a young man who is coming of age and discovers his own homosexuality, The City and the Pillar (1946) is recognized as the first post-World War II novel whose openly gay and well-adjusted protagonist is not killed off at the end of the story for defying social norms. It is also one of the "definitive war-influenced gay novels", one of the few books of its period dealing directly with male homosexuality. The City and the Pillar has also been called "the most notorious of the gay novels of the 1940s and 1950s."
It sparked a public scandal, including notoriety and criticism, because
it was released at a time when homosexuality was commonly considered
immoral and because it was the first book by an accepted American author
to portray overt homosexuality as a natural behavior. Upon its release, The New York Times refused to publish advertisements for the novel and Vidal was blacklisted to the extent that no major newspaper or magazine would review any of his novels for six years. Modern scholars note the importance of the novel to the visibility of gay literature. Michael Bronski
points out that "gay-male-themed books received greater critical
attention than lesbian ones" and that "writers such as Gore Vidal were
accepted as important American writers, even when they received attacks
from homophobic critics." Ian Young notes that social disruptions of World War II changed public morals, and lists The City and the Pillar among a spate of war novels that use the military as backdrop for overt homosexual behavior.
A key element of Allen Drury's 1959 bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning political novelAdvise and Consent is the blackmailing of young US senator Brigham Anderson, who is hiding a secret wartime homosexual tryst. In 2009, The Wall Street Journal'sScott Simon
wrote of Drury that "the conservative Washington novelist was more
progressive than Hollywood liberals", noting that the character Anderson
is "candid and unapologetic" about his affair, and even calling him
"Drury's most appealing character". Frank Rich wrote in The New York Times in 2005:
For a public official to be
identified as gay in the Washington of the 50s and 60s meant not only
career suicide but also potentially actual suicide. Yet Drury, a
staunchly anti-Communist conservative of his time, regarded the
character as sympathetic, not a villain. The senator's gay affair, he
wrote, was "purely personal and harmed no one else."
Drury later wrote about the unrequited love of one male astronaut for another in his 1971 novel The Throne of Saturn, and in his two-part tale of ancient EgyptianPharaohAkhenaten's attempt to change Egyptian religion—A God Against the Gods (1976) and Return to Thebes (1977)—Akhenaten's romance with his brother Smenkhkara contributes to his downfall.
Tormented homosexual North McAllister is one of the ensemble of Alpha
Zeta fraternity brothers and their families that Drury follows over the
course of 60 years in his University novels (1990-1998), as well as René Suratt — villain and "bisexual seducer of students" — and the tragic lovers Amos Wilson and Joel. Assessing Drury's body of work in 1999, Erik Tarloff suggested in The New York Times that "homosexuality does appear to be the only minority status to which Drury seems inclined to accord much sympathy."
In Taiwan, during the martial law period (1949–1987), the Kuomintang
government focused on strengthening Taiwan's industrial and economic
power and reinforcing traditional Confucious values on society. The heterosexual image of the modern family dominated, and "public discourses of same-sex desire were almost non-existent." Nevertheless, Pai Hsien-yung's Jade Love
(1960), "Moon Dream" (1960), "Youthfulness" (1961), and "Seventeen
Years Old and Lonely" (1961) — novellas and short stories exploring male
homosexual desire — were published in Xiandai Wenxue. He published "A Sky Full of Bright, Twinkling Stars" in 1969, which follows gay characters who frequent Taipei's New Park area and would appear in Pai's 1983 novel Crystal Boys. Crystal Boys
is set in 1970s Taipei and covers the main character Li-Qing's life
after he is expelled from school for engaging in sexual relations with
his classmate Zhao Ying.
It is commonly identified as "the first Chinese novel that depicts the
life struggles in the homosexual community [and] grew out of the
particular socio-historical environment of Taiwan in the 1970s."
Other works published in Taiwan in the early 1960s include Chiang Kuei's Double Suns (1961), with depictions of male homosexual desire, and Kuo Liang-hui's Green Is the Grass (1963), which follows two Taiwanese middle school boys who exhibit sexual and romantic desires toward each other. The status of Double Suns in the Taiwanese gay literature scene has been questioned since male homosexuality is not the main focus of the work. On this, Chi Ta-wei
comments on its influence and significance in the history of homosexual
literature in Taiwan, writing that "[t]o underestimate [the characters
of Double Suns] and deem them 'not homosexual enough' is to truncate the
history of literature and to regulate the ever-elusive homosexuality to
a confined definition."
James Baldwin followed Giovanni's Room with Another Country
(1962), a "controversial bestseller" that "explicitly combines racial
and sexual protests ... structured around the lives of eight racially,
regionally, socioeconomically, and sexually diverse characters." John Rechy's City of Night (1963) and Numbers (1967) are graphic tales of male hustlers; City of Night
has been called a "landmark novel" that "marked a radical departure
from all other novels of its kind, and gave voice to a subculture that
had never before been revealed with such acuity." Claude J. Summers wrote of Christopher Isherwood's A Single Man (1964):
A Single Man more fully
develops the context of gay oppression than do [Isherwood's] earlier
novels ... To portray homosexuals as simply another tribe in a nation
comprising many different tribes is both to soften the stigma linked to
homosexuality and to encourage solidarity among gay people. And by
associating the mistreatment of homosexuals with the discrimination
suffered by other minorities in America, Isherwood legitimizes the
grievances of gay people at a time when homosexuals were not recognized
either as a genuine minority or as valuable members of the human
community. Presaging the gay liberation movement, A Single Man
presents homosexuality as simply a human variation that should be
accorded value and respect and depicts homosexuals as a group whose
grievances should be redressed.
George Baxt's A Queer Kind of Death (1966) introduced Pharaoh Love, the first gay black detective in fiction. The novel was met with considerable acclaim, and The New York Times critic Anthony Boucher
wrote, "This is a detective story, and unlike any other that you have
read. No brief review can attempt to convey its quality. I merely note
that it deals with a Manhattan subculture wholly devoid of ethics or
morality, that said readers may well find it 'shocking', that it is
beautifully plotted and written with elegance and wit ... and that you
must under no circumstances miss it." Love would be the central figure in two immediate sequels Swing Low Sweet Harriet (1967) and Topsy and Evil (1968) and also two later novels, A Queer Kind of Love (1994) and A Queer Kind of Umbrella (1995). In his controversial 1968 satireMyra Breckinridge, Gore Vidal explored the mutability of gender-roles and sexual-orientation as being social constructs established by social mores, making the eponymous heroine a transsexual waging a "war against gender roles".
In 1969, Taiwanese author Lin Hwai-min published "Cicada" in his short story collection of the same name, Cicada. "Cicada" follows the lives of several college students living in Ximending, Taipei, who explore and struggle with expressing homosexual desires for each other.
Colombian-born gay author Fernando Vallejo on 1994 published his semi-autobiographical novel Our Lady of the Assassins.
The novel deals with the topic of homosexuality in a secondary way, but
it is notable for being set in the context of a Latin American country
where it is a taboo.
Taiwanese author Chu T'ien-wen's Notes of a Desolate Man
(1994) is written from the first-person perspective of a Taiwanese gay
man. Chu compiled the experience of gay men in various cultures as
portrayed through media to construct the narrative of Notes of a Desolate Man.
The novel has often been criticized by Taiwanese critics for its
fragmentary structure and narrative, due to Chu's frequent use of
quotations and references. Chu's "presumably heterosexual" and female
identity has also inspired various different readings of the novel, as
well as "a tension that has been used to serve very different sorts of
sexual politics."
The following year, Chi Ta-wei published Sensory World (1995), which is composed of short stories are significant because of their explicit discussion of sex, sexuality, gender, transgender identity, and male homosexual desire. In 1997, Chi published Queer Carnival, which contains a detailed list of Taiwanese queer literature (covering themes of gay, lesbian, transgender, and other sexuality and gender identities).
Gay pulp fiction or gay pulps, refers to printed works, primarily fiction, that include references to male homosexuality, specifically male gay sex, and that are cheaply produced, typically in paperback books made of wood pulp paper; lesbian pulp fiction is similar work about women. Michael Bronski,
the editor of an anthology of gay pulp writing, notes in his
introduction, "Gay pulp is not an exact term, and it is used somewhat
loosely to refer to a variety of books that had very different origins
and markets"
People often use the term to refer to the "classic" gay pulps that
were produced before about 1970, but it may also be used to refer to the
gay erotica or pornography in paperbackbook or digest magazine form produced since that date.
Science fiction and fantasy have traditionally been puritanical genres aimed at a male readership, and can be more restricted than non-genre literature by their conventions of characterisation and the effect that these conventions have on depictions of sexuality and gender. During the pulp magazine era (1920s-1930s), explicit sexuality of any kind was rare in genre science fiction and fantasy. Then, according to Joanna Russ, in the more relaxed Golden Age of Science Fiction (1940s-1950s) the genre "resolutely ignored the whole subject" of homosexuality.
Some writers were able to introduce more explicit sexuality into their
work as the readership for science fiction and fantasy began to age in
the 1950s; however until the late 1960s few depicted alternative
sexuality or revised gender roles, or openly investigated sexual
questions.
After the pushing back of boundaries in the 1960s and 1970s,
homosexuality gained much wider acceptance, and was often incorporated
into otherwise conventional SF stories with little comment. By the
1980s, blatant homophobia was no longer considered acceptable to most
readers. In Lois McMaster Bujold's Ethan of Athos
(1986), the titular "unlikely hero" is gay obstetrician Dr. Ethan
Urquhart, whose dangerous adventure alongside the first woman he has
ever met presents both a future society where homosexuality is the norm
and the lingering sexism and homophobia of our own world. Uranian Worlds,
by Eric Garber and Lyn Paleo, was compiled in 1983 and is an
authoritative guide to science fiction literature featuring gay,
lesbian, transgender, and related themes. The book covers science
fiction literature published before 1990 (2nd edition, 1990), providing a
short review and commentary on each piece.
As speculative fiction gives authors and readers the freedom to
imagine societies that are different from real-life cultures, this
freedom makes speculative fiction a useful means of examining sexual
bias by forcing the reader to reconsider his or her heteronormative cultural assumptions. It has also been claimed that LGBT readers identify strongly with the mutants, aliens and other outsider characters found in speculative fiction.
James Jenkins of Valancourt Books notes that the connection between gay fiction and horror goes back to the Gothic novels of the 1790s and early 1800s. Many Gothic authors, like Matthew Lewis, William Thomas Beckford and Francis Lathom,
were homosexual, and according to Jenkins "the traditional explanation
for the gay/horror connection is that it was impossible for them to
write openly about gay themes back then (or even perhaps express them,
since words like 'gay' and 'homosexual' didn't exist), so they
sublimated them and expressed them in more acceptable forms, using the
medium of a transgressive genre like horror fiction." Early works with clear gay subtext include Lewis's The Monk (1796) and both Charles Maturin's The Fatal Revenge (1807) and Melmoth the Wanderer (1820). Somewhat later came the first lesbian vampire novella Carmilla (1872) by Sheridan Le Fanu and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) by Oscar Wilde, which shocked readers with its sensuality and overtly homosexual characters. There is even gay subtext in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) as the title character warns off the female vampires and claims Jonathan Harker, saying "This man belongs to me!" The erotic metaphor of vampirism, inspired by Carmilla, has resulted in numerous vampire films since the 1970s strongly implying or explicitly portraying lesbianism.
James R. Keller writes that in particular, "Gay and lesbian
readers have been quick to identify with the representation of the
vampire, suggesting its experiences parallel those of the sexual
outsider." Richard Dyer
discusses the recurring homoerotic motifs of vampire fiction in his
article "Children of the Night", primarily "the necessity of secrecy,
the persistence of a forbidden passion, and the fear of discovery." With the vampire having been a recurring metaphor for same-sex desire from before Stoker's Dracula,
Dyer observes that historically earlier representations of vampires
tend to evoke horror and later ones turn that horror into celebration. The homoerotic overtones of Anne Rice's celebrated The Vampire Chronicles series (1976–present) are well documented,and its publication reinforced the "widely recognized parallel between the queer and the vampire."
LGBT themes in comics is a relatively new concept, as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) themes and characters were historically omitted intentionally from the content of comic books and their comic strip predecessors, due to either censorship or the perception that comics were for children. With any mention of homosexuality in mainstream United States comics forbidden by the Comics Code Authority (CCA) until 1989, earlier attempts at exploring these issues in the US took the form of subtle hints or subtext regarding a character's sexual orientation. LGBT themes were tackled earlier in underground comics
from the early 1970s onward. Independently published one-off comic
books and series, often produced by gay creators and featuring
autobiographical storylines, tackled political issues of interest to
LGBT readers.
Comic strips have also dealt in subtext and innuendo, their wide
distribution in newspapers limiting their inclusion of controversial
material. The first openly gay characters appeared in prominent strips
in the late 1970s; representation of LGBT issues in these titles causes
vociferous reaction, both praise and condemnation, to the present day.
Comic strips aimed at LGBT audiences are also syndicated in gay- and
lesbian-targeted magazines and comics have been created to educate
people about LGBT-related issues and to influence real-world politics,
with their format and distribution allowing them to transmit messages
more subtle, complex, and positive than typical education material.
Portrayal of LGBT themes in comics is recognized by several notable
awards, including the Gaylactic Spectrum Award and GLAAD Media Awards for outstanding comic book and comic strip.
Since the 1990s, LGBT themes have become more common in
mainstream US comics, including in a number of titles in which a gay
character is the star. European comics have been more inclusive from an
earlier date. The lack of censorship, and greater acceptance of comics
as a medium of adult entertainment led to less controversy about the
representation of LGBT characters. The popular Japanese manga tradition has included genres of girls' comics that feature homosexual relationships since the 1970s, in the form of yaoi and yuri.
These works are often extremely romantic and include archetypal
characters that often are not identified as gay. Since the Japanese "gay
boom" of the 1990s, a body of manga aimed at LGBT customers has been
produced, which have more realistic and autobiographical themes. Pornographic manga also often includes sexualised depictions of lesbians and intersex people. Queer theorists
have noted that LGBT characters in mainstream comic books are usually
shown as assimilated into heterosexual society, whereas in alternative
comics the diversity and uniqueness of LGBT culture is emphasized.
Children's fiction
Gay themes
Compared to gay and lesbian teen fiction,
sales of gay-themed books for younger children, and availability of
these books in public and school libraries, remain "very dicey and very
different".
When Megan Went Away (1979) was the first picture book to include LGBT characters. The story, written by Jane Severance and illustrated by Tea Schook, concerns a preteen girl whose lesbian mother and her partner have separated. The first children's book with gay male characters was Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin. Originally published in 1981 in Danish as Mette bor hos Morten og Erik,
it tells the story of Jenny, her father and his partner and their daily
life. Controversy and politicization followed its publication.
Some of the best known children's books with gay themes include Heather Has Two Mommies (1989) and Daddy's Roommate (1991), published by LGBT publisher Alyson Books. Both books discussed same-sex parenting and attracted criticism and controversy. The American Library Association ranked Heather Has Two Mommies as the third and second most frequently challenged book in the United States in 1993 and 1994, respectively.
Recent controversies include King & King,
originally written in Dutch and published in English in 2002. The book
is about a prince uninterested in princesses, who eventually falls in
love with another prince. In 2006, parents sued a Massachusetts school
district after a teacher read the book to their son's second grade
class. And Tango Makes Three (2005) by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
has been frequently challenged, and is often on the American Library
Associations's List of Challenged Books for Banned Books Week. It was ranked ninth on this list in 2017.
The book tells the true story of two male penguins who adopt an egg and
raise the baby once it has hatched. While it has been banned and debated many times, it has been awarded and noted by the American Library Association on their Rainbow Book List.
In 2018, Little Bee Books partnered with media advocacy group GLAAD for a series of books that offered positive LGBT representation in children's literature. The partnership kicked off with Prince & Knight,
written by Daniel Haack and illustrated by Stevie Lewis, which was
named to the American Library Association's Rainbow Book List and was
named a best book of the year by Kirkus Reviews, Amazon and the Chicago Tribune. The partnership has gone on to include books that also offer lesbian, transgender and gender non-conforming representation.
Australian titles include the books in the 'Learn to Include' series: The Rainbow Cubby House, My House, Going to Fair Day and Koalas on Parade. House of Hades (2013), Book 4 in the young adult series The Heroes of Olympus by Rick Riordan, features a gay supporting character, Nico di Angelo.
A more extensive list of gay children's literature includes:
A Name on the Quilt: A Story of Remembrance by Jeannine Atkins
In July 2014, Singapore's National Library Board (NLB), a
state-funded network of 26 public libraries, confirmed it would destroy
three children's books with pro-LGBT families themes for being "against
its 'pro-family' stance[,] following complaints by a parent and its own
internal review". The decision was widely criticized by LGBT supporters
and the arts and literary community who see the actions as akin to book burnings and other forms of censorship. The three books are And Tango Makes Three, which covers the true story of a pair of male penguins that successfully raise a chick, The White Swan Express, which features children adopted by a variety of families including gay, mixed-race and single parents, and Who's in My Family,
which references families with homosexual parents. Two weeks after a
gay rights rally, these books "sparked a fierce debate" between the
religious conservatives, who opposed the rally, and Singapore's growing
gay-rights lobby.
As of 2020, there have been no explicitly bisexual characters–either children or adults–in children's picture book fiction.
While many nonfiction picture book biographies of historical figures
who had relationships with people of the same gender overlook or ignore
those relationships, at least one, Frida Kahlo for Girls and Boys by Nadia Fink (2017), mentions that Kahlo loved both men and women. Some young adult fiction books do feature bisexual characters, including Empress of the World by Sara Ryan (2001), Double Feature: Attack of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies/Bride of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies by Brent Hartinger (2007), Pink by Lili Wilkinson (2009), and It's Our Prom (So Deal with It) by Julie Anne Peters (2012). When they do appear in young adult fiction, bisexuals are often portrayed as confused or greedy.