subject: What's the Best, Most Powerful LGBT Young Adult Novel You've Read Recently? [print this page] Current queer YA literature offers critical literacy moments beyond the context of "real life." When I teach David Levithan's debut novel Boy Meets Boy, students find it humorous and interesting (in that voyeuristic "that's kinda weird" way); they love the narrative voice and its attitude and they find the incongruity of the drag-queen-star-quarterback both wonderfully exaggerated and oddly critical of the gendered world of football/team sports. Yet they are also quick to say, "But this book is too unrealistic! That would never happen!" In presenting a "modern fairytale," Levithan disrupts mythical constructions that continue to pervade American culture, particularly myths about gender, sexuality, and religion, and creates a space in a critical pedagogy for reenvisioning the options before us.
What's the Best, Most Powerful LGBT Young Adult Novel You've Read Recently?
