아동문학과 퀴어

Children’s Literature and Queer

Queer novels in children’s literature have repeatedly asked “Who am I?” and “Where do I belong?,” around which questions children’s literature itself has revolved since its appearance in the 18th century. The first generation of queer children’s stories in 1970s and 1980s described homosexuality using images of disease and guilt. Gays were named queer in that they fell out of the normal, out of the accepted. Same sex orientation was considered as a “passing phase” which protagonists were required to outgrow. A turning point came when stories began to address “homosexual visibility,” that is, coming out and the establishment of queer identity. The 2000s witnessed the publication of “queer community” novels: Rainbow Boys and Geography Club disturbed the myth of manliness through a gay teen's struggle to be a jock and queer at the same time; Luna represented gender as repeated performances; Boy Meets Boy allowed readers a moment in which they experienced contingent construction of meaning and impossibility of categorization. Identity was ephemeral and the concept of inner self underneath numerous “layers” was ridiculed. These works problematized the bifurcated gender system and the notion of normativity. However, it does not negate the fact that children’s literature is still a literature of identity pursuit. A subtle strategy is detected by which the territory of the normal expands to contain some queers and leave out the others. The result is stratification of queers. Queer novels facilitate children’s understanding and accepting themselves as queers, which means they demonstrate what queers are acceptable and normal, and what queers are not. Children’s literature is, still, a didactic educational discourse.