Queer Literary Ecologies and Young Adult Literature

• Published in: Global Literary Studies. Key Concepts / eds. Diana Roig-Sanz & Neus Rotger p. 61
• Main Author: Bergenmar, Jenny
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: Comparative literature; General Literature Studies; Languages and Literature; Litteraturvetenskap; queer literature; social media; Språk och litteratur; world literature; young adult literature
• ISBN: 9783110741223; 3110741229
• DOI: 10.1515/9783110740301-003

This chapter investigates an under-researched area within global literary studies: LGBTQ fiction and its readers. In history, LGBTQ fiction has been notoriously hard to find for readers. This is in part a question of representation: in times when queer identities and actions could not be described openly, readers relied on word of mouth, or on following queer intertextual networks in-between individual texts. In other words, LGBTQ readers seeking acknowledgement in literature relied to a large part on local, and small-scale communities. This chapter explores the development towards global, and digital queer reading communities within social media. Using Beecroft’s metaphor of an ecology of world literature, the literature shared in these digital spaces seen as part an environment where literature can thrive and spread. Furthermore, the chapter places this discussion within a broader framework of world literature scholarship. After an overview over the historical conditions for the circulation of LGBTQ fiction in the past, the chapter focuses on the global exchange of queer literature in social media. Here, the shift from local and small-scale distribution of LGBTQ literature to global accessibility is explored as a simultaneous loss of community when LGBTQI identities become mainstream, and an emergence of new types of queer belongings. Furthermore, spaces of queer belonging are investigated more broadly in relation to world literature scholarship. This concluding section establishes a dialogue between global literary studies and queer historiography and argues that queer temporalities can provide anti-canonical knowledge and a better understanding of marginalized identities.