Young Adult Novels, AIDS Pedagogy, and Queer History

Abstract This article explores the role of young adult novels (or “problem novels”) in constructing ideas about the impact of AIDS on gay men in the United States from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. The article utilizes Jennifer Miller’s concept of critical optimism to argue that it is insufficient to read these novels as merely propping up a dominant ideology of homonormativity. It explores the relationship between melodrama and pedagogy in cultural responses to AIDS as intertwined rather than oppositional. The article uses a new historicist lens to argue that the first young adult novel about AIDS deserves greater integration into scholarly conversations about queer history, because of its use of a mass-market, normative form to conceal internal debates about AIDS within the gay community.