Heartstopping Moments: Rainbow Joy, Queering Spaces, and Shaping Futurities in L.M. Montgomery’s Anne and Emily Novels

Queer joy is a ticket to a journey back to the future. In L.M. Montgomery’s Anne and Emily novels from Rainbow Valley onward and Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper books/Netflix adaptations, the queering of timelines and spaces for young people has the potential to nurture and be nurtured by rainbow or queer joy—the kind of joy that comes from transforming trauma into healing, the privileging of uniqueness into the valuing of differences and (inter)connections, and fixedness into personal and political becoming—by subverting conventional narrative patterns and tropes associated with queerness. Questions arise when Montgomery’s queer or marginalized characters reach adulthood as to whether queerness can sustain the joyful, heartstopping moments of their youth and shape the futurities that Oseman’s multiverses predict.