DOCTORAL THESIS Lesbian Love Stories in Young Adult Literature and Graphic Memoirs Narrative Constructions of Same-Sex Relationships Between Female Characters Across Genre and Form Gillingham, Erica Award date: 2018 General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 06. Oct. 2021 Lesbian Love Stories in Young Adult Literature and Graphic Memoirs: Narrative Constructions of Same-Sex Relationships Between Female Characters Across Genre and Form by Erica Gillingham BA, MA A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD Department of English & Creative Writing University of Roehampton 2017 Abstract This thesis examines the narrative constructions of same-sex relationships between female characters in lesbian love stories published for a young adult audience in the United States in English from 1976 to 2016. The thesis argues that there has been a significant shift in the portrayals of lesbian and female bisexual characters, and their same-sex relationships, during this period, as well as a dramatic increase in the diversity of these stories for a young adult audience. The interrogation of narrative and characterisation takes into consideration the ways these lesbian love stories participate in and are shaped by genre, discussing generic conventions from romance, fantasy, science fiction, and memoir and, to a lesser extent, magical realism and historical fiction. The investigation also privileges the idea of love, in its multitude of forms, as the central theme of the selected novels, and for the research project as a whole. Through the examination of the research corpus, the thesis, first, proposes three key narratives elements—the revelation (coming out), the first kiss, and the resolution—that serve a particular function in the representations of these characters and their romantic relationships in YA novels and graphic memoirs. The analysis then includes case studies on the work of two prominent authors of lesbian and bisexual young adult novels, Julie Anne Peters and Malinda Lo, in respective chapters. The thesis will next explore philosophically motivated fiction on the theme of love. Finally, a study of graphic memoirs will consider genre in the portrayals of lesbian love stories in the comics form. Overall, the thesis illustrates a spectrum of storytelling—from the conventional romance narrative to novels that are deeply invested in the depiction of love, in all its forms—through the depictions of same-sex relationships between female characters for a young adult audience. 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 4 Table of Figures 6 Introduction 7 Exploring Lesbian Love Stories for the Young Adult Reader Chapter One 47 Lesbian Young Adult Romance Novels: How Annie on My Mind Set the Precedent for a Conventional Revolution Chapter Two 83 Butches, Femmes, and the Consequences of Coming Out: A Legacy of Lesbian Pulp Fiction in the Young Adult Novels of Julie Anne Peters Chapter Three 121 Constructing Identities in Alternate Realities: Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Malinda Lo’s Young Adult Novels Chapter Four 158 Love, Wonder, and Expanding the Range: Thought Experiments and Lesbian Love Stories in the ‘Adolescent Novel of Ideas’ Chapter Five 204 Drawing on Memories of First Loves: Representations of Young Adult Same-Sex Relationships in Graphic Memoirs Conclusion 240 Reflections on Lesbian Love Stories in Young Adult Literature Appendices 248 Bibliography 258 3 Acknowledgements My primary thanks are extended to my supervisor, Dr Alison Waller, and my Director of Studies, Professor Nicola Humble. I would also like to thank the National Centre for Research in Children’s Literature, specifically Dr Lisa Sainsbury and Dr Gillian Lathey, and the English and Creative Department, particularly Dr Laura Peters, Dr Amy Tooth Murphy (Royal Holloway), and Dr Mary Shannon at the University of Roehampton. A special thanks is offered to Dr Jane Carroll, now at Trinity College Dublin, for cultivating a ‘nicer academia’. To my NCRCL PhD colleagues, your camaraderie has made this experience all the more joyful and sane. Thank you to Nick Campbell, Manuela Salvi, Rebecca Sutton, Kay Waddilove, and Karen Williams, and especially to Anne Malewski, Emily Mercer, Sinéad Moriarty, and Sarah Pyke. The foundations of my research project are indebted to a network of individuals who share my passion for diversity in children’s and young adult literature. I am grateful to Dr Elizabeth Chapman, Dr B.J. Epstein, and Dr Mark McGlashan for their advice and collaborative opportunities, Beth Cox and Charlotte Morris for their perspectives as publishers, and booksellers Jim MacSweeney and Uli Lenart of Gay’s the Word for their continued support. My jubilant gratitude to Fen Coles and Kerry Mason of Letterbox Library: your encouragement and friendship has been invaluable and irrepressible. Thank you to the forty ‘loves, sweethearts, darlings, paramours, lovers, admirers, and love bugs’ (or, backers) who supported my ‘Made with Love’ campaign, with special acknowledgments to Andrea Constantine and David Crisp. To my friends and family, in England and America, I could write a second thesis on my gratitude for you; but, to save us all the trouble, I say thank you, in no particular order, for the laughter, messages, letters, phone calls, dance parties, study dates, books, surprises, protests, drinks, slices of cake, train tickets, plane tickets, copyediting, time, 4 unconditional love, and making me an auntie and a (fairy) godmother. There are, of course, a few individuals to recognise in particular. Thank you, Hazel Yeomans, for your courageous support and persistent friendship over the last five years. Thank you to Paul Gillingham, who always reminds me to look on the bright side of life. Thank you to Chris and Charlie Gillingham, my extra-ordinary parents, who instilled in me the confidence to wonder and wander and grow and achieve. Finally, thank you to my wife, Alexandra Gillingham, whose love inspired this research and who made it possible for me to complete it. This thesis is dedicated to you. For reals. 5 Table of Figures Figure 1: A Venn diagram of romance studies… 49 Figure 2: Women’s Barracks (1950) by Tereska Torres 90 Figure 3: Spring Fire (1952) by Vin Packer 112 Figure 4: Odd Girl Out (1960) by Ann Bannon 113 Figure 5: Beebo Brinker (1962) by Ann Bannon 114 Figure 6: Keeping You a Secret (2003) by Julie Anne Peters 115 Figure 7: Keeping You a Secret (2007) by Julie Anne Peters 116 Figure 8: She Loves You, She Loves You Not… (2011) by Julie Anne Peters 117 Figure 9: Pretend You Love Me (2011) by Julie Anne Peters 118 Figure 10: From Definition (1997) by Ariel Schrag 218 Figure 11: From Potential (1998) by Ariel Schrag 221 Figure 12: From Honor Girl (2015) by Maggie Thrash 225 Figure 13: From Honor Girl (2015) by Maggie Thrash 229 Figure 14: From I Love This Part (2015) by Tillie Walden 233 Figure 15: From I Love This Part (2015) by Tillie Walden 237 6 Introduction Exploring Lesbian Love Stories for the Young Adult Reader On 4th July 1976, the United States of America (US) culminated a series of bicentennial celebrations. Fireworks displays were set off across the country, President Ford addressed the nation from Washington, D.C., and an international gathering of tall ships sailed up the Hudson River, bringing thousands of sailors into New York City for the festivities. In the final section of her graphic memoir Fun Home (2006), cartoonist Alison Bechdel retrospectively adjusts the memory of her father—and herself—during the celebrations in Greenwich Village, the historic gay and lesbian neighbourhood of New York City, having not fully understood the magnitude of what she was witnessing at the time. She remarks that she was ‘moved by [her] own open-minded tolerance’ (Fun Home 190) as a fifteen year old and that the exposure to gay culture left her ‘supple and open to possibility’ even if she did not then ‘draw a conscious parallel to [her] own sexuality’ (191). That same year, with little fanfare, Viking published the young adult (YA) novel Ruby (1976) by Rosa Guy, the first novel in the US to feature a lesbian relationship for a young adult audience. Ruby is set in Harlem, New York City, and tells the story of eighteen-year-old protagonist Ruby Cathy who falls in love with classmate Daphne Duprey. Ruby is desperately lonely, both in her family and at school, until she finds ‘a likeness to herself, a response to her needs, her age, an answer to her loneliness’ (Guy 55) through her brief intimate relationship with Daphne. Ruby’s emotional experience is conveyed through the depth and breadth of feelings expressed following her first kiss with Daphne at the beginning of their relationship. The third-person omniscient narrator offers the reader a multitude of metaphors for the experience of love through the description of Ruby’s internal state. The narration of the kiss starts with an expanded list of colours, designating the 7 qualities of each shade in highly romantic language: ‘Love was green. Dark green, light green—the new light green of a world bursting with life.