Gender is the linguistic index of the political opposition between the sexes. ~ Monique Wittig
Gender issues arise in every aspect of human experience, whether conscious or not. This includes the writing and reading of literature. Gender analysis in literature is not rare, but including the LGBTQI2 perspective, is.
Literary gender criticism and criticism of gender in literature are extension of feminist literary criticism. The “new game” criticism focuses not just on women but on the construction of gender and sexuality. It especially (but not always) considers LGBTQ issues. This gives rise to queer theory.
Gender criticism suggests that power is not just from the top down, or patriarchal (a man dominating a woman). It suggests that power is multifaceted and multidirectional. It sometimes acknowledges that the power isn’t always equal.
Here are 5 lesbian/queer books about gender in literature and gender in lesbian/queer literature.
1. Gender in Lorraine Hansberry’s a Raisin in the Sun by Gary Wiener (editor)
The landmark play “A Raisin in the Sun” takes its title from a Langston Hughes poem which poses the questions “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?” The play focusses on a working-class African-American family in Chicago who save money. They have enough to purchase either a business in a black neighborhood or a house in a white neighborhood. The play exposes issues of racism and gender as the women of the family make important decisions that push against both racial and gender lines.
The book discusses gender in the play. It looks at how the female characters fight both racism and male chauvinism. It covers how the play is dominated by strong female characters. And it investigates how characters resist the stereotype of the emasculating female. The book also presents contemporary perspectives on race and feminism in the twenty-first century. Contributors include Barbara Ehrenreich, Jewelle L. Gomez, and Sharon Friedman.
2. Gendering The Nation – Studies in Modern Scottish Literature by Christopher Whyte (editor)
Nationalism has resurfaced as a major factor in European (and American!) politics and culture. A powerful commitment to national freedom has marked Scottish writing throughout the twentieth century. How has the emergence of new voices from feminist, gay and lesbian critics transformed that commitment? How critical and pluralistic can the new nationalisms be? This collection serves notice that the tradition is being read in new and disruptive ways. Five women and four men examine the relationship between gender and nationality. Writings include how male and female authors portray women, and the treatment of sexuality in Scottish writing. Covering modern fiction, theatre, poetry, film and television, it is a reassessment of the gender and culture of a ‘stateless nation.’
3. Queer China: Lesbian and Gay Literature and Visual Culture under Postsocialism by Hongwei Bao
This book analyses queer cultural production in contemporary China. It maps the broad social transformations in gender, sexuality and desire. It examines queer literature and visual cultures in China’s post-Mao and postsocialist era to show how these diverse cultural forms and practices function as context-specific and culturally sensitive forms of social activism. They also produce distinct types of gender and sexual subjectivities unique to China’s postsocialist conditions.
Various forms include poetry to papercutting art, from ‘comrade/gay literature’ to girls’ love fan fiction, from lesbian films to activist documentaries, and from a drag show in Shanghai to a public performance of a same-sex wedding in Beijing. The book reveals a queer China in all its ideological complexity and creative energy. Rich in eclectic observation and methods, Queer China weaves together historical and archival research, interviews and ethnography.
Breaking new ground and bringing a non-Western perspective to the front, this work contributes to multiple academic fields. This includes studies in film, contemporary art, theatre, gender, sexuality, cultural history, geography, political theory and the study of social movements.
4. Narratives of Queer Desire: Deserts of the Heart by Margaret Sonser Breen
Narratives of Queer Desire: Deserts of the Heart is an interdisciplinary project that uses literary analysis, especially close reading, along with personal testimony and the applications of gender theory, as a means for identifying, looking at, and exploring LGBTQ stories. Taking its subtitle from Jane Rule’s novel Desert of the Heart, Narratives of Queer Desire considers queer yearnings for stories other than those conventionally available, stories that, often located at the social margins (‘deserts’) and subject to violent regulation, engage and resist norms in literature as well as culture and politics.
Narratives of Queer Desire offers a story about the power of storytelling: within our personal, professional, and political lives and at the sites of our desire, including the classroom. This is a story about how literature encounters loss, staves off aggression, and answers erasure by offering itself as a site of care and empowerment and activism for LGBTQ people.
5. Gender(ed) Identities: Critical Rereadings of Gender in Children’s and Young Adult Literature by Tricia Clasen and Holly Hassel
This volume brings together diverse, cross-disciplinary scholarly voices to examine gender construction in children’s and young adult literature. It complements and updates the scholarship in the field by creating a rich, cohesive examination of core questions around gender and sexuality in classic and contemporary texts.
By providing an expansive treatment of gender and sexuality across genres, eras, and national literature, the collection explores how readers encounter unorthodox as well as traditional notions of gender. It begins with essays exploring how children’s and YA literature construct communities formed by gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and in face-to-face and virtual spaces.
Section II’s central focus is how gendered identities are formed, unpacking how texts for young readers ranging from Amish youth periodicals to the blockbuster Divergent series trace, reproduce, and shape gendered identity socialization.
In section III, the essential literary function of translating trauma into narrative is addressed in classics like Anne of Green Gables and Pollyanna, as well as more recent works.
Section IV’s focus on sexuality and romance encompasses fiction and nonfiction works, examining how children’s and young adult literature can serve as a regressive, progressive, and transgressive site for construction meaning about sex and romance.
The last section offers new readings of paratextual features in literature for children — from the classic tale of Cinderella to contemporary illustrated novels.
The key achievement of this volume is providing an updated range of multidisciplinary and methodologically diverse analyses of critically and commercially successful texts, contributing to the scholarship on children’s and YA literature; gender, sexuality, and women’s studies; and a range of other disciplines.
