MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

This paper examines the growing field of LGBT young adult literature and the problems therein when certain members of that community acronym are left out. It is becoming more and more common to find lesbian, gay, and even trans* protagonists in books aimed at teens, middle grade, and young adult readers, but there remains an “invisible” portion of the LGBT spectrum: bisexual protagonists, particularly male ones. The paper works through some of the very few examples of YA books containing bisexual male characters, such as Alex Sanchez’s Boyfriends with Girlfriends and Garret Freyman-Weyr’s My Heartbeat, both of which have the bisexual male protagonists sharing “main character” status with at least two others and both of which present bisexuality as a sort of “problem,” much like gay characters were presented in early YA literature from the 1960s-1980s. Using ideas from the scholarship of Robyn Ochs and Ritch Savin-Williams, the paper attempts to parse out possible reasons for authors not including bisexual male protagonists in their YA novels and suggestions for further inclusivity in the ever-expanding world of LGBT young adult literature.