Queer Young Adult Literature and the Politics of (Un)Happiness

Abstract This chapter explores the emotional and political contours of Queer Young Adult Literature (QYAL), with emphasis on how this oeuvre is built upon a foundation of pain, violence, and negative affect reminiscent of emotional frameworks present in early queer texts. Drawing from scholarship in queer theory, affect studies, and youth literatures, this discussion first highlights the norms that affect the creation and reception of queer content for younger readers. Afterwards, it examines the works of Adam Silvera—focusing on his debut novel More Happy Than Not (2015) and its revised 2020 version—to illuminate the negotiations and compromises that QYAL must undergo to represent different forms of queer hurt and unhappiness. Lastly, this discussion contemplates how readers and critics can use queer approaches and thinking to resist assimilative and reductive understandings of the role of negativity, pain, and violence in QYAL.