LGBTQ representations in media and novels, especially in young adult (YA) literature, have become more recurrent and reliable in recent years. While little research exists on youth and transgender stories, existing LGBTQ texts predominantly deal with men, chiefly White gay men (Cart & Jenkins, 2006; Garcia, 2013). To address this imbalanced…

Tensions and contradictions in my personal practice and in the extant research prompted this study of preservice teachers' responses to trans-themed young adult literature. I adopted a self-study methodology to identify and address the shortcomings in my practice of including trans-themed literature in a Literature for Adolescents course. Through…

Sarah Arnold was in a bind. On the surface, the students in her 11th-grade English courses seemed to have their act together. Like so many people their age, Arnold's students saw open homophobia as uncool. On the other hand, when Arnold listened to her students talking before the bell, she often heard an anti-gay undertone that disturbed her.…

Writers across time have valued the use of fiction as a means of truth-telling. Fiction that portrays sexual minorities can lay claim to a place in the school curriculum for many of the same reasons that people include Shakespeare or Twain: they speak to the human experience in all its variety. But for those same reasons, fiction that speaks to…