ABSTRACT
In light of the global #Metoo movement, this paper examines a set of young adult (YA) novels where the authors navigate two cultural taboos – underage drinking and sexual violence perpetrated by young men. Our text set includes Laurie Halse Anderson and Emily Carroll’s Speak (2018), EK Johnston’s Exit, Pursued by a Bear (2016), Aaron Hartzler’s What We Saw (2015), Courtney Summers’ All the Rage (2015), Louise O’Neill’s Asking for It (2016), Chris Lynch’s Inexcusable (2005) and Ashley Herring Blake’s Girl Made of Stars (2018). These books are cautionary tales that rely on drinking to excuse intemperate masculinity and to reiterate common rape scripts in which the blame lands squarely on the shoulders of the young heterosexual girls. Such stories demonstrate the costliness of compulsory heterosexuality as the gender relations operating under it produce rape culture in particular ways for each text. Drawing on feminist theories of rape culture and representation, we analyze these YA texts in conversation with one another to highlight the discursive entanglements of rape culture, alcohol consumption, heteronormativity, and feminisms within YA fiction.
