ABSTRACT
Since the 2000s, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) characters have moved from the margins of young adult (YA) literature to become central protagonists. While early YA fiction featuring queer characters frequently presented ‘coming out’ stories, more recent novels represent openly gay characters functioning within their broader communities, which reflects growing social acceptance and visibility of LGBTIQ people within Western societies. This shift has resulted in an increase in the depiction of gay–straight friendships, and the emergence of a new subgenre of LGBTIQ YA literature, the ‘gay bromance’. This chapter offers a queer reading of three contemporary YA gay bromances: Tim Federle’s The Great American Whatever (2016), Will Walton’s Anything Could Happen (2015) and Bill Konigsberg’s Openly Straight (2013). It views the gay bromance subgenre as a response to the recent revisioning of acceptable masculinities and the growing acceptance and visibility of homosexuality. In doing so, it exposes the implications gay bromances have for the construction and enactment of both straight and gay masculinities. While gay bromances can be read as an attempt to deconstruct homophobia, reconfiguring homosocial discourses and straight masculinities, they nevertheless place limitations on gay identities and experiences, and thus ultimately maintain the subordination of homosexual subjectivities within heteronormative discourses.
