ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to account for the sympathy Elaine Culbertson's argument seems to generate and provides a measure of resistance to it by exploring how two American young adult novels, Stephanie S. Tolan's The Liberation of Tansy Warner (1980) and John Green's The Fault in Our Stars use the Diary in order to teach about the Holocaust. It looks at two novels that can be understood more positively in relation to Sedgwick's analysis. Sedgwick argues that to discuss the binary terms that construct meaning in the absence of an "antihomophobic analysis" risks "to perpetuate unknowingly compulsions in each" Both formulations, 'a fetus sprouting a face' and 'she just is' dehumanise Frank even as they value her text for documenting one human's experience. The excerpt from An Imperial Affliction suggests as much: As the tide washed in, the Dutch Tulip Man faced the ocean: "Conjoiner rejoinder poisoner concealer revelator. Look at it, rising up and rising down, taking everything with it".
