ABSTRACT
This chapter connects YA narratives on AIDS to broader affective and literary histories, paying close attention to how narrative techniques facilitate conversations between a damaged queer past and a supposedly “better” queer present. It examines how David Levithan's YA novel Two Boys Kissing (2013) draws from the emotional and formalistic structures of the NAMES AIDS Memorial Quilt in weaving a narrative that combines contradictory emotions, political inclinations, and histories to spark repair and transformation. Particular attention is given how YA AIDS narratives negotiate the place of history and futurity in a subgenre of queer literature explicitly centered on notions of death, illness, and loss.
