Journal article
Pinkwashing Picturebooks: Reading Homonational Heroes Through Contemporary US LGBTQ plus Biographies
Children's literature in education, Vol.55(1), pp.37-59
03/2024
DOI: 10.1007/s10583-022-09496-7
Abstract
This article reports on a critical content analysis of contemporary picturebook biographies featuring lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer (LGBTQ+) protagonists. Recognizing the increased rights and legibility accorded queer life within the United States, we analyze a textual corpus of 26 texts to spotlight how nationalist norms shape representations of LGBTQ + history in picturebook biographies. In particular, the queer theory concept of homonationalism provides conceptual purchase for illuminating instances of pinkwashing (the exclusion of certain racialized and sexualized others from a nation's citizenry) across these books. To spotlight these practices, we follow homonationalist focal subjects-the individual(s) and objects through which readers experience the storying of queer history-and analyze their effects upon representations of that history in children's nonfiction. Findings from our critical content analysis suggest that the homonationalist focal subject manifests in two ways: (1) as humans "out" in their occupations and (2) as regulatory queer icons suppressing gender and sexual transgression. Both iterations, as this article suggests, advance a progress narrative that positions the United States as a "gay-friendly" nation. However and often unintentionally, this narrative pinkwashes queer history, obscuring the continued oppression of those LGBTQ + individuals who remain, simply put, too deviant to be recognized and protected by the nation.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Pinkwashing Picturebooks: Reading Homonational Heroes Through Contemporary US LGBTQ plus Biographies
- Creators
- Jon M. Wargo - Chestnut Hill CollegeJames Joshua Coleman - Univ Iowa, Dept Teaching & Learning, 240 S Madison St N264, Iowa City, IA 52242 USA
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Children's literature in education, Vol.55(1), pp.37-59
- Publisher
- Springer Nature
- DOI
- 10.1007/s10583-022-09496-7
- ISSN
- 0045-6713
- eISSN
- 1573-1693
- Number of pages
- 23
- Language
- English
- Electronic publication date
- 07/17/2022
- Date published
- 03/2024
- Academic Unit
- Teaching and Learning
- Record Identifier
- 9984420943702771
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