Sister Sledge Said It Best— “We are Family”: Chosen Family in LGBTQ+ Young Adult Literature

Abstract

This thesis will explore the concept of chosen, or voluntary, family as it relates to fictional depictions of young adults who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community. The introductory chapter of this thesis will discuss the importance of chosen family, depictions within LGBTQ+ literature for young adult readers, and how these depictions could be more prominent within young adult media to ensure queer readers have access to these models when constructing their own chosen family bonds in the present and the future. Becky Albertalli’s Simonverse, a representation of contemporary realism, will show how the expansion of a chosen family can include a community and influence more than just the figures within that community; this will be presented in the second chapter of this thesis. The inclusion of multicultural communities within a chosen family will be depicted through Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s The Inexplicable Logic of My Life, Adiba Jaigirdar’s The Henna Wars, and Sheba Karim’s Mariam Sharma Hits the Road in the third chapter. The fourth chapter will show how magical connections can parallel and expedite the creation of chosen family bonds in Aiden Thomas’s Cemetery Boys and M.K. England’s Spellhacker. The conclusion of this thesis will tie together the research previously analyzed with the intention of discussing how the chosen family is represented in LGBTQ+ young adult literature and media, and how these works could further model chosen family within the variety of genres reflected in these media types.