The Classic Coming Out Novel: Unacknowledged Challenges to the Heterosexual Mainstream

Challenges to the Heterosexual Mainstream The coming out novel has repeatedly come under fire for complying with heterodominance through its supposed focus on visibility and its believed teleology. The article counters these criticisms by means of three classic coming out stories. Audre Lorde's Zami problematizes the primacy of visibility associated with the genre, focusing on those who do not exhibit the presupposed visible markers and countering the essentialism that follows from an equation of visibility and identity. Zami as well as Edmund White's A Boy's Own Story and Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit exhibit a non-linear structure, showing that the coming out novel does not always unfold chronologically until sexual identity is established. A gay or lesbian identity, moreover, is not necessarily the genre's sole end product. Rather than complying with heterodominance, classic coming out novels such as Zami, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, and A Boy's Own Story actually present unacknowledged challenges to the heterosexual mainstream.