Sexual Content in Young Adult Literature: Reading Between the Sheets by Bryan Gillis and Joanna Simpson (review)

Bryan Gillis and Joanna Simpson’s survey of young adult novels with sexual content serves as a comprehensive overview of how and why sexuality and sex acts are used within books for adolescent readers. The authors state their hope that the book “provide[s] parents, teachers, and librarians with a better understanding of the role that sex in young adult fiction plays in the socioemotional and academic development of adolescents” (ix). In looking at specific novels, genres, and time periods, Gillis and Simpson’s analysis is often punctuated with quotations from authors about how and why they include scenes that contain explicit sex or emotionally charged intimate situations. While this approach certainly gives insight into the scenes that Gillis and Simpson analyze in their study, it also serves to illustrate (perhaps to concerned parent readers) that the sexual content in adolescent literature is not included without intention and character/plot development. Rather, sex is often used in these novels as a space for character growth and maturation, providing fictional models for teens to explore safely.

The book opens with two chapters that contextualize why the use of sexual content in novels matters for real-world teenagers, looking at identity formation within adolescents and, briefly, at the history of public school sex education in the United States. These chapters are brief but informative, summarizing how identities (including normative gender roles) are socially constructed, and how the US came to have the abstinence-only sex ed currently provided in many schools. Gillis and Simpson then turn their attention to literature, looking at sexual content within the Western canon that is often taught in high schools. This chapter highlights the sex present in works by authors that many expect high schools to be teaching to teenagers, such as Shakespeare, Chaucer, Hawthorne, and Homer. Looking at pedagogy, the authors argue that teachers are often able to avoid discussing sex when using these works, which are linguistically difficult for their students; however, removing the sexual content from these novels does them a disservice: “If we are requiring students to read adult content, then we should treat them as adults or choose alternative texts” (34). The authors then shift to young adult literature from the 1950s through the 1980s. Here they illustrate how sex was often punished with awful consequences, such as pregnancy, unfulfilling marriages, or being forced to leave school. However, they then look at prolific authors at the time—such as Judy Blume and Norma Klein—who redefined gender roles and included female characters who showed sexual agency and desire, which had previously been virtually absent in literature for teens.

In the next three chapters, Gillis and Simpson examine contemporary young adult literature by genre, dividing the field into dystopian novels, romance novels, and contemporary realistic fiction and giving a brief history of each of them, both within and outside of adolescent literature, along with short analyses of representative novels. Within the dystopia chapter, they investigate several of their own subcategories, including government-controlled sex, disease-induced sexual abstinence, and sex and romance in dystopian series. These categories all serve the same purpose of examining how sex, romance, and love are governed within these repressive societies. The authors posit that “Dystopian YAL is popular because these stories create worlds that challenge the protagonists to question the status quo,” and expressing their sexuality is one way in which characters can rebel against authoritarianism (98).

Similarly, the romance chapter is divided into paranormal romance and realistic romance, discussing how in this category sexual content must be emotionally linked to character and plot development. Whether the romance takes place in supernatural worlds or in familiar settings, it is the “honesty [of sexual relationships] that draws readers in and keeps them reading. A lack of honesty, particularly emotional honesty, is what has led to the failure of school sex education programs across the country” (121). It is also this honesty that allows...