What a Shame! Gay Shame in Isabelle Holland’s The Man Without a Face

This paper explores the critical reception of Isabelle Holland’s The Man Without a Face (1972), which is one of the first gay-themed young adult novels published in North America and the United Kingdom. Drawing upon Eve Sedgwick’s theorization of shame as an affect related to performance and identity, this paper explores the function of shame in the novel and argues that shame plays a role in gay identifications and ought not to be dismissed as a backward affect.