Abstract
This chapter focuses on themes of sexuality and gender identity. Although sexuality is regarded as one of the dominant ways of representing access to power in YA fiction internationally, adolescent sexuality, and even teenage romance, is relatively unexplored in South African YA literature. It discusses how, and to what extent, adolescent sexuality is depicted in SA YA fiction and whether the dangers of HIV/Aids have effectively dampened authors’ attempts to depict realistic sexual relationships. It includes a discussion of a variety of novels including teen romances, works highlighting the negative effects of sexual activity such as pregnancy, the risk of HIV/AIDS, and gender-based violence and abuse. The chapter ends with a discussion of recent novels in which authors attempt to deal with issues of gender identity and sexual orientation and other ways of being male and female, such as homosexuality, lesbianism and transgenderism.
An earlier version of sections of this chapter originally appeared in International Research in Children’s Literature (Inggs 2009).
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Notes
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According to the Ministry of Health statistics there were 94,000 teenage pregnancies in South Africa in 2011, 77,000 of which were terminated. 28 % of schoolgirls across the country were HIV positive, compared with just 4 % of schoolboys (SAPA 2013). There are numerous publications with further information on teenage and schoolgirl pregnancies (Jewkes et al. 2009; Willan 2013).
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Slap chips are hot chips, which are soft rather than crispy.
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Khati is a skipping rope game and diketo is a stone-throwing game. The comment from the smaller girls means “Sister, you are beautiful, you know?”. These words and phrases all appear in the glossary.
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Inggs, J. (2016). Transgression, Romance and Sexuality. In: Transition and Transgression. SpringerBriefs in Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25534-7_5
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