The Literary Sweet Spot: Sex in US and UK YA Fiction from the 1960s to the 1980s

Abstract

This is a transcript of the opening keynote for the Let’s Talk About Sex in YA online conference organised by colleagues at the University of Cambridge in May 2021. It considers the suppression of sexual context in US and UK YA publishing before the 1970s in relation to attitudes to youth, virginity, and patriarchy, and looks at the effects on adolescent readers of the lack of age and experience-appropriate reading material they could consult. Attention is also paid to the changing social context: the late 1960s and 1970s were decades when sexual liberation was widely promoted, including for young people, on the one hand but regarded as a challenge to authority on the other. Finally, it looks at how this context has continued to shape YA fiction that represents and writes about sex.

Keywords

• abstinence culture
• judy blume
• aidan chambers
• nancy chambers
• martin cole
• robert westall