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The coming out novel, arguably one of the most widespread and central lineages within the literary tradition of post- 1960s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) fiction, has repeatedly come under fire for complying with or even fortifying hetero-dominance, for instance through its supposed focus on visibility. When the coming out novel is solely concerned with the protagonist's celebratory assumption of a visible gay or lesbian identity after a painful period of hiding in the closet, the genre is said to miss the opportunity to fundamentally question the system that forced homosexuals into invisibility in the first place. In what follows, I want to counter this point of criticism, suggesting that it is not only in many cases unwarranted, but it is also potentially dangerous, as coming out narratives contribute importantly to the construction of non-heterosexual identities.1
To support my argument, I will draw on three classic instances of the coming out story that were all first published in the 1980s: Edmund White's A Boy's Own Story, which is sometimes cited as the pioneer of the genre (Saxey 2008, 14); Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, perhaps the most well-known and high-profile example in British fiction; and Audre Lorde's classroom favorite, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. Even these prime embodiments of the genre frequently avoid the typical pitfalls that are often ascribed to the coming out novel, indicating that much of the prevalent criticism of the genre simply cannot be generalized. I begin by sketching a number of relevant characteristics of the coming out story, after which I will elaborate what I see as the prevailing criticism of the genre. I will then turn to A Boy's Own Story, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, and Zami to examine how a more attentive reading allows these works to answer back.
While in "The Creation of Coherence in Coming-Out Stories," A.C. Liang maintains that there is "no prototypical meaning of homosexuality" just as there is "no central definition of coming out," it is nevertheless useful to consider two fundamental characteristics of the coming out experience and its corresponding narratives before we proceed (1997, 291). The first concept that is important for a characterization of the coming out narrative is the question...