"Love Your Neighbor": LGBTQ Social Justice and the Youth Canon of World War II Literature

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 32
  In Roundtable Session: Intersectionalities of Christian Literacies and Literacy Education in U.S. Schools

Abstract

Objectives
This paper argues that socially conscious educators’ selection of texts from the young adult canon of WWII informational literature could and should serve as a catalyst to examining the ways two dramatically different Christian social narratives have influenced the treatment and social positioning of LBGTQ people.

Perspectives
The first Christian social narrative this paper examines is what some ministers call “the primary moral obligation taught by Jesus — to love our neighbors as ourselves, especially our most vulnerable neighbors,” including LGBTQ people (e.g., Gushee, 2014, n.p.). The second narrative argues that the Bible includes a code of sexual/gender ethics that rejects LGBTQ people. This code has among some members of the Christian community, “metastasized into a hardened attitude against sexual- and gender-identity minorities, bristling with bullying and violence” (Gushee, 2014, n.p.). Today, seven U.S. states have “No Promo Homo” laws that stigmatize LGBTQ persons in K-12 public school classrooms (GLSEN, 2019, n.p.). Actions that stigmatize youth are recognized as forms of psychological violence or abuse (Public Health Agency of Canada, 2008).

This paper is also informed by the work of historians like Steigmann-Gall (2003) who have argued that in the years leading to WWII and the persecution and murder of more than 11 million people by Germany’s Nazi government, including countless LGBTQ persons, “many Nazis considered themselves or their movement to be Christian” (p. 267). Concurrently, according historians like Hájková (2013, n.p.), the history of Germany’s government-sponsored slaughter of queer people reflects a “heteronormative Holocaust master narrative” that erases the existence of LGBTQ people in Europe.

Methods and Data Sources
Data were initially generated from a critical content analysis (Johnson, Mathis, Short, 2016) of the multiple informational WWII texts that are recommended in Appendix B of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects. Additional data were compiled from a second critical content analysis of award-winning works of WWII informational youth literature of the last 15 years, identified by the American Library Association.

Findings and Significance
Corresponding with Hájková’s observation, in the contemporary U.S. literary canon for youth, most of the fiction and non-fiction literature about the Holocaust, albeit excellent, is heteronormative and cisgender. However, the content analysis revealed three award-winning informational books, not endorsed by the CCSS, present first-hand accounts of events and experiences that illustrate how the leaders of one democratic government selectively employed Christian social narratives in fostering a citizenry that was complicit with the stigmatization and subsequent murder of innocent people whose gender identity, sexual orientation, race, religion, philosophical stance, and/or political affiliation were viewed as a potential threat to the power of the government leaders (Wiesel, 1984). Alongside of reading and discussing with students the CCSS text recommendations, the results of this study imply that educators reflect on how their selections of additional WWII texts are inclusive or exclusive of stories that humanize LGBTQ people as one’s neighbor.

Author

• Elouise Epstein, Kearney