On a Sunbeam: Queering and Challenging Heteronormativity and Gender Binaries in YA Graphic Literature

Graphic literature, while once considered a "low-brow" form of literature, has surged in popularity both in scholarly work and leisure readings. Dominating specific niches where the intermedial form lends itself to being especially fitting, graphic literature has been evaluated to be of significant importance for its narrative quality. In the niche of queer literature, graphic texts find themselves blooming beyond traditional fiction narratives. By blending together queer and graphic literature, the impact of narratology on the text is significant as it invites the reader to experience intermedial narrative forms that both challenge and conform to traditional narrative expectations. On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden is a YA queer graphic novel that employs intermedial narratives to deliver both prose and a visual representation of marginalized and oppressed people that both defies traditional literary conventions and demonstrates how literary studies should evolve to accept and encompass intermedial forms. This is significant for challenging educators’ tendency toward enforcing heteronormativity and gender binaries, rather than challenging them, in the classroom.