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This article explores the representation of the figure of the effeminate boy in two contemporary adolescent novels written in Chinese which break the silence in addressing alternative gender and sexual identities. In A Beautiful Heart, the transsexual and homosexual tendencies evinced by an effeminate boy are treated as forms of sexual perversion to be cured through professional psychotherapy. The narrative's tensions and contradictions, however, call into question the reductive discourse of pathology. Such questioning unsettles, but does not subvert, the text's explicit conservatism, nor does it attribute legitimacy to queer identities. The Dream of A Beautiful Lad, on the other hand, sets out expressly to interrogate and shatter the monopoly of received opinions about boyhood, gender, maturity and adulthood. In presenting cases of gender nonconformity, however, the text reveals its own complicity in binarism, carrying with it strong traces of androgynous humanism which, in its intention to validate queer existence, is inevitably coloured by heteronormative and heterosexist prejudices. It is concluded that the various forms of gender-crossing and trans-phenomena represented as accompanying queer boyhood do not necessarily entail transcendence or subversion. The figure of the effeminate boy is nonetheless a welcome presence in children's and adolescent literature, unleashing possibilities for resistance and intervention in a rigidly gender-defined society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School stories in contemporary China, which target a pre- and early-adolescent readership, frequently evoke representations of girlhood and boyhood in normative gender terms. The present article considers issues of femininity and gender in Tomboy Dai An (Jia Xiaozi Dai An), one among a series of commercially successful school stories by the popular female author Yang Hongying. Drawing on contemporary theories of gender and sexuality with a primary focus on Judith Butler's work, the article examines critically the text's representations of femininity, its construction of ideal womanhood, and the strenuous labour invested in correcting gender deviations. It is posited that, on the one hand, Yang's text, written with the overt intention to enhance children's gender awareness, serves to guide female children into traditional feminine roles, and as such, risks reaffirming gender stereotypes and perpetuating patriarchal values. On the other hand, by revealing the contingency associated with gendered identities, and by acknowledging that deliberate—and sometimes even violent—efforts need to be made to preempt and correct gender deviations, the text sets out to question, paradoxically and inadvertently, the very stability and authority of gender as a natural fact, calling attention instead to its improvisatory and performative nature. Despite its effort to shape the thinking of young readers, the text nonetheless presents the pre- and early-adolescent years as a potentially deviant site where different possibilities of gender play out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the construction of gender in children’s literature by focusing on the phenomenon of tomboyism as a typical case of cross-genderism. It seeks to probe into different representations of tomboyism, and the various ways in which cross-gendered traits in children are regulated and policed. In particular, the article aims to call attention to a balanced approach to gender issues in children’s literature which highlights the dynamics of sociality and individuality in the construction of children’s gendered identities. To this end, two contemporary children’s stories (one American and one Chinese)—Tomboy trouble (Wyeth 1998) and Tomboy Dai An (Jia xiaozi Dai An, Yang 2005)—are selected for comparative analysis. Instead of setting up a simplistic dichotomy between the conservative and the progressive as suggested by the stories’ drastically different intentions and agendas, the article argues that Tomboy trouble and Tomboy Dai An, which represent respectively the idealist focus on individuals and the realist focus on gender’s social dimensions, can complement and reinforce each other when juxtaposed and read together. As examples, they highlight the possibility and importance of alerting children to the interrelationship between individual choice, agency and material social realities. It is proposed that an awareness of the ways in which individuality can be simultaneously enabled and constrained by sociality will hopefully serve as the basis for action, agency and resistance on both individual and collective levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]