Sexual and Gender Identity in I'll Give You the Sun M Callaway College

I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson published in 2014 is a split non-chronological narrative of twins, Noah and Jude, that follows their separate perspectives during adolescence. Although Noah and Jude are incredibly close at thirteen, they begin to drift apart and by sixteen they are barely speaking with one another. While Noah narrates the early years as he struggles with his sexuality and his mother, Diana’s affair, Jude narrates the later years as she grapples with her hopeless attraction to Oscar, whom she meets as she struggles with her mother’s death. Nelson’s split narrative allows readers an insight into alternative perspectives from Noah and Jude about the same topic of sexual identity as their characters contribute to the reader’s beliefs about the place of youth in society in terms of sexuality and what is considered “normal” in adolescence. By utilizing this double narrative and framing these twins in their different subject positions, Nelson challenges youth’s limited awareness on the adolescent gender and sexual identity.

Nelson’s narrative subverts this traditional gender ideology of the female adolescent with the character, Jude to expand adolescents’ limited perception of subjective identity. In other words,...