Queer Youth Suicide, Culture and Identity

Rob Cover is Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Studies at the University of Western Australia, Australia.

• Introduction; Chapter 1 Queer Suicide Representations in Popular Media; Chapter 2 Histories and Genealogies of Suicide Research and Sexuality; Chapter 3 It Gets Better? Online Representations of Hope, Vulnerability and Resilience; Chapter 4 Reconstitutions: Identity, Subjectivity and the Dominant Discourses of Sexuality; Chapter 5 Tensions: Suicide, Sexual Identity and Shame; Chapter 6 Community: Homonormativity, Exclusion and Relative Misery; conclusion Conclusion;

A Yankee Book Peddler UK Core Title for 2012 'Blending beautifully extant research with analyses of media representations, Rob Cover shows us that queer youth do not seek death, but an end to the pressure of making their sexual identities coherent, alongside shame, vulnerability, homophobia and the cultural politics of coming out. We must have a genuine interdisciplinary dialogue if we are ever to comprehend queer life as resilient.' Katrina Jaworski, University of South Australia, Australia 'Informed by post-structuralism, queer theory and a transdisciplinary ethos, this highly accessible text demonstrates the relevance of culture studies to a topic dominated by psychological and sociological analyses. Introducing debates on sexuality and suicidal risk while questioning the explanatory frameworks and prevention strategies that might be applied to issues of vulnerability and queer youth suicide this book is an important marker in the emerging field of queer youth suicide.' Katherine Johnson, University of Brighton, UK 'In Queer youth suicide, culture and identity Rob Cover presents a unique approach to conceptualising the issue of queer youth suicide by examining both the representation of the issue in popular media and the discursive frameworks through which suicidal queer young people are typically understood. By questioning the representation of queer youth as inherently vulnerable on the basis of their sexuality alone as well as the discourse of risk on which current knowledge of suicide is based, he provides a novel interpretation of the available research and widely publicised instances of queer young people who have taken their own lives and makes a persuasive argument for a change in how we as a society deal with this phenomenon... a balanced analysis of media representations of queer young people and suicide, pointing out the gaps and shortcomings as well as the strengths in current understanding of the issue. In particular, Cover’s examination of the