"Iz ormara na police": O odrastanju i izlasku iz ormara u hrvatskoj queer književnosti

“OUT OF THE CLOSET, ONTO THE BOOKSHELF”: ON GROWING UPAND COMING OUT IN CROATIAN QUEER LITERATUREIn the contemporary Croatian queer prose, growing up is represented as a processwith uncertain outcomes. Contemporary writers do not describe gay and lesbianidentities as already shaped, finalized, and unquestionably different from heterosexuality. Their poetics have many predecessors, Bildungsroman, the 19th-century genrethat, despite conventional epilogues, depicts youth as a period of the adventure andoverturn, being the oldest one. The second important influence are foreign comingout novels (texts that describe the articulation of gay and lesbian identities in thefamily and community) or narratives of affirmation, and the third Yugoslav youngadult prose. The publication of the Croatian queer prose has increased dramatically since the first Gay Pride in Zagreb (2002) and the Queer Zagreb festival thefollowing year. In the short story collection Poqureene priče [The queered stories](2004) growing up is one of the prevailing topics with eventually popularized motifssuch as coming out, moving away / traveling, cultural signifiers of gay identity, andcrossings of sexual orientation with gender and class. Writing in the first person isalso very popular. Vladimir Stojsavljević’s oeuvre is important because the authordepicts growing up in three contexts, during Yugoslavia, in the war-time, and inpost-transition, and texts by Nora Verde are a novelty because she writes aboutqueer women as belonging to lesbian community. Young authors Mirta Maslaćand Viktorija Božina reveal an interesting autobiographical discourse and share atendency towards using diverse cultural references. This paper aims to show howthe encounter of local gay and lesbian culture, foreign fiction, and already presentgenres has shaped the current texts about queer identity that manage to avoid writingabout sexuality within simplistic, binary oppositions.