Two Boys Kissing

Two boys attempt to break the world record for longest kiss — a political act, a visibility act, a defiance act. The novel is narrated by the collective voice of the generation of gay men who died of AIDS, watching from wherever the dead watch from, as the living live the freedoms they never got to have. Levithan's formal choice is the entire argument: the relationship between queer generations, between those who died fighting for something and those who inherited it, between history and the present moment. Was challenged and banned in multiple school districts. The most important YA novel about queer intergenerational connection ever written and the one that most honestly holds both the grief of what was lost and the joy of what was won — refusing to let either feeling cancel the other out.