Race in Young Adult Speculative Fiction

Description

Contributions by Malin Alkestrand, Joshua Yu Burnett, Sean P. Connors, Jill Coste, Meghan Gilbert-Hickey, Miranda A. Green-Barteet, Sierra Hale, Kathryn Strong Hansen, Elizabeth Ho, Esther L. Jones, Sarah Olutola, Alex Polish, Zara Rix, Susan Tan, and Roberta Seelinger Trites Race in Young Adult Speculative Fiction offers a sustained analysis of race and representation in young adult speculative fiction (YASF). The collection considers how characters of color are represented in YASF, how they contribute to and participate in speculative worlds, how race affects or influences the structures of speculative worlds, and how race and racial ideologies are implicated in YASF. This collection also examines how race and racism are discussed in YASF or if, indeed, race and racism are discussed at all. Essays explore such notable and popular works as the Divergent series, The Red Queen, The Lunar Chronicles, and the Infernal Devices trilogy. They consider the effects of colorblind ideology and postracialism on YASF, a genre that is often seen as progressive in its representation of adolescent protagonists. Simply put, colorblindness silences those who believe—and whose experiences demonstrate—that race and racism do continue to matter. In examining how some YASF texts normalize many of our social structures and hierarchies, this collection examines how race and racism are represented in the genre and considers how hierarchies of race are reinscribed in some texts and transgressed in others. Contributors point toward the potential of YASF to address and interrogate racial inequities in the contemporary West and beyond. They critique texts that fall short of this possibility, and they articulate ways in which readers and critics alike might nonetheless locate diversity within narratives. This is a collection troubled by the lingering emphasis on colorblindness in YASF, but it is also the work of scholars who love the genre and celebrate its progress toward inclusivity, and who further see in it an enduring future for intersectional identity.

Get the book

Amazon.com

Search the book

eBay.com

Search the book

Other editions

• 

  Race in Young Adult Speculative Fiction

  • 2021-04-22
  • 280 pages
  • Ebook
  • Univ. Press of Mississippi

Similar books

• 

  The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games

  By Ebony Elizabeth Thomas

  This problem lies not only with children’s publishing, but also with the television and film executives tasked with adapting these stories into a visual world.

• 

  A Scatter of Light

  By Malinda Lo

  “Full of yearning, ponderances about art and what it means to be an artist, and self-revelation, A Scatter of Light has a simmering intensity that makes it hard to put down."—NPR An Instant New York Times Bestseller Last Night at the ...

• 

  The Freedom Race

  By Lucinda Roy

  The Freedom Race, Lucinda Roy’s explosive first foray into speculative fiction, is a poignant blend of subjugation, resistance, and hope.

• 

  A Blade So Black

  By L.L. McKinney

  "A Blade So Black is the fantasy book I've been waiting for my whole life." —Angie Thomas, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Hate U Give For fans of Marissa Meyer, L.L. McKinney's A Blade So Black delivers an irresistible urban ...

• 

  Reconsidering Laura Ingalls Wilder: Little House and Beyond

  By Miranda A. Green-Barteet, Anne K. Phillips

  One notable exception is a collection of five poems that Wilder composed for children about fairies, which were later published in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Fairy Poems (1998). 2. Scholars continue to debate each writer's contributions to ...

• 

  Blood Heir

  By Amélie Wen Zhao

  Ramson is a cunning crime lord with sinister plans—though he might have met his match in Ana. Because in this story, the princess might be the most dangerous player of all.

• 

  Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction

  By André M. Carrington

  In Speculative Blackness, André M. Carrington analyzes the highly racialized genre of speculative fiction—including science fiction, fantasy, and utopian works, along with their fan cultures—to illustrate the relationship between genre ...

• 

  The Race

  By Nina Allan

  A child is kidnapped with consequences that extend across worlds… A writer reaches into the past to discover the truth about a possible murder… Far away a young woman prepares for her mysterious future… In a future scarred by fracking ...

• 

  The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

  By N. K. Jemisin

  After her mother's mysterious death, a young woman is summoned to the floating city of Sky in order to claim a royal inheritance she never knew existed in the first book in this award-winning fantasy trilogy from the NYT bestselling author ...

• 

  Female Heroes in Young Adult Fantasy Fiction: Reframing Myths of Adolescent Girlhood

  By Leah Phillips

  ... Race in Young Adult Speculative Fiction, edited by Meghan Gilbert-Hickey and Miranda A. Green-Barteet, explores the depictions of young people of colour in YA speculative fiction (2021). Beyond both my interests (adolescent girlhood and ...