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Much has been written about America's troubled teens, in particular
endangered teenage girls. Works like Mary Pipher's Reviving Ophelia
and many others have contributed to the general perception that
contemporary young women are in a state of crisis. Parents,
educators, social scientists and other concerned individuals worry
that our nation's girls are losing their ambition, moral direction
and self-esteem as they enter adolescence - which can then lead
them to promiscuous sex, anorexia, drug abuse, and at the very
least, declining math scores. In spite of evidence to the contrary
in life and literature, this bleak picture is seldom challenged,
but a good place to begin may be with recent literary
representations of young women, fictional and autobiographical,
which show proud young women who are highly focused and use their
brains and good humor to work toward satisfying adult lives. This
book addresses the ways in which 12 women writers use their
heroines' stories to challenge commonly held and frequently
damaging notions of adolescence, femininity and regional identity.
The book begins with a chapter on sociological and literary
theories of adolescent female development. This chapter also
includes theoretically informed discussions of young adult fiction
and southern literature. Chapters that follow focus on adolescent
heroines in the novels and autobiographies of the contemporary
southern women writers Anne Tyler, Bobbie Ann Mason, Josephine
Humphreys, Dorothy Allison, Kaye Gibbons, Tina Ansa, Janisse Ray
and Jill McCorkle and Young Adult writers Katherine Paterson,
Mildred Taylor and Cynthia Voight.
Focusing on the attempted and successful banning of young adult
fiction from media centers and classrooms, this book treats the
legal and experiential history of censorship in libraries and
public schools. It also looks closely at young adult novels from
the early 1970s until today that have been the subject of book
challenges. The authors discussed include Judy Blume, S.E. Hinton,
Chris Crutcher, Jean Craighead George, M.E. Kerr, Mildred Taylor,
and Sherman Alexie. This book offers parents, teachers and
librarians arguments against censorship based on literary merit and
societal benefit.
Young adult literature featuring teenage lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender and questioning characters is growing in popularity.
Unlike the ""problem novels"" of the past, which focused on the
guilt, bullying and isolation of LGBTQ characters, today's
narratives present more sympathetic and celebratory portrayals. The
author explores a selection of recent novels-many of which may be
new to readers-and places them in the wider contexts of LGBTQ
literature and history. Chapters discuss a range of topics,
including the relationship of Queer Theory to literature, LGBTQ
families, and recent trends in utopian and dystopian science
fiction.
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