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.
