{"title":"Asian Masculinity, Eurasian Identity, and Whiteness in Cassandra Clare’s Infernal Devices Trilogy1","authors":"Eliza Ho","doi":"10.14325/mississippi/9781496833815.003.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14325/mississippi/9781496833815.003.0009","url":null,"abstract":"In this chapter, Elizabeth Ho considers how whiteness, masculinity, and Eurasian identity inform each other in Cassandra Clare’s Infernal Devices trilogy. The essay argues that, because it does not provide a thoughtful “ethics of appropriation” of past and present systems of oppression, the series ultimately reinscribes Victorian racist structures within the text and beyond.","PeriodicalId":238692,"journal":{"name":"Race in Young Adult Speculative Fiction","volume":"55 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124610104","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Blood Rules","authors":"Sarah Olutola","doi":"10.14325/mississippi/9781496833815.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14325/mississippi/9781496833815.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"In this chapter, Sarah Olutola examines Victoria Aveyard's The Red Queen. The juxtaposition of racial ambiguity, racial oppression, and upward mobility in Victoria Aveyard’s YA dystopian fantasy positions this text as a window into the complex, unstable, and often contradictory meaning of race in America, particularly in this present era of late capitalism. The Red Queen perpetuates colonial discourses of biological determinism that have long since fueled racial anxieties and justified state-sanctioned racial terror. Simultaneously, the text works with the concept of race and particularly racial rebellion through the depoliticizing language of capitalist modernity that offers racial minorities the promise of inclusion through their ideological and emotional investment in consumption. The goal of raising these critical concerns is to complicate discussions of diversity in Young Adult fiction and to underscore the violent, historical, and contemporary power relations that belie the mass market and consumer demand for stories, in any genre, of race and racial oppression.","PeriodicalId":238692,"journal":{"name":"Race in Young Adult Speculative Fiction","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125792647","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Postracial Futures and Colorblind Ideology","authors":"Sierra Hale","doi":"10.14325/mississippi/9781496833815.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14325/mississippi/9781496833815.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"In this chapter, Sierra Hale considers the series' use of colorblind ideology, arguing that the use of literary colorblindness and technology as a metaphor for race perpetuates racist discourse. The essay specifically demonstrates how “the use of post-racial spaces that espouse a colorblind ideology” elides experiences of difference in a genre that purports to deal with difference directly.","PeriodicalId":238692,"journal":{"name":"Race in Young Adult Speculative Fiction","volume":"55 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123921554","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fore-fronting Race and Law","authors":"Z. Rix","doi":"10.14325/mississippi/9781496833815.003.0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14325/mississippi/9781496833815.003.0014","url":null,"abstract":"In this chapter, Zara Rix argues that Ambelin Kwaymullina, an indigenous Australian author, imagines a dystopian Australia as a way to teach readers about Australia’s history of indigeneity. The indigenous futurism Kwaymullina employs allows her to envision a path forward for Australia—one that respects and honors indigenous tradition while also leaning on indigenous notions of law to move the nation toward a more ethical social order. In The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf, Kwaymullina combines the genres of YA and Indigenous Futurism to address issues of Indigenous land use, ownership, and access to citizenship. Kwaymullina demonstrates the importance of Aboriginal peoples and concepts of nationhood to the contemporary world order, suggesting that a just and ecologically balanced world can come only from reincorporating Indigenous practices into governmental policy. In making these moves, The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf becomes a utopian vision in the most politically active sense.","PeriodicalId":238692,"journal":{"name":"Race in Young Adult Speculative Fiction","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121428533","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Enchanting the Masses","authors":"J. Coste","doi":"10.14325/mississippi/9781496833815.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14325/mississippi/9781496833815.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Dystopian fairy tales, with their spirited female leads, nestle comfortably in the canon of novels with strong, subversive heroines that, unfortunately, circumvent the topic of race. These novels dance around the complications of heterogeneity by offering fantastic renderings of diverse characters for the typically white (or passing-as-white) heroines to encounter. In this chapter, Jill Coste analyzes Anna Sheehan's Long, Long Sleep, Stacey Jay's Of Beast and Beauty, and Marissa Meyer’s The Lunar Chronicles, arguing that these works use allegory to present diversity but in fact “deracialize” diversity while still representing marginalization. Paired with dystopias, then, fairy tale revisions offer a course for change: they reach masses of readers and present diversity through fantasy. While allegorical diversity may not offer a solution to the dearth of diversity in popular YA fiction, it does invite conversation about difference and provide direct corollaries to contemporary problems.","PeriodicalId":238692,"journal":{"name":"Race in Young Adult Speculative Fiction","volume":"35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125594939","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Neoliberalism’s Erasure of Race in Young Adult Fiction","authors":"S. Connors, R. Trites","doi":"10.14325/mississippi/9781496833815.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14325/mississippi/9781496833815.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"In this chapter, Sean P. Connors and Roberta Seelinger Trites argue that “neoliberalism has influenced the erasure of race” in contemporary YA dystopian fiction. They devise a framework for determining if a YA novel critiques or condones neoliberalism and, thus, “whether it is reproducing, complicating, or resisting” neoliberal ideologies. To demonstrate how YA dystopian novels reproduce neoliberalism as a means to privilege the individual and erase race and racist power structure, the essay considers Sherri L. Smith’s Orleans as a counterexample, arguing that Smith’s novel “employs neoliberalism” to challenge “the erasure of race.”","PeriodicalId":238692,"journal":{"name":"Race in Young Adult Speculative Fiction","volume":"39 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122479154","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“I’ve Connected with Them”","authors":"Meghan Gilbert-Hickey","doi":"10.14325/mississippi/9781496833815.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14325/mississippi/9781496833815.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"In this chapter, Meghan Gilbert-Hickey interrogates Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking, a series that seems to problematize the normalized heteropatriarchal family while also critiquing the settler colonial mindset that supports this structure. However, as sympathetic as Ness’s portrayals of his indigenous characters and characters of color are, the series ultimately replicates structures of both settler colonialism and western racism. His portrayals of two major characters of color whitewash racialized histories of power imbalance, romanticize and stereotype indigenous populations and people of color, and reify the normalized centrality of the white perspective, particularly that of the liberal, white middle-class. Thus, Chaos Walking is, at best, an incomplete critique of Western power imbalances and, at worst, an insidious investigation of normativity that privileges discussion of gender and sexuality at the expense of racial discourse.","PeriodicalId":238692,"journal":{"name":"Race in Young Adult Speculative Fiction","volume":"4 4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126902483","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Between “Castoff” and “Half-Man”","authors":"S. Tan","doi":"10.14325/mississippi/9781496833815.003.0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14325/mississippi/9781496833815.003.0012","url":null,"abstract":"In this chapter, Susan Tan examines race and multi-racial identity in Ship Breaker and Drowned Cities, drawing on posthumanism, and specifically, Elaine Grahame’s discussion of posthuman monstrosity as a means of identity articulation. Focusing on the characters of Mahlia and Tool, this essay explores how racial identity is elided in favor of larger discussions of what it means to be “human.” To examine this silencing of racial issues in a set of texts that initially showcase diversity and questions of race, the essay considers the subtle ways in which common YA dystopian tropes of human hybridity, technology, and national belonging can work to dismiss and dispel real engagement with racial difference.","PeriodicalId":238692,"journal":{"name":"Race in Young Adult Speculative Fiction","volume":"120 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116305211","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Fairy Race","authors":"K. Hansen","doi":"10.14325/mississippi/9781496833815.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14325/mississippi/9781496833815.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"In this chapter, Kathryn Strong Hansen asserts that the Artemis Fowl series fails to consider race and gender directly, while it simultaneously offers readers essentialist readings of race and gender. Thus, this series, which has the potential for creating characters with intersectional identities, reinforces current hegemonic structures of race and gender, ultimately eliding race and racialized differences.","PeriodicalId":238692,"journal":{"name":"Race in Young Adult Speculative Fiction","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121831111","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Eugenics and the “Purity” of Memory Erasure","authors":"A. Polish","doi":"10.14325/mississippi/9781496833815.003.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14325/mississippi/9781496833815.003.0010","url":null,"abstract":"In this chapter, Alex Polish examines how disability is constructed as a form of racialized otherness. The essay contends that the series creates a colorblind world, which they define as an ableist term and a privileged world, enabling characters to believe that race no longer exists.","PeriodicalId":238692,"journal":{"name":"Race in Young Adult Speculative Fiction","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117086758","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}