Connecting and Critiquing the Canon

This article discusses the intertextual connections between the young adult novel, Pride by Ibi Zoboi, and the canonical text, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Similarities between the plot and structure of the two texts are discussed along with the differences in themes between the novels. Critical Race Theory is used to help make sense of the differences between the novels and critique the overwhelming whiteness of the canon. Implications for educators who wish to pair the two novels are provided.

In the Footsteps of the Absent Father: The Protagonist as a Writing Subject in the Work of Ronit Matalon

The article addresses the literary development of the young female protagonist in Ronit Matalon’s early writing, and the character’s relationship with her absent father. Despite the prevalence of this theme, little research has been dedicated to the father-daughter relationship in Matalon’s work and its influence on the daughter’s decision to become a writer. The article examines this theme in Matalon’s young adult novel, A Story that Begins with a Snake’s Funeral (1989). My main argument here is that the father-daughter relationship in Matalon’s work is central to the construction of the daughter’s ’decision to write‘, and points to the issue of inter-generational accountability, in which the daughter is entitled to an inheritance from her father despite her critical view of him. As I will show in my reading of the novel, the fictional representation of this relationship bears an autobiographical imprint, particularly in light of Matalon’s choice to quote her father, Felix Matalon, and to lend his voice to the father figure in her writing. As part of the exploration of this theme, which consists of both fictional and autobiographical aspects, I suggest that the heroine’s efforts to place her absent father in the context of her life and to cope with his absence through her writing point to Matalon’s own efforts to deal with her father’s legacy by writing about him and giving him a place in the Israeli literary canon, while maintaining a critical attitude towards him.

Youth solving pandemics: hopeful futures in Maths Claesson’s novel Pandemic

Are representations of pandemics in fiction always bleak dystopian tales understood as nature’s revenge on the modern Faustian man, or could they also express hope and expand our imagination in a time of environmental crisis? In this article, we analyse the young adult novel Pandemic (Swedish title: Pandemi, 2018) by Swedish author Maths Claesson. Pandemic is the third novel in a trilogy (2013–2018) with 15-year-old astronaut-trainee Linux as the main protagonist. During his astronaut program on a space station, a pandemic breaks out on Earth. While scientists on Earth struggle to isolate the virus and find a vaccine, Linux and his fellow astronaut-trainees are asked by the WHO to try out a simulation, a computer game aimed at isolating a pandemic outbreak and finding a vaccine. Their simulation is successful and eventually becomes decisive for the solution of the current pandemic crisis on Earth. Departing from Critical Future Studies (Goode and Godhe, Cult Unbound J Curr Cul Res 9(1):108–129, 2017), we focus on the figures of hope (cf. Moylan, Demand the impossible: Science fiction and the utopian imagination, Methuen, pp. 1–2, 1986) for a sustainable future and analyse how the novel is widening the scopes of possible futures. We show how the computer simulation and the successful solution of the crisis serves as a vehicle for a broader discussion about what kind of future we want, a future where the conquest of space offers new opportunities, e.g. for solving the environmental crisis. While normally in Y/A speculative fiction, technology is almost exclusively depicted as ostensibly serving human needs, in Pandemic it is thanks to technology, and the younger generation’s particular skills, that the disease is conquered. In this sense, the novel is hopeful since it depicts the younger generation as being capable of developing different thinking patterns from those of the adult society.

Popular media as a double-edged sword: An entertainment narrative analysis of the controversial Netflix series 13 Reasons Why

13 Reasons Why is a Netflix original series adapted from Jay Asher’s 2007 young adult novel with the same title. Season 1 premiered on March 31, 2017 and featured the sensitive issue of teen suicide along with bullying, substance use, depression, and sexual assault. Unlike the typical teen dramas on popular streaming platforms, this show was created not only for entertainment, but also to stimulate conversations about taboo topics that people often shy away from. However, it also caused significant controversy, especially criticism around the main character Hannah’s suicide scene. More than three years into the initial controversy and at least two dozen scholarly publications later, this study is the first to examine the entertainment narrative content of 13 Reasons Why Season 1 to better understand how these health and social issues were portrayed in the show, what specific examples we could identify as potential behavioral modeling, and to what degree it complied with the 2017 WHO guidelines for media professionals. We used the framing theory and social cognitive theory in communication research and media studies as our guiding conceptual frameworks and a narrative analysis approach to investigate a total of 660 cut scenes in all 13 episodes. Our findings provided empirical evidence, along with contextual information and detailed examples, to demonstrate that a popular entertainment program like the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why serves as a double-edged sword. The production team’s good will and due diligence are commendable. Yet, additional steps can be taken in the future to effectively promote professional resources and reduce viewers’ risks, especially the most vulnerable groups.

Nanook: He Is Coming: A dystopian young adult novel from Brazil1

This article discusses Nanook: ele está chegando (‘Nanook: He Is Coming’) (2016), written by Brazilian author Gustavo Bernardo, a Brazilian dystopian apocalyptic young adult (YA) novel influenced by an Inuit legend that mixes science with mysticism and human subjectivity. In this book, 15-year-old Bernardo emerges as a harbinger of events that will occur in the narrative, when he affirms that ‘Nanook is coming’. From that point onwards, climatic and supernatural events happen, which affect the whole world, with consequences for Ouro Preto, the former capital of the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, where the story takes place. These consequences include snowfalls, increasingly intense cold and the disappearance of some animals. Nanook: He Is Coming was selected by the Brazilian National Textbook Program (PNLD – Programa Nacional do Livro Didático) for high school students. This programme is designed to evaluate didactic, pedagogical and literary works and make them available for free to Brazilian students what are studying at public schools. This article concludes with an analysis of the text, using critical tools, which include Reception Theory to examine the communicability of the novel with its implicit reader, the dialogical relationship with that reader and the novel’s language, stylistic characteristics, the constitution of its narrative operators and its ideological discourse.

Consciously eco-conscious: An eco-conscious re-reading of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s Moon Mountain as young adult literature

A better physical environment is quintessential for a comfortable life; this conscious of environment has been one of the post-world-war effects. The predominance of colonialism is accompanied by exploitation of forest and environment. Since then, land is nothing more than a resource that conferred wealth and materials for the colonizers. The depletion of forest for agriculture and urban development is a historical phenomenon. It is then aggravated by industrial revolution and colonization. The legacies of colonialism have influenced the mindset of the colonized. Recently, the scarcity of the resources and climate change are the rising concerns of the world. This is mainly because of the humans’ insensitivity towards nature and literature plays an effective role in spreading the need for being eco-conscious. This article highlights the role of young adult narratives in spreading social awareness and interprets the classic Indian young adult novel Moon Mountain by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, which has symbolic references offering ecological insights. The journey of the protagonist through the African continent is critiqued to highlight the enfeeble consciousness about the natural ecology of an individual who seizes material development. This study partly brings out how the colonial legacies continues to influence the contemporary environmental challenges, and discusses the literary relationships between nature and youth influence readers’ attitudes towards the contemporary anxieties such as climate change and related environmental crises.

A Maud of her own: re-visioning L.M. Montgomery’s “Western Eden” in Melanie Fishbane’s historical fiction

This major research paper considers the connection between the genre of historical fiction and the complex dynamics of revisionist history in Melanie Fishbane’s young adult novel Maud: A Novel inspired by the Life of L.M. Montgomery (2017). More specifically, this study critically examines how Fishbane appropriates L.M. Montgomery’s Western Canadian writings for her own purposes to update complex social realities and sensibilities in her historical novel. Because Montgomery’s personal and fictional writings reveal a deeply conflicted and contradictory ideological stance on race issues, particularly where Indigenous peoples are concerned, which may frustrate or alienate 21st century mass readership, Fishbane opted to make her character, Maud, more sympathetic towards the plight of the Indigenous peoples in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan; this revisionist approach, I argue, has potential to gloss over the real Montgomery’s more problematic and more heteroglossic representations on race. This study’s findings indicate that the revisionist nature of historical fiction, moulded by the new context in which it is written, influences the way that texts and historical figures, like L.M. Montgomery are re-imagined and re-written.

A Maud of her own: re-visioning L.M. Montgomery’s “Western Eden” in Melanie Fishbane’s historical fiction

This major research paper considers the connection between the genre of historical fiction and the complex dynamics of revisionist history in Melanie Fishbane’s young adult novel Maud: A Novel inspired by the Life of L.M. Montgomery (2017). More specifically, this study critically examines how Fishbane appropriates L.M. Montgomery’s Western Canadian writings for her own purposes to update complex social realities and sensibilities in her historical novel. Because Montgomery’s personal and fictional writings reveal a deeply conflicted and contradictory ideological stance on race issues, particularly where Indigenous peoples are concerned, which may frustrate or alienate 21st century mass readership, Fishbane opted to make her character, Maud, more sympathetic towards the plight of the Indigenous peoples in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan; this revisionist approach, I argue, has potential to gloss over the real Montgomery’s more problematic and more heteroglossic representations on race. This study’s findings indicate that the revisionist nature of historical fiction, moulded by the new context in which it is written, influences the way that texts and historical figures, like L.M. Montgomery are re-imagined and re-written.