Overview

Over twenty years after the publication of her groundbreaking work, Waking Sleeping Beauty: Feminist Voices in Children’s Novels, Roberta Seelinger Trites returns to analyze how literature for the young still provides one outlet in which feminists can offer girls an alternative to sexism. Supplementing her previous work in the linguistic turn, Trites employs methodologies from the material turn to demonstrate how feminist thinking has influenced literature for the young in the last two decades. She interrogates how material feminism can expand our understanding of maturation and gender – especially girlhood – as represented in narratives for preadolescents and adolescents. Twenty-First-Century Feminisms in Children’s and Adolescent Literature applies principles behind material feminisms, such as ecofeminism, intersectionality, and the ethics of care, to analyze important feminist thinking that permeates twenty-first-century publishing for youth. The structure moves from examinations of the individual to examinations of the individual in social, environmental, and interpersonal contexts. The book deploys ecofeminism and the posthuman to investigate how embodied individuals interact with the environment and via the extension of feministic ethics how people interact with each other romantically and sexually. Throughout the book, Trites explores issues of identity, gender, race, class, age, and sexuality in a wide range of literature for young readers, such as Kate DiCamillo’s Flora and Ulysses, Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming, and Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor & Park. She demonstrates how shifting cultural perceptions of feminism affect what is happening both in publishing for the young and in the academic study of literature for children and adolescents.

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9781496813800

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Reviews

Twenty-First-Century Feminisms in Children's and Adolescent Literature offers a crucial model for interrogating the representation of gender and sexuality in texts for young readers. Trites clearly establishes the stakes of her project, providing a compelling foundation for her shift from an interest in how middle grade and young adult literature offers discursive constructions of gender to why they have done so. . . . Perhaps most impressively, Trites balances a wide array of theorists and novels, deftly pairing well-known concepts and texts with those that are likely to be new (but no less valuable) to many scholars of children's literature, childhood and girlhood studies, gender studies, and queer studies, among others. --Sara K. Day, assistant professor of English at Truman State University and author of Reading Like a Girl: Narrative Intimacy in Contemporary American Young Adult Literature In her elegant overview of thirty years of scholarship in feminist theory and children's literature, Roberta Trites has accomplished--to use the phrase philosopher Sara Ruddick made famous in Maternal Thinking--the 'preservation, growth, and acceptability' of the discipline. By applying evolving theories of ecofeminism, gender studies, critical race theories, and the ethics of care to the analysis of specific recent works of fiction for children and young adults, Trites has produced a wonderful new resource for scholars in the field. As a companion volume to Waking Sleeping Beauty: Feminist Voices in Children's Novels, Trites's Twenty-First-Century Feminisms in Children's and Adolescent Literature demonstrates just how far both the literature and the discipline have come. --Lissa Paul, professor at Brock University and associate general editor of The Norton Anthology of Children's Literature: The Traditions in English At a time when feminism struggles to find an appreciative audience with young people, Twenty-First-Century Feminisms in Children's and Adolescent Literature offers convincing arguments for its relevance. This is an important, thoughtful, and timely book that shows how contemporary feminisms inhabit literature written for children and adolescents. Trites deftly demonstrates the benefits of a material feminist critique (and self-reflexivity) through close reading of selected texts that engage with twenty-first-century feminist concerns regarding female empowerment amidst growing social, technological, and environmental challenges. The value of this book resides in the understanding it promotes, in its engagement with other critical studies, and in its commendable clarity. --Kerry Mallan, professor emeritus at Queensland University of Technology and author of Gender Dilemmas in Children's Fiction and Secrets, Lies and Children's Fiction

Twenty-First-Century Feminisms in Children's and Adolescent Literature offers a crucial model for interrogating the representation of gender and sexuality in texts for young readers. Trites clearly establishes the stakes of her project, providing a compelling foundation for her shift from an interest in how middle grade and young adult literature offers discursive constructions of gender to why they have done so. . . . Perhaps most impressively, Trites balances a wide array of theorists and novels, deftly pairing well-known concepts and texts with those that are likely to be new (but no less valuable) to many scholars of children's literature, childhood and girlhood studies, gender studies, and queer studies, among others. --Sara K. Day, assistant professor of English at Truman State University and author of Reading Like a Girl: Narrative Intimacy in Contemporary American Young Adult Literature In her elegant overview of thirty years of scholarship in feminist theory and children's literature, Roberta Trites has accomplished--to use the phrase philosopher Sara Ruddick made famous in Maternal Thinking--the 'preservation, growth, and acceptability' of the discipline. By applying evolving theories of ecofeminism, gender studies, critical race theories, and the ethics of care to the analysis of specific recent works of fiction for children and young adults, Trites has produced a wonderful new resource for scholars in the field. As a companion volume to Waking Sleeping Beauty: Feminist Voices in Children's Novels, Trites's Twenty-First-Century Feminisms in Children's and Adolescent Literature demonstrates just how far both the literature and the discipline have come. --Lissa Paul, professor at Brock University and associate general editor of The Norton Anthology of Children's Literature: The Traditions in English At a time when feminism struggles to find an appreciative audience with young people, Twenty-First-Century Feminisms in Children's and Adolescent Literature offers convincing arguments for its relevance. This is an important, thoughtful, and timely book that shows how contemporary feminisms inhabit literature written for children and adolescents. Trites deftly demonstrates the benefits of a material feminist critique (and self-reflexivity) through close reading of selected texts that engage with twenty-first-century feminist concerns regarding female empowerment amidst growing social, technological, and environmental challenges. The value of this book resides in the understanding it promotes, in its engagement with other critical studies, and in its commendable clarity. --Kerry Mallan, professor emeritus at Queensland University of Technology and author of Gender Dilemmas in Children's Fiction and Secrets, Lies and Children's Fiction

Twenty-First-Century Feminisms in Children's and Adolescent Literature offers a crucial model for interrogating the representation of gender and sexuality in texts for young readers. Trites clearly establishes the stakes of her project, providing a compelling foundation for her shift from an interest in how middle grade and young adult literature offers discursive constructions of gender to why they have done so. . . . Perhaps most impressively, Trites balances a wide array of theorists and novels, deftly pairing well-known concepts and texts with those that are likely to be new (but no less valuable) to many scholars of children's literature, childhood and girlhood studies, gender studies, and queer studies, among others. --Sara K. Day, assistant professor of English at Truman State University and author of Reading Like a Girl: Narrative Intimacy in Contemporary American Young Adult Literature At a time when feminism struggles to find an appreciative audience with young people, Twenty-First-Century Feminisms in Children's and Adolescent Literature offers convincing arguments for its relevance. This is an important, thoughtful, and timely book that shows how contemporary feminisms inhabit literature written for children and adolescents. Trites deftly demonstrates the benefits of a material feminist critique (and self-reflexivity) through close reading of selected texts that engage with twenty-first-century feminist concerns regarding female empowerment amidst growing social, technological, and environmental challenges. The value of this book resides in the understanding it promotes, in its engagement with other critical studies, and in its commendable clarity. --Kerry Mallan, professor emeritus at Queensland University of Technology and author of Gender Dilemmas in Children's Fiction and Secrets, Lies and Children's Fiction In her elegant overview of thirty years of scholarship in feminist theory and children's literature, Roberta Trites has accomplished--to use the phrase philosopher Sara Ruddick made famous in Maternal Thinking--the 'preservation, growth, and acceptability' of the discipline. By applying evolving theories of ecofeminism, gender studies, critical race theories, and the ethics of care to the analysis of specific recent works of fiction for children and young adults, Trites has produced a wonderful new resource for scholars in the field. As a companion volume to Waking Sleeping Beauty: Feminist Voices in Children's Novels, Trites's Twenty-First-Century Feminisms in Children's and Adolescent Literature demonstrates just how far both the literature and the discipline have come. --Lissa Paul, professor at Brock University and associate general editor of The Norton Anthology of Children's Literature: The Traditions in English

At a time when feminism struggles to find an appreciative audience with young people, Twenty-First-Century Feminisms in Children's and Adolescent Literature offers convincing arguments for its relevance. This is an important, thoughtful, and timely book that shows how contemporary feminisms inhabit literature written for children and adolescents. Trites deftly demonstrates the benefits of a material feminist critique (and self-reflexivity) through close reading of selected texts that engage with twenty-first-century feminist concerns regarding female empowerment amidst growing social, technological, and environmental challenges. The value of this book resides in the understanding it promotes, in its engagement with other critical studies, and in its commendable clarity. --Kerry Mallan, professor emeritus at Queensland University of Technology and author of Gender Dilemmas in Children's Fiction and Secrets, Lies and Children's Fiction Twenty-First-Century Feminisms in Children's and Adolescent Literature offers a crucial model for interrogating the representation of gender and sexuality in texts for young readers. Trites clearly establishes the stakes of her project, providing a compelling foundation for her shift from an interest in how middle grade and young adult literature offers discursive constructions of gender to why they have done so. . . . Perhaps most impressively, Trites balances a wide array of theorists and novels, deftly pairing well-known concepts and texts with those that are likely to be new (but no less valuable) to many scholars of children's literature, childhood and girlhood studies, gender studies, and queer studies, among others. --Sara K. Day, assistant professor of English at Truman State University and author of Reading Like a Girl: Narrative Intimacy in Contemporary American Young Adult Literature In her elegant overview of thirty years of scholarship in feminist theory and children's literature, Roberta Trites has accomplished--to use the phrase philosopher Sara Ruddick made famous in Maternal Thinking--the 'preservation, growth, and acceptability' of the discipline. By applying evolving theories of ecofeminism, gender studies, critical race theories, and the ethics of care to the analysis of specific recent works of fiction for children and young adults, Trites has produced a wonderful new resource for scholars in the field. As a companion volume to Waking Sleeping Beauty: Feminist Voices in Children's Novels, Trites's Twenty-First-Century Feminisms in Children's and Adolescent Literature demonstrates just how far both the literature and the discipline have come. --Lissa Paul, professor at Brock University and associate general editor of The Norton Anthology of Children's Literature: The Traditions in English

Author Information

Roberta Seelinger Trites, Bloomington, Illinois, is Distinguished Professor of English at Illinois State University, where she has taught children's and adolescent literature since 1991. She is author and coeditor of many works, including Waking Sleeping Beauty: Feminist Voices in Children's Novels and Literary Conceptualizations of Growth in Adolescent Literature. She has served as president of the Children's Literature Association and as editor of Children's Literature Association Quarterly.

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