Neuroscience and Young Adult Fiction: A Recipe for Trouble?

Modern Dystopian Fiction and Political Thought: Narratives of World Politics

Asking for Trouble

While Young Adult dystopian texts commonly manipulate expectations of time and space, it is largely in a linear sense—projecting futuristic scenarios, shifting the contemporary reader into a speculative space sometimes only slightly removed from contemporary social, political, or environmental concerns (Booker 3; McDonough and Wagner 157). These concerns are projected into the future, having followed their natural trajectory and come to a dystopian present. Authors write words and worlds of warning in a postapocalyptic landscape, drawing from and confirming established dystopian tropes, and affirming the activist power of teenage protagonists in cultivating change. This article examines the intersections between dystopian Young Adult literature and Indigenous Futurisms, and the possibilities for sharing or encoding Indigenous Knowledge through the disruption or revision of genre, where the act itself become a movement of activism and survival echoed in text. Lynette James acknowledges the “ruptures” (157) Indigenous authors have made in the genre through incorporating Indigenous Knowledge into story as an embedded element – not only of narrative, but of structure. Ambelin Kwaymullina, of the Palyku people of the Pilbara region of Western Australia, exemplifies this approach in her disruption or rupture of the dystopian genre in her embodiment of Indigenous Knowledge in the Young Adult (YA) text The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf. Kwaymullina centres Indigenous Knowledge throughout the trilogy, offering a powerful revision of key tropes of the dystopian YA genre, creating a perspective that privileges Indigenous Knowledge. This is most significantly identified through her depiction of time as a non-linear concept, at once realised narratively, conceptually, and structurally in the text. The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf, the first of a trilogy of novels in “The Tribe” series, presents a futuristic post-apocalyptic world, set 300 years after the Reckoning, a cataclysmic environmental disaster. The protagonist, Ashala Wolf, is one of a number of people with supernatural abilities that are outlawed by their government and labelled Illegals. As the novel begins, Ashala is being interrogated by the villainous Neville Rose, held in a detention centre as she plots to escape, free her fellow detainees, and return to the Tribe in the Firstwood. The plot draws from historical and contemporary parallels in Australia, yet part of the text’s subversive power is that these parallels and connections are never made explicit on the page. The reader is invited to become an active participant in coding meaning by applying their own understandings of the context and connections, creating an inter-subjective dialogue between reader and text, and Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowing. This article looks to the first novel in the trilogy as the key exemplifier of the disruption of genre and knowledge through the representation of time. It is in this novel that these concepts are established and realised most clearly, being predominantly from Ashala’s perspective as a direct descendant of Indigenous Australians, with the following two novels divided between Ashala, Georgie, and Ember as polyphonic narrative focalisers. Acting as an introduction to the series, The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf presents a foundation for readers to challenge their perceptions on both genre and knowledge. Kwaymullina entangles the two, imbuing knowledge throughout narrative and structure which in turn disrupts genre. In her revisioning of narrative through genre and structural focus of time as a non-linear concept, Kwaymullina puts into practice Conrad Scott’s argument that “the potential healing of moments or processes of crisis in Indigenous dystopias is never possible without a strategic engagement with narrative itself, and even the formal aspects of the text” (73).While the series fits the conventions of the dystopian genre, it has been more commonly identified as speculative fiction, or Indigenous futurism, as Kwaymullina herself defines her work. James notes the significance of acknowledging a text as Indigenous futurism, writing, “identifying a work as Indigenous futurism rather than simply as YA dystopia asks readers, critics, and scholars to adjust their orientation in ways that may radically alter both their perception and reception of it” (153). For the purposes of this article, I acknowledge the clear value and importance of identifying the text as Indigenous futurism, but also find value in the movements that define the shift from dystopian literature to Indigenous futurism, in its engagement with and recasting of dystopian conventions in the text. In embedding Indigenous Knowledge in her worldbuilding and narrative, Kwaymullina actively rewrites dystopian expectations and tropes. These notions would be expected or normalised when grounded in Indigenous futurism, but are regarded as a subversion and revision when read in dystopian fiction. The text engages directly with the specific tropes and expectations of dystopian genre—its significance in rewriting the spaces, narratives, and structures of the genre cannot be overstated. The employment of the dystopian genre as both framework and space of revision speaks to larger debates of the value of dystopian fiction in examining socio-cultural issues over other genres such as realism. Critics argue the speculative nature of dystopian fiction that remains linked to concerns of the present and past allows audiences to envision and experience their own transformative experience, effecting political change (Kennon; Mallan; Basu, Broad, and Hintz; Sypnowich). Balaka Basu, Katherine Broad, and Carrie Hintz argue that serious issues presented in fantastic futuristic scenarios “may provide young people with an entry point into real-world problems, encouraging them to think about social and political issues in new ways, or even for the first time” (4-5). Kerry Mallan notes the “ability of dystopian fiction to open up to readers a dystopian social elsewhere serves a double function: On the one hand, it offers readers an opportunity to reflect on their current existence to compare the similarities and differences between the real and the fictional; on the other, these stories implicitly exhort young people to take responsibility for their own lives and the future of society” (16). Drawing on these metanarrative structures with the interweaving of Indigenous knowledge increases the active responsibility for the reader. It invokes Nnedi Okorafor’s labelling of Indigenous Futurisms as “the most truthful way of telling the truth” (279), creating opportunities for the Indigenous and non-Indigenous reader to engage with narratives of a real apocalypse on invaded land. The dystopian setting and expectations form a buffer between reader and text (Basu, Broad, and Hintz 4), making the narrative more accessible to the reader without shying away from the embedded trauma, while drawing on dystopian fiction’s balance of despair and optimism (Basu, Broad, and Hintz 2).The stakes and value of dystopian fiction are heightened when engaging with Indigenous narratives and knowledge; as Claire Coleman (a Noongar woman from the south coast of Western Australia) notes, Indigenous Australians live in a post-apocalyptic state as “all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people alive today are the descendants of people who survived an apocalypse” (n.p.). James, quoting Uppinder Mehan, concurs, writing “these narrators are ‘survivors—or the descendants of survivors’ [162], not just of broken dystopian worlds or post-cataclysmic events but of the real historical legacies of slavery, conquest, and oppression” (157). Writing on Indigenous futurisms in dystopian and utopian fiction, Mary Morrison argues “people outside Western hegemonic power structures would likely be well-placed to transform the utopian imagination, to decolonize it” (11), acknowledging the significance in the intersection of genre and lived experience by author and character.Kwaymullina expands on this, noting that for Indigenous authors the tropes of speculative fiction are familiar lived experiences. She writes thatmany of the ideas that populate speculative-fiction books – notions of time travel, astral projection, speaking the languages of animals or trees – are part of Indigenous cultures. One of the aspects of my own novels that is regularly interpreted as being pure fantasy, that of an ancient creation spirit who sung the world into being, is for me simply part of my reality. (“Edges” 27)Kwaymullina affirms Coleman and James in her approach, writing “Indigenous people lived through the end of the world, but we did not end. We survived by holding on to our cultures, our kin, and our sense of what was right in a world gone terribly wrong” (“Edges” 29). The Tribe series demonstrates survivance, with Kwaymullina’s approach forming possibilities for intersubjective dialogues across genre. The concept is reinforced through Ashala’s repeated, joyful cries of hope throughout the text: “I live! We live! We survive!” (197, 200, 279, 391).Sara K. Day, Miranda A. Green-Barteet, and Amy L. Montz note dystopian literature considers possible futures from the outlook and failures of the present (8), arguing “the label ‘dystopia’ typically applies to works that simultaneously imagine futures and consider the present, essentially occupying a liminal space between these times” (Day, Green-Barteet, and Montz 9). This sense of liminality is heightened with the engagement of time from an Indigenous perspective; as Scott writes, “Indigenous dystopian fiction presents not only the crisis of the future but the ongoing crisis of the present time, and that which is still resonant from the past” (73). In “Respect, Relationships, Renewal: Aboriginal Perspectives on the Worlds of Tomorrow”, Kwaymullina notes that linear time can “become a tool of ideology, with colonial characterisa

Reviewed by: Beyond the Blockbusters: Themes and Trends in Contemporary Young Adult Fiction ed. by Rebekah Fitzsimmons and Casey Alane Wilson Katy Lewis (bio) Beyond the Blockbusters: Themes and Trends in Contemporary Young Adult Fiction, edited by Rebekah Fitzsimmons and Casey Alane Wilson. UP of Mississippi, 2020. Rebekah Fitzsimmons and Casey Alane Wilson's edited collection, Beyond the Blockbusters: Themes and Trends in Contemporary Young Adult Fiction, is an excellent addition to the study of Young Adult (YA) literature, providing key insights into the roles that understudied and underrecognized texts play in literary discourse about adolescence. In "Introduction. Boom! Goes the Hypercanon: On the Importance of the Overlooked and Understudied in Young Adult Literature," Fitzsimmons and Wilson establish two goals for this collection of essays: their first goal is "to move away from analysis focused only on singular popular texts and toward a broader framework of common themes, character arcs, and genre conventions present in the contemporary YA field" (x). This clearly stated goal helps set the tone of the volume, which takes a more "macrolevel approach," Fitzsimmons and Wilson point out, favoring broader understandings of what these genres are doing rather [End Page 283] than in-depth, close reading analyses (x). Connected to this is their second goal, "to expand the corpus of materials with which children's literature scholarship regularly engages and examines" (x). With this context, the editors establish how this volume of scholarly work does not seek to cover every area of YA literature; instead, the work here opens outward, inviting readers and students, "scholars and teachers alike to engage with a broader range of texts by a more extensive list of authors" (x). This thematic "opening outward" becomes the central strength for the collection as it inherently invites its readers to participate in this scholarly study. Situating their edited collection within the long-established literary theory and criticism of young adult literature, Fitzsimmons and Wilson provide an overview of how power, adolescence, and growing up are central themes of YA literature and how this collection of essays explicitly pushes back on the "hypercanon" (ix) of popularized YA novels and series to envision new ways of understanding those themes in YA literature. "It is this overall impression of homogeneity" in YA literature, Fitsimmons and Wilson note, "that this book seeks to correct by highlighting the vast array of genres, developmental patterns, and tropes that are regularly published under the umbrella of YA literature" (xv). Fitzsimmons and Wilson designate "a blockbuster book … as a bestselling book that exceeds conventional or expected boundaries such as genre or marketing categories," that is, "books that become so recognizable they can be comfortably featured in multiple sections of a bookstore" (xiii). In this collection, authors engage with YA novels about dystopias, road trips, YouTube memoirs, paranormal powers and serial killers, mermaid coming-of-age stories, police violence against Black youth, masculinity, disability, romance and marriage plots, acquaintance rape and sexual violence, and contemporary ballet. With this breadth of focus, the collection excellently surveys different trends in YA literature while still leaving room for other scholars to develop further analyses about additional understudied texts. The fourteen chapters in the collection are split into three sections: Defining Boundaries "groups together essays that collectively work to provide insights into the conventions of existing subgenres within the YA category" (xvi). Next, Expanding Boundaries "brings together essays that explore collisions of subject, theme, and character in ways that challenge the limits of long-established genres." Fitzsimmons and Wilson also note that "[w]hile the essays in the previous section provide insight into the rules that define (emerging) genres, the essays in this [End Page 284] section look at texts that question the rules as we know them" (xviii). Last, Revealing Boundaries "works to critique existing categories by tracing often unspoken genre norms and pushing back against expectations," and the authors in this section "work to illuminate boundaries that previously may have been hidden or overlooked by previous analyses" (xix). The section divides are one thing that I think the volume could improve on. While I wholeheartedly agree that these divides help balance the work of the essays, I would have found it more helpful to include...

Critiques Claudia Nelson Like our spring issue, ChLAQ 40.2 does not have an official theme, but the articles included here nonetheless share an interest in works in which children serve as the vehicles for social critique. The genres they examine range from comic strips to picture books to young adult dystopian novels and beyond, but together, these articles indicate ways in which literature for children and young adults may interrogate particular social constructs and seek to replace them with others. We begin with Lara Saguisag’s “Family Amusements: Buster Brown and the Place of Humor in the Early Twentieth-Century Home.” In contrast to critics who see Buster Brown primarily as a subversive text, Saguisag argues that it instructs readers in using humor to shore up the family, an institution widely perceived as under threat during the strip’s heyday. In doing so, however, Buster Brown supported not the family in general but the companionate family in particular, a model inimical to hierarchy. Buster and his parents thus function simultaneously to critique patriarchy and to support what was increasingly offered as an alternative to it. The main title of Vanessa Joosen’s “Second Childhoods and Intergenerational Dialogues: How Children’s Literature Studies and Age Studies Can Supplement Each Other” speaks to the kind of child-adult exchanges going on both within Buster Brown and in the strip’s crossover appeal, but Joosen’s focus is not on the Progressive Era US but rather on present-day Europe. Using a sample of four award-winning Dutch and British texts, Joosen examines “how old age and intergenerational relationships are constructed” in these works, asking “how insights from age studies can contribute to interpreting and contextualizing these fictional constructs.” Much as Buster Brown, in Saguisag’s reading, privileges both the playful child and the adult who is willing to play along with him, Joosen sees in her selected texts a validating of playful child and playful elder that comes at the expense of authority situated in the (implicitly joyless) middle-aged. Continuing this focus on the potential social power of play, David Aitchison turns to the concept of “puerility” in “Little Saboteurs, Puerile Politics: The [End Page 101] Child, the Childlike, and the Principled Life in Carl Hiaasen’s Ecotage Novels for Young Adults.” Aitchison reads Hiaasen’s Hoot, Flush, and Scat as indicative of how today’s environmentalist discourse offers “a certain political possibility for the child and the childlike: a license to react strongly, respond playfully, and get into trouble in the name of protecting the environment.” Simultaneously, Aitchison suggests, it is important to recognize that this discourse exists in the context of “a deeply politicized fear of childishness,” so that Hiaasen’s novels may productively be understood as “rethink[ing] what it means for children to be responsible.” Although Suzanne Collins’s protagonist Katniss Everdeen is famously involved in events designated “games” by her culture, the Hunger Games do not invite the reader to see them as play. We can, however, readily see the discourse of the Games as enabling social criticism, not least because Collins traces how this discourse contributes to the revolution of which Katniss is the public face. Kathryn Strong Hansen’s contribution, “The Metamorphosis of Katniss Everdeen: The Hunger Games, Myth, and Femininity,” combines an examination of Collins’s use of Greek myth with a gender studies approach. Tracing the presence in the trilogy of two feminine archetypes upon which Katniss is invited to model herself, namely Artemis and Philomela, Hansen argues that ultimately Katniss must reject both in order “to create a form of femininity that allows her to break free from her past and to change her society.” The article section of this issue concludes with a consideration of another contemporary dystopian novel for young adults. Amy Elliot’s “Power in Our Words: Finding Community and Mitigating Trauma in James Dashner’s The Maze Runner” argues that Dashner’s popular novel, the first installment of a trilogy later augmented by a prequel, seeks to school its adolescent readers in a crucial emotional skill by “convey[ing] the nature of trauma and suggest[ing] productive responses to help mitigate grief.” In Elliot’s reading...

Reviewed by: Beyond the Blockbusters: Themes and Trends in Contemporary Young Adult Fiction ed. by Rebekah Fitzsimmons and Casey Alane Wilson Robert Prickett (bio) Rebekah Fitzsimmons and Casey Alane Wilson, editors. Beyond the Blockbusters: Themes and Trends in Contemporary Young Adult Fiction. UP of Mississippi, 2020. Harry Potter. Twilight. The Fault in Our Stars. The Hunger Games. These "blockbuster" books and films have dramatically changed the landscape of young adult literature in recent years. Despite the ever-expanding young adult literature publishing world, the editors of this collection argue that there continues to be a detrimental focus on these blockbuster texts adapted to films within scholarship, the classroom, and library environments. The editors argue, "limiting scholarship to this hypercanon means many valuable and important perspectives and approaches are left out" (ix) and posit "three major takeaways" of their collection: (1) that YA is diverse, not a singular genre; (2) that there are YA texts overlooked due to the phenomenon of the blockbuster; and (3) that "scholars, teachers, librarians, and patrons of YA literature … have influence over which texts become blockbusters" (xxi–xxii). The essays within this collection provide a hint at the thematic emphasis that the editors outline in the introduction, "Boom! Goes the Hypercanon: On the Importance of the Overlooked and Understudied in Young Adult Literature." Split into three sections, the collection moves from "conventions of existing subgenres" ("Defining Boundaries") (xvi), to "collisions of subject, theme, and characters in ways that challenge the limits of long-established genres" ("Expanding Boundaries") (xviii), to "critique existing categories" (Revealing Boundaries") (xix). This collection of fourteen essays covers a good deal of ground, ranging from focused topics on mermaids to police-violence to fairy tales to ballet novels. Some of the essays effectively illustrate the overarching argument of the collection and do, themselves, expand the scholarship and focus to lesser-known, lesser-studied works. Taken as a sub-set, essays such as Amber Gray's "Fathoms Below: An In-Depth Examination of the Mermaid in Young Adult Literature, 2010–2015"; Leah Phillips' "Mythopoetic YA: Worlds of Possibility"; Sara K. Day's "Reimagining Forever …: The Marriage Plot in Recent Young Adult Literature"; and Sarah E. Whitney's "Sharpening the Pointe: The Intersectional Feminism of Contemporary Young Adult Ballet Novels" provide a thematic/trend approach to the analysis over the subgenre's multiple texts. These essays are a diverse set of readings outside of the "blockbusters" of YA, providing the intended expansion of research and texts that the editors argued for effectively. However, there are clear moments where the very thing that the editors seem to be arguing against points out the struggle inherent within their argument and within YA itself. There is recognized power in the "blockbuster," and the draw of the "blockbuster" makes it irresistible to include. For instance, the essay that starts the collection, "Exploring the Genre Conventions of the YA [End Page 219] Dystopian Trilogy as Twenty-First-Century Utopian Dreaming" by Rebekah Fitzsimmons, one of the editors, is focused on the dystopian trilogy that has had many blockbuster moments, such as the Hunger Games, Divergent, The Maze Runner, The Giver, and so on. While the author points out the desire to "move beyond the best-known trilogies" (3), her examples repeatedly include the Hunger Games and interestingly, The Chaos Walking trilogy (soon to be a major motion picture starring the current Spider-Man star, Tom Holland, and Star Wars star, Daisy Ridley). Another essay centered on police violence in YA, "Who Are These Books Really For? Police-Violence YA, Black Youth Activism, and the Implied White Audience" by Kaylee Jangula Mootz—an incredibly timely addition to the scholarship of YA at this particular moment in time—begins with an acknowledgment of the "blockbuster" status of The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas and continues to include an analysis of other "blockbuster" YA books, such as All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely and Tony Medina's "blockbuster" graphic novel, I Am Alonso Jones. The blockbuster, after all, is known to many; the appeal and functional value of referencing the known and well-liked to the reader is too compelling even in a collection seeking to turn the spotlight...

“Post-apocalyptic fiction has been moved to our current affairs section”—this announcement was allegedly first observed outside a Massachusetts bookstore in mid-November 2016, and has since made its way around the internet as a much-quoted meme. And it is true that post-apocalyptic and dystopian elements have become dominant factors in current fiction. In this article, I discuss “the dystopic” in contemporary fiction and relate it to the increasing current interest in apocalyptic scenarios and motifs. The inherent allegorical and didactical aspects of dystopian fiction have long been criticized for making this particular kind of literature either one-dimensional and moralistic, on the one hand, or purely entertaining and escapist, on the other, particularly with regard to the booming industry of young adult literature.However, there is plenty of evidence of creative and original poetic explorations of scenarios, languages, and worldviews in contemporary dystopic fiction and poetry, and one of the most experimental and influential Scandinavian examples of this is Øyvind Rimbereid's 2004 collection of poetry, Solaris korrigert (Solaris Corrected). The title poem, a thirty-five-page-long narrative science fiction poem, describes life in the year 2480, in a future society owned, regulated, and controlled by what seems to be a privatized corporation. The poem is written in a language specifically created for—we assume—this poem, simulating a future amalgamated language containing elements from (amongst others) Norwegian, English, German, Old Norse, Dutch, and Rimbereid's own spoken Stavanger dialect. The poem can obviously be read as a portrayal of a dystopian future society, a collapsing civilization in a post-industrial society sitting on top of defunct and scrapped oil installations on the coast of the North Sea.This article argues that Rimbereid's poem not only belongs to a current wave of contemporary dystopic fiction, but also should be seen as an example of a particularly creative piece of political poetry, fitting the description of critical dystopia. This points at a version of dystopic fiction that not only depicts a world worse than our own, but that also contains possible utopian elements. This is in line with the established conception of this poem (Lindholm 2008; Auklend 2010; Norheim 2012) and means that the poem does not only imagine and describe a catastrophic future for us to draw potentially allegoric and didactic wisdom from (as is the default for dystopic narratives), but also carries with it a more specific imperative for its readers, namely, that of hope, and along with this, assigns the role of instigator of insurgence to imagination, critical creativity, and to poetry itself. In this article, I attempt to pinpoint the location of these fragments of hope by proposing a reading of the poem where its ominous, downward-bound, apocalyptic ending—where the protagonist seems to be uploaded to the Solaris, an artificial world residing on the bottom of the North Sea—is seen as accommodating a revolutionary gesture.We are living in dystopic times, we hear. A time where dystopia is not only a literary genre or a sub-category of utopia. Rather, it is now “being mobilized as a signifier for our times,” Tom Moylan suggested in a 2018 essay (2018, 1), and since then, the tendency has intensified due to increasing political rifts and polarizations, but also (at the time of writing) due to the global outbreak of an infectious disease with possibly unforeseeable consequences—and collective fear.It is not hard, we understand, to come up with reasons why so many writers and filmmakers at the beginning of the twenty-first century have fantasized about the apocalyptic, about the end of the world as we know it, about a world rid of civilization and modern, democratic societies—or why they have conjured up scenarios of calamity, chaos, and government that has gone wrong or morphed into brutal, authoritarian forms. If we think of literature in terms of mimesis, possible reasons for this tendency are obvious: fiction relates to, comments on, and mimics both the world we live in and the state of it. Dystopia has been called the narrative of late modernity (Auklend 2010), and we are currently, as Jill Lepore stated in a (much commented upon) New Yorker piece in 2017, living in “A Golden Age for Dystopian Fiction.” We could add that, with dystopian studies being one of the fastest-growing branches of literary criticism, particularly in the field of young adult literature, we are also living in a golden age for dystopian studies. In Scandinavian literature, dystopia seems to be the number one export, with international successes like Maja Lunde's The History of Bees (2015; the first volume in Lunde's “climate trilogy”), Johannes Anyuru's They Will Drown in Their Mothers’ Tears (2017), and Caspar Colling Nielsen's The Danish Civil War 2018–2024 (2014)—the former leading the way for a wave of dystopian “climate fiction,” and the latter describing possible future results of our own time's political polarization, anti-elitism, and distrust in politicians.And it would seem logical to connect this upturn in dystopian fiction to a corresponding historical economic and political downturn: after decades of booming economies and giant technological leaps, our once optimistic and progress-oriented views of the world have been turned inside out: “Dystopias follow utopias like thunder follows lightning” (Lepore 2017). We could also apply a wider historical perspective, and, as Moylan observes in his analysis of the “dystopian turn” of the twentieth century: Dystopian narrative is largely the product of the terrors of the twentieth century. A hundred years of exploitation, repression, state violence, war, genocide, disease, famine, depression, debt, and the steady weakening of humanity through the buying and selling of everyday life provided more than enough fertile ground for this fictive underside of the utopian imagination. (Moylan 2000, xi)Peter Seyferth has also linked the evolution of the utopian genre in the twentieth century to the aftermath of the 1968 rebellions, with its hopes of systemic change: “As we know, these hopes have been crushed in the rise of neo-liberalism,” and we are now in what he calls the “gloomy fifth phase . . . , a critical dystopia” (Seyferth 2018, 2). And looking at it, with ongoing political crises, climate changes, rapid increases in social and economic differences, public spheres haunted by polarization and aggression and all kinds of fake news, our own time not only provides “fertile ground” for dystopian thinking—it even beckons direct comparison to grim dystopian fiction.However, one should perhaps tread carefully when including the idea of dystopia into the discussion of contemporary politics. One thing is the danger of actually losing the grip on reality, confusing facts with fiction—which, in these times of conspiracy theories, strategic disinformation, and troll factories, unfortunately is not as unusual as one would wish. On the other hand, the definition of and meaningful use of terms like “post-apocalyptic” and “dystopia” are at stake. Do we actually run the risk, by overusing terms like “apocalyptic” and “dystopia,” not just of exaggerating or inflating these terms, but also of mirroring back on our everyday lives the visions of horror and fear? Is it possible that we, by overusing the dystopic, by bringing the idea of the dystopic into our own very real world, are actually making things worse? Or could it be that our notion of “the dystopic” needs to be adjusted, corrected, and seen as more of a revolutionary and potentially hopeful genre?Moylan has recently raised concerns like these about the overuse or misuse of the term “dystopia.” He sees the tendency to use “dystopia” as a way of describing the current bleak state of the world as “ideological appropriation of dystopia” (Moylan 2018, 1). From his point of view, this tends to produce a pessimistic “moral panic” rather than “provoking the prophetic awakening of which dystopian narrative is capable” (2). To Moylan, dystopia is intrinsically linked to a will to make a change for something better, and thus it is always the carrier of hope in one form or another. Dystopia, we must remember, is a subcategory of utopia. Critical dystopia—a term originally coined by Lyman Tower Sargent (1994) and developed further by Moylan—should thus be seen as a genre expressing “the insurgent hope of the utopian impulse” (Moylan 2018, 3). This is not only the hope that our real-world societies will avoid ending up as nightmarish versions from fictional worlds, but a hope of developing what Moylan calls “actual utopian alternatives”—a rebellious impulse, so to speak, that “endeavour[s] to find traces, scraps, and sometimes horizons of utopian possibility” (Moylan 2000, 276).This way, Moylan opposes another important theorist of both the critical potential of literature and of dystopic literature, namely, Fredric Jameson. To Jameson, dystopia is the non-flexible cousin of the revolutionary utopia—which always carries with it a potential for and a (possible) promise of change. Dystopia, on the other hand, is seen as everything that can go wrong if we do not proceed with care. Jameson sees dystopia as a conservative genre, and uses the classical dystopian novels of the twentieth century as examples—Huxley, Orwell, Lem, and other representatives of classical dystopic literature become images of a future brought on by humanity making all the wrong decisions; they are warnings. Dystopias, according to Jameson, represent rather than challenge ideologies. And whereas the former are static, alienating representations of late capitalism, all true utopian mechanisms “conform to Marx's political program in Capital” (Jameson 1994, 58), and thus only the utopian imagination is capable of grasping “some far future of human history the rest of us are not in a position to anticipate” (74).Jameson's critique of dystopia could, of course, be made into criticism of contemporary dystopian fiction: images of totalitarian societies of militarism and all sorts of control regimes can function as a veil masking harsh political realities, which in comparison do not look that bad. Moylan, on the other side, sees dystopia as a mode of thinking that expands the room of the utopian. Critical dystopia—as opposed to “classical dystopia” of the twentieth century—leaves open a space of possibility and of change. In the following discussion, we shall keep this distinction in mind, but also try to put it to the test: How explicit do we need these fragments of hope to be?In 2004, a collection of poems was published that has come to be seen as the dystopian moment in Scandinavian poetry, and it was said to have “contributed to remove the ban on imagination . . . in contemporary Norwegian literature” (Lindholm 2008, 367)—namely, Solaris korrigert by Øyvind Rimbereid. It contains nine poems, of which the title poem has drawn the most attention, and has been characterized as “perhaps the most original work of fiction in Norway so far this century” (Andersen 2018, 44). Solaris korrigert soon made it into several (semi-official) versions of a Norwegian literary canon,1 was adapted for the stage, and was rewritten as a libretto. Before long, it became the object of critical study in a number of ways—with a focus on its linguistic creativity and multilingualism (Refsum 2010; Stegane 2012), its version of dystopia (Auklend 2010; Norheim 2012), its status as radical poetic innovation (Swedenmark 2014), its attempt as “future topographical poetry” (Norheim 2014; Vassenden 2015; Andersen 2020), its “cosmopolitanism” (Andersen 2018), its contribution to a renewed interest in the long poem (Madsen 2015; Mønster 2014), and its eco-poetic portrayal of a post-industrial, future “No-Oil Norway” (Ritson 2018; Andersen 2019).The thirty-five pages and more than 800-lines-long narrative science fiction poem describes life in a future society in the year 2480, regulated and controlled by a central business administration. It is a place where the inhabitants work very little, where manual labor is taken care of by robots or by non-inhabitants, and the outcasts are named “drifters” by the protagonist of the poem. The nameless protagonist is a thirty-eight-year-old robotics engineer who controls a small cohort of 123 robots that carry out installments and maintenance work on the seabed outside the western coast of (what used to be) Norway, near “siddy Stavgersand”—a name suggesting that the cities Stavanger and Sandnes have merged. The main narrative of the long poem introduces us to the lyrical I—the “aig” (a pronoun combining the the English “I” and the Norwegian “eg,” with a supposed pronunciation close to the former). The “aig” in turn describes his life-world, its layout and structure, his everyday life and his thoughts, feelings, and dreams, as it all unfolds in the year of 2480.The poem follows a narrative structure that is both straightforward and complex. As the account of the future world unfolds, we are given bits and pieces of information of the future world, and we follow the “aig” from the first introduction until, in the final lines, he dissolves and/or disappears from his physical state. However, we are left with a number of possible interpretations of both how this future world is really organized and how we should understand the poem's ending. There is no definite way of pinpointing the exact time line of the poem or whether the opening statement is made from the same time and/or place as the rest of the poem. Most readings of the poem do not comment upon how the poem's time line is organized, or they see it as a mostly linear narrative (or succession of tableaus)—ending either with the death of the “aig” (Norheim 2012) or with the arrival at the Solaris (Ritson 2018). Either way, the narrative is seen as describing a one-way journey into an unavoidable catastrophe of sorts.The most spectacular feature of the poem is obviously its language. With bits and pieces of a number of written, spoken, and imagined languages, and its main grammatical structure a blend of Norwegian and English, Rimbereid creates a future language for the post-industrial North Sea coast population. The language contains elements reminiscent of the Norwegian-English hybrid language that was used in the early days of the North Sea oil industry, as documented both by Norwegian linguists (Myking 1998) and in fiction (Johnsgaard 1996), but seems to have evolved far from either starting point. We do not, however, know whether this is the official language of the protagonist's society, or whether it is a written or a spoken language,2 or whether there are any sociolinguistic distinctions in place. All we know is that this language exists on these thirty-five pages, in this poem that tends to confuse readers by its sheer linguistic unfamiliarity—but also fascinates by its conceptual familiarity with other fictitious dystopian languages.3 The opening lines are both compelling and confronting: WAT vul aig bliom du ku kreip fradin vorld til uss?SKEIMFULL, aig trur, vendu kommen vid diner imagoovfr oren tiim, tecn, airlife,all diner apocalyptsen skreik-mare. OR din beauti draum! NEwi er. NE diner ideo! DERaig lefr, i 14.6, wi arbeidenonli vid oren nanofingren,dei er oren total novledg, wi arbeidenso litl, 30 minutes a dag. AIG seer anminer fingren, part af organic 14.6,men veike, dei er som seagrass . . . SO ku aig begg din vorldbegynning, start ussup igen? KU det! SKEIMFULL aig er. SO watvul du bliom wi ku kreip frauss til deg?(Rimbereid 2004, 9–10)4The first of the long poem's forty-two parts has a particular significance for the poem's narrative plot, as it is unclear both why it is italicized5 and to whom the “aig” is actually addressing his questions. The “du”—you—can be read as “us”: readers here and now. As H. O. Andersen notes, the opening address mimics the exordium of classical rhetoric,6 in which “the speaker addresses the audience to show his ethos and win their attention and trust” (Andersen 2020, 147). As we shall see, there are good reasons for this strategy—he needs us to trust him.The “aig” reaches out with a our of and of his would I if could from world to The “aig” the I the of the with the of the world of the The world of the in the year 2480, does not with the images or that the from the have of the diner apocalyptsen OR din beauti draum! NE wi er. NE diner and this would read something like are not images of the dystopic the “aig” with a more version of everyday life in 14.6, the he is a part aig lefr, i 14.6, wi vid oren dei er oren total novledg, wi so litl, 30 minutes a poem by first the and by an account of its own The “aig” of the poem the idea of the dystopian or utopian by on the of his and its own We could see this as a way of the with the of and that has always been a to the political potential of science fiction and dystopian we are our about the future do not On the other hand, we are with a rather description of everyday where we are given as to what what to, or why the are The part of the address is a direct for but even this imperative is to How do we do a a a or In the lines of the opening the have been if we, the to have the of the future world upon the of the future be in something or does the potential for also in our own in his opening lines, has created and both a dystopian and a to make this upon itself. It up to be a dystopian that is about the other at the same time that it very is about us with the way the dystopian is a piece of dystopian fiction. In the opening address of the poem like a we see we something that is no but we but with it. This first part of the long poem carries a particular then, as it both the and us as readers on the thus also us a to how we could with the to dystopian Solaris and Solaris the is always a and a for us to our images but it also be an of its own, for us to understand and outside the of the the opening address one possible only part of the poem that the in this As the they that even the introduction both the and their the rest of the poem's narrative follows a more The “aig” here is from a to a his own world to us as he upon it. He about the and history of the world he lives about the and their and he about the future and about his who is a and and not as adapted to life as he is in this regulated, He about the of his of his to the robots he to the organic that to of the his of the and of of the technological and and sometimes he or of the possibility of that he (or his does see his own world and its regulated society as something of a As we to the end of the poem, we also that it as unclear to parts of his society to a world called their to be in the of the in the North The is by the of the society til er af 2004, account of life in the year of and and to other literary is seen as the first historical of and Rimbereid's of the Solaris poem to can be seen as both a and a of of the is years after the future in and of the narrative in Solaris korrigert that what we are with in this poem is a of the future (as in the Rimbereid's like the didactical to the that has been called seems to function more like a dystopian as we from the opening lines, the world in which the “aig” lives to our of a dystopian to any utopian of an society, a Rather, it is the world the “aig” with all its however, are parts of the protagonist's for upon his own life and As observed by Rimbereid's poetry in characterized by an number of and As we have seen in the opening these they also the as to a uses to and his and the and of his own He about his that they are in their own and are about total i som 2004, this to he oren This is not only our protagonist's of the world, but also his attempt to make distinctions human being he something from the the human from the is first of all The robots do not know their own place in the do not even know that the world they do not their own in the world, all i dei 2004, The human however, all of its own and its place in aig af kommen kommen oren out af oren er dei 2004, with a the protagonist's to the that his line of not be the to the of and Is it possible that even robots and and not and to a central we must understand as a for the in line with the Old and English The that this way of thinking to be for kind of should the status of change. This also be seen to to an made by H. O. Andersen that the of the opening address in can only be as the of his thus that the human “aig” is far more with his than he is to The however, to his original point of in the that 2004, This of needs on of the however, be seen as corresponding to the own use of and are his aig er AIG all point out point back vul wi du vid 2004, are by a that a of into space inside an He is not however, as he to i our The are as in their from and no more Rimbereid upon a central in one of the most dystopic poems in Scandinavian literature, namely, the of the and on a for but in a and on a into of a society, with no hope of and with only their a number of of their former As the “aig” of Rimbereid's poem on a from a and controlled to both a to but also creates of the many and feature in all of Rimbereid's they a in Solaris In the same as in Rimbereid's the seem to work as in this specific poem, they also have the to through the the “aig” and the In the the “aig” the du vid to the On the other hand, the of this could also be the protagonist's there are no other where is or where as part of any direct in the society in Rimbereid's future Norway is organized into and regulated and could here be as or even with both are organic or for We know for but the society seems to be at the at one point that the organic is of The “aig” in by interest and run by a who or not be one or several name that have taken of the post-industrial Norwegian coast so in oil and A of has and er vid all dei 2004, are the of the society, of the structure of the they can be seen as or They are leading from both labor and of the they have more than or the other end of the of we find the som 2004, The “drifters” can only at or even and have no The

While English teachers are working to incorporate various versions of the Common Core State Standards into their curriculum, they are often emphasizing canonical fiction over alternative literature that students may connect with at a higher engagement level. Young Adult (YA) literature may help teachers meet the needs of the whole student as well as local standards. The purposes of this study were (1) to explore how students engaged with reading and writing after reading YA literature, (2) to evaluate whether the YA students’ writing samples differed from the canonical group’s, (3) to determine if students see themselves as better writers after the experience, and (4) to examine the teacher’s perception of reading YA Literature. The research was conducted in a single teacher’s 9th grade classes at an urban high school in the Southwest with a primarily Hispanic population. Two groups worked with canonical literature, and two groups worked with YA literature. All students were given a modified version of the Daly Miller Writing Apprehension Survey before and after they read either a YA short story or a classic short story. They then constructed a writing sample using the same generic prompt for all groups. Several students and the teacher were interviewed after the process. Quantitative results showed that students who read the YA pieces increased their mean score on the modified Daly Miller Survey. Their writing samples had a greater mean score than the canonical group. The qualitative results also indicated greater engagement and understanding of the YA literature, while the teacher expressed enjoyment in teaching both pieces since they were both received well by the students. Finding that students improved in a quantifiable way after using YA literature indicates that there are pedagogical reasons to incorporate YA literature in the classroom, in addition to enhancing enjoyment.

If Young Adult (YA) literature constitutes one of the social mechanisms that indoctrinate teenagers into working within capitalistic institutions, high school teachers would do well to ask what political and economic ideologies YA fiction invites teenage readers to adopt. This article examines one genre of YA literature—YA dystopian fiction—to understand how it participates in neoliberal discourse. The article begins by defining neoliberalism and describing some of its core assumptions. Responding to arguments that regard YA dystopia as reproducing neoliberalism and its attendant ideologies, the article next examines how the critical dystopia, a type of dystopia that emerged in the 1980s and which critiques oppressive systems by depicting characters who resist them, models strategies for resisting neoliberalism. To demonstrate the different stances that YA dystopias can take in regard to neoliberalism, the article then examines the different degrees of emphasis that three popular YA novels—Divergent (Roth, 2011), The Hunger Games (Collins, 2008), and Orleans (Smith, 2013)—place on individual exceptionalism, competition, and systemic oppression rooted in gender, race, and class. To conclude, the article discusses the implications for high school teachers of asking students to critique neoliberalism in YA literature, and in their lives more broadly.

The trajectory of girlhood encompasses various experiences, and these might include practicing sports. The examination of girlhood in relation to the participation in sports in literary discourse allows for a better understanding of what it has meant and currently means to be a girl. This article investigates the ways in which contemporary girl-centric French young adult (YA) novels represent practising sports as a girl in relation to gender inequality. Through close textual analysis of three recent YA novels – La fille d’avril by Annelise Heurtier, Championnes by Mathilde Tournier, and Le syndrome du spaghetti by Marie Vareille – and drawing upon the concept of gender-based socialisation as a discursive cultural and social practice with an impact on sports participation, I investigate the limitations the three teenage protagonists face and how they transgress the social and cultural norms imposed upon them by a patriarchal Western society. In all three novels, the protagonists are portrayed as heroines who experience gender inequality in different ways while practicing sports. Although only one novel has gender inequality and women’s rights as its main theme, all three can be read and interpreted through a feminist lens. By relating their experiences to numerous constructs associated with a patriarchal society at the level of social, cultural, and linguistic practices, the young protagonists – and young readers – are given the opportunity to challenge gendered norms and the monolithic order of a patriarchal society.

This chapter introduces the issues at stake in the book and outlines the theoretical and methodological approaches. The book begins with questions that arise in the classroom: is all reading that kids do “good”? Who says so, and why? These questions, common in the young adult literature classroom, may seem naive, but they get at the heart of the concerns that motivate educational policy on the one hand and literary approaches to fiction on the other. The introductory chapter outlines the stakes of the debates about adolescent reading and young adult fiction, taking an interdisciplinary approach that draws on reader-response theory, applied study of literacy and education, and literary analysis to argue for the importance of reading in contemporary young adult fiction.

What makes a dystopian fiction so popular? What creates a memorable opening? More importantly, what are the conventions of dystopian fiction? There is now an increasing number of scholarly works that explore contemporary dystopian fiction. It has become apparent that dystopian fiction today seems to target a specific audience, namely young adults. Besides the more obvious reasons for the stereotypical anti-social teen interest in doom and despair, there lies a more important message, both politically and spiritually. So then, if you are to write a dystopian novel of your own, what are the guidelines for the novel to be both successfully dystopian and successfully inspirational to the young adults who are bound to stumble upon it? This paper looks at the way popular dystopian novels of the decade have made an impact and moves on to explore the beginnings of contemporary dystopian novels, before finally concluding on how effective these guidelines are for future use.

Reviewed by: Contemporary Dystopian Fiction for Young Adults: Brave New Teenagers ed. by Balaka Basu, Katherine R. Broad, Carrie Hintz Robert Gadowski, PhD Candidate Contemporary Dystopian Fiction for Young Adults: Brave New Teenagers. Ed. by Balaka Basu, Katherine R. Broad, and Carrie Hintz. Series: Children’s Literature and Culture; 93. New York: Routledge, 2013. 214pages. ISBN: 978-0-415-63693-3. In recent years, dystopian narrative has blossomed from a somewhat timid bud to a full-grown branch of young adult literature. There is no denying that the issue of the imminent future is of the utmost importance to young people, as evidenced by their choices of what kinds of novels to buy, read, and contemplate on. However, one might get a nervous feeling once the dominant schema of these narratives is exposed. The leading trend in contemporary YA novels has taken a dystopian turn with the future full of fears, problems, struggles, and injustices—all of which might be said to have their origins in the present time. In this respect, YA dystopias offer not only a glimpse into the future but also a good view on the state of contemporary culture and society. Moreover, the complexity of the field makes it possible to generate in-depth discussions on the implications and challenges of the genre. A book that aims to go beyond the mere surface of YA dystopias is Contemporary Dystopian Fiction for Young Adults: Brave New Teenagers, edited in 2013 by Balaka Basu, Katherine R. Broad, and Carrie Hintz. By offering an extensive collection of critical essays on the most popular YA dystopian novels to date, the authors of the book fulfill their main goal, which is to “enable a prismatic understanding of the genre as a political, cultural, and aesthetic phenomenon” (9). The book comprises four main units, each divided into three chapters. The main parts are as follows: part I is “Freedom and Constraint: Adolescent Liberty and Self-Determination,” which examines the notion of freedom and autonomy in the light of the limitations imposed by place, character, or class; part II is “Society and Environment: Building a Better World,” which tackles the issue of the degradation of natural environment and the interconnectedness of this problem with the young people’s growing self-awareness and their outlook on nature; part III is “Radical or Conservative? Polemics of the Future,” which seeks to reconcile the “big themes” of race or technology with the emerging literary framework of YA dystopian fiction; and finally, part IV is “Biotechnologies of the Self: Humanity in a Posthuman Age,” which extrapolates on the forthcoming post- and trans-humanist worlds with special emphasis on bio-ethics and questions of identity and self-knowledge. While I mostly enjoyed the content and ideas behind each of the above-mentioned parts, it seems that the topic of liberty, indeed to some degree the chief characteristic of all YA dystopias, could have been enriched with an overview of freedom as a cultural idea. As dystopias take place in diametrically different societies, cultural notions like freedom acquire new facets while abandoning others. A delineation of “purely dys-topian” freedom might have been interesting. Nevertheless, with such a wide array of topics on display, there was a danger that this scholarly endeavor might collapse under its own weight or that it could favour some chapters or perspectives over the others, thus creating a dissonant feeling of the whole. Neither of these things ring true in this case. At no point does the reader feel overwhelmed by the information or analyses, and each chapter reads well as a stand-alone article. In this respect, I feel that the book proves itself to be pragmatic and well-adjusted to the demands of a common reader. On the other hand, the editors skillfully introduce some dialectic discussion, which highlights even more the ideas presented. As the genre is in constant flux, to curb it into generalizations and norms would be to miss the point. On the whole, the authors seem to balance on the thin line that separates a scholar who simply lays down ideas and a scholar who assumes a commanding voice as a writer. In my view, the book succeeds...

In dystopian fiction, repressive regimes form a stringent system through which they control their subjects. The control is in the form of manipulation through propaganda, re-writing of history to suit regimes’ agenda, creating artificial enemies to unite their subjects to redirect their hate away from the regimes. Also, use of mass psychology, especially the idea of one identifying oneself through many and many acting as one, is one of the primary end-goals of such regimes – a collectivist dystopia. These end-goals become reality when majority of subjects, who once dreamt of living in a utopian society, are convinced to unanimously agree to adapt to a fundamentalist or totalitarian ideology. Beginning of a dystopia is acceptance of an extremist ideology by the majority along with the rise of a didactic authority. In the light of this hypothesis, the present paper analyses, with the help of theory of Mass Psychology that it is not the power alone, but people living in fictional world are to be blamed equally for the ultimate demise of the society they live in. The paper analyses the behaviour of the society through its members in the dystopian novel ‘The Lesson’ by Sowmya Rajendran, published in 2015. The paper also aims at comparing behaviour of the mass in ‘The Lesson’ with other dystopian novels written by foreign authors namely ‘WE’ by Yevgeny Zamyatin, ‘Brave New World’ by Aldous Huxley, ‘1984’ by George Orwell and ‘Fahrenheit 451’ by Ray Bradbury; and with Indian Dystopian novels – ‘Leila’ by Prayaag Akbar, ‘Escape’ and ‘The Island of Lost Girls’ by Manjula Padmanabhan. The study also takes into account how the already marred protagonist living in dystopia, struggles against fellow individuals and authority in order to break the chains of submission and manipulation in the novels mentioned above.

This book visits contemporary British children’s and young adult (YA) fiction alongside cosmopolitanism, exploring the notion of the nation within the context of globalization, transnationalism and citizenship. By resisting globalization’s dehumanizing conflation, cosmopolitanism offers an ethical, humanitarian, and political outlook of convivial planetary community. In its pedagogical responsibility towards readers who will become future citizens, contemporary children’s and YA fiction seeks to interrogate and dismantle modes of difference and instead provide aspirational models of empathetic world citizenship. McCulloch discusses texts such as J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Jackie Kay’s Strawgirl, Theresa Breslin’s Divided City, Gillian Cross’s Where I Belong, Kerry Drewery’s A Brighter Fear, Saci Lloyd’s Momentum, and Julie Bertagna’s Exodus trilogy. This book addresses ways in which children’s and YA fiction imagines not only the nation but the world beyond, seeking to disrupt binary divisions through a cosmopolitical outlook. The writers discussed envision British society’s position and role within a global arena of wide-ranging topical issues, including global conflicts, gender, racial politics, ecology, and climate change. Contemporary children’s fiction has matured by depicting characters who face uncertainty just as the world itself experiences an uncertain future of global risks, such as environmental threats and terrorism. The volume will be of significant interest to the fields of children’s literature, YA fiction, contemporary fiction, cosmopolitanism, ecofeminism, gender theory, and British and Scottish literature.