Review of Inclusive Young Adult Fiction: Authors of Colour in the United Kingdom

Susanne Abou Ghaida

doi:10.24877/ijyal.24

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract: Inclusive Young Adult Fiction might have preceded the Black Lives Matter protests that erupted in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020, but the points Melanie Ramdarshan Bold raises in this book resonate on many different levels with experiences that authors of colour have been sharing this year, as well as with conversations that have been taking place for decades about racism in publishing, including in the fields of children’s and YA literature.

Highlights

Susanne Abou Ghaida, PhD, is an Early Career Researcher
Given the influence of American culture and the large percentage of American YA authors published in the UK (43%), Ramdarshan Bold presents the issues she addresses in the context of Anglo-American YA discourse, while highlighting similar debates and trends in other cultural fields, such as adult publishing and the film industry
Ramdarshan Bold’s introduction offers a rationale and justification for the study: she places her research in the context of the turn within cultural studies to take into greater account the role of race and ethnicity in cultural production, given that media and book content shapes identity construction, especially for the younger generation

Summary

Introduction

Susanne Abou Ghaida, PhD, is an Early Career Researcher. She has just completed her PhD at the University of Glasgow, and her doctoral research was on the contemporary Arabic adolescent novel and constructions of adolescence. Interviews conducted with fourteen of those British YA authors of colour (male and female, representing different ethnic communities, and including several authors of mixed heritage) to present their experiences in navigating the predominantly white, middle-class field of publishing as an industry which rests upon and promotes whiteness as the norm.

Results

Conclusion