Teaching Resources for the Apocalypse

Abstract

Teaching Resources for the Apocalypse Richard Gooding (bio) Cadden, Mike, Karen Coats, and Roberta Seelinger Trites, editors. Teaching Young Adult Literature. Modern Language Association, 2020. 358 pp. $34.00 USD pb. ISBN 9781603294553. A challenge facing faculty who teach post-secondary courses on young adult literature is that pedagogical resources can be hard to find, dispersed as they are through journals that engage more in educational than literary theory. This wide-ranging volume, published in MLA's Options for Teaching series, redresses that problem in thirty-three readable and timely essays that retain an allegiance to literary studies. The essays comprising Teaching Young Adult Literature detail the classroom experiences and pedagogical practices of instructors in English departments and education faculties throughout North America, with modest representation from the UK, Europe, and India. Written mostly by research faculty who teach undergraduate students, preservice, and practicing teachers, this collection is an invaluable resource for instructors whose classes have moved beyond general introductions to YA literature. The essays are bracketed by an incisive introduction and an extensive list of resources. Taking a cue from publishers of books for youth, Mike Cadden, Karen Coats, and Roberta Seelinger Trites define YA literature as "texts written and produced for adolescents and marketed directly to teens" (3), thereby excluding crossover texts originally aimed at an adult readership and books marketed to middle-grade and younger readers. The editors' definition work is followed by a brief history of YA literature, from its roots in Enlightenment educational theory and the Romantic-era bildungsroman through to its twentieth-century developments, with an emphasis on its trajectory in North America. There is also an all-too-brief survey of major attempts at theorizing YA literature that began in the late 1990s, a section that would have [End Page 342] benefited from being double or even triple its current length of four pages. The introduction ends, as most introductions do, with brief summaries of upcoming chapters. The volume is rounded out by twenty-five pages of resources, compiled by Mike Cadden, including bibliographies of scholarly work on the genres and themes covered by the collection, as well as lists of relevant organizations and journals, awards, and online resources. The collection is divided into three parts. The first, "Theories, Themes, and Issues," comprising nearly half the book, reflects current concerns in the field: representations of gender and sexuality, with particular attention to LGBTQ+ experiences; critical race theory and literatures of diversity; and radical and controversial texts, along with the challenges of censorship. Some chapters take a broad approach, emphasizing applications of literary theory or making the case for the inclusion of YA texts in the wider university curriculum. These include one of only two contributions emerging from a European academic context, Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak's "The Pleasures and Impasses of Teaching Young Adult Literature to Polish Graduates in English Studies," and S. Patrice Jones's "The Case for Teaching Young Adult Literature Everywhere." Other chapters, such as Carey Applegate's "Say Their Names: Complicating the Single-Story Narrative of City Kids" and Ebony Elizabeth Thomas's "Embracing Discomfort and Difference in the Teaching of Young Adult Literature: Notes toward an Unfinished Project," describe specific projects of activist faculty striving to help preservice teachers embrace practices that will allow their classrooms to become places dedicated, in Thomas's words, to "the work of equity and justice in our time" (65). Still other chapters provide overviews of innovative and, I imagine, very successful courses. One contribution likely to find wide application is Angel Daniel Matos's discussion of using LGBTQ+ texts to interrogate the conservative agenda of traditional YA literature, a chapter that encourages instructors to move beyond glib readings of works that are ostensibly emancipatory, but in reality old-fashioned, and equally glib generalizations about YA fiction's single-minded commitment to promoting straight, cis-gendered subject positions. In a similar vein, Lee A. Talley's application of Susan Rubin Suleiman's concept of the 1.5 generation to Elie Wiesel's Night problematizes the genre of the bildungsroman while deftly demonstrating how careful attention to paratextual elements and nuances in translation can be marshalled [End Page 343] to sharpen students' understanding of "the...