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Registration is open for the virtual Summit on the Research and Teaching of Young Adult Literature!  Plan on April 21, 2023, 8:30-5:30 CST.  

Don't worry, it is easy to find.  Just go to YouTube and search for Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday.

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Disabilities Studies with YAL in the English Classroom by Rachel R. Wolney and Ashley S. Boyd

5/25/2022

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​Rachael R. Wolney is a second year Ph.D. student in the Department of English at Washington State University. Her research interests include Disability Studies, Young Adult Literature, and Education. She teaches using disability studies pedagogy in a range of literature and writing courses, but specifically enjoys working with preservice teachers and practicing teachers in learning about disability.

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​Ashley S. Boyd is Associate Professor of English Education at Washington State University where she teaches courses on English Methods and Young Adult Literature and researches practicing teachers’ social justice pedagogies as well as avenues for cultivating students’ critical literacies. She is author of Social Justice Literacies in the English Classroom and co-author of Reading for Action: Engaging Youth in Social Justice through Young Adult Literature.
Disabilities Studies with YAL in the English Classroom by Rachel R. Wolney and Ashley S. Boyd
In recent years, teaching to cultivate students’ critical literacies (Janks, 2000; Luke 2014) has taken root in English Language Arts classrooms (e.g. Riley, 2014), and educators have devoted attention to facilitating students’ critiques of systems of oppression in their worlds. This work includes explorations of systems such as racism, class disparities, and gender inequity, and teachers have proposed myriad ways, through both canonical and young adult texts, to explore those with students. Such work is crucial to developing critical, democratically-minded youth who are prepared to engage in social change.  

Yet, despite such efforts, we find that a focus on one system of oppression–ableism, and its counterpart, disabilities–continues to be lacking in classrooms. While numerous texts highlight (and even perpetuate) the stereotypes and misconceptions of disability in our culture, we feel that more can be done in our field with youth to unpack those and to help them develop more empathy and understanding. As such, in this post, we explore the common tropes of disability created by and found in literature and culture. We also offer some advice and resources on teaching about ableism and disability in English classrooms, including how to select texts and lead dialogue. We focus on one work from young adult literature, The Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus by Dusti Bowling (2019), and use this as an example to illustrate how a teacher can promote understandings of ableism and disability and critically respond to literature and society. We conclude with additional text recommendations as well as implications for teaching. ​
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Approaching Ableism and Disability in the Classroom 
In conversations, especially as related to social justice issues, it is always important to begin with definitions. Students are often unfamiliar with the variations in disabilities and thus a bit of diligence is required to explain the social model versus medical model. Disability within the social model is defined as a common human experience. We will all face disability at one point or another during our lifetime (Dolmage, 2017, pg. 61). Disability is also always present, as Dolmage (2017) teaches us, “there is no perfect body or mind” (pg. 62). The social model defines disability as social exclusion, not impairment. Essentially, disability requires us to “accept impairment and to remove disability” (Shakespeare, 2017, pg. 197). The social model and the medical model are dichotomous; the medical model seeks to cure, erase, and remove impairments and disability through medical intervention. 
Providing students with concrete examples of how disability is socially constructed is helpful to solidify these definitions. When we work with students, we often discuss how wearing glasses is not defined as a disability but is an impairment. It is not until this impairment becomes extreme that it is then socially defined as a disability, where the structure of society is no longer accepting of impairment, and where exclusion limits full participation in everyday life activities. The medical model would offer corrective surgery or another form of medical intervention to remove this barrier and renormalize the body within society. The social model would accept the impairment and remove the social stigmas and structural barriers preventing inclusion.
After defining disability and giving clear examples and space for introspective identification of disability, students are often eager to share. This is a great time for autobiographical writing, journaling, drawing, or some form of expression of personal experience with or in close relation to disability. Socially, we are often hushed when we see and discuss differences, as though it is impolite. By presenting an open dialogue about disability as an entity that promotes oppression and through offering critical engagement for social change, students quickly respond positively and want to share their stories. Stories become a form of social action against abstraction (Sharpe, 2016, pg. 8), and allow students to contemplate lived experiences and build empathy through sharing. As students begin to understand disability as a social construct, identify it personally and share, we then ask them to apply this understanding to YA texts.  
Applying Disability Studies to Literature and Developing Reading Criteria 
While literature can inform culture, culture also informs literature. This interdependency can often be identified in multiple constructs. If we think about racism, sexism, classism, or any of the ‘isms,’ as cultural and social constructs, as constructed and built ways of knowing that are identified as inherent biases woven into multiple structural frameworks, then it is no surprise that ableism appears in the same ways. Patricia Dunn (2015), a scholar of YAL and disability studies, writes that, “Many barriers contributing to disability are material or attitudinal; either way, they are built. They are constructed. And whatever is constructed can be named, mitigated, or removed” (pg. 1). Literature offers a space for this work. By teaching students about disability and identifying ableism as oppression, students can begin to discern how texts promote or resist these barriers. Dunn (2015) writes that literature often “blithely and uncritically draw[s] upon disability myths or stereotypes, thus cementing them further” and it requires a “resistant reader” to critically examine these uses and challenge them (pg. 9). Resistant reading requires naming spaces where definitions of disability remain unchallenged. Providing YA novels with characters with disabilities and offering critical discussions focused on representation offers students space to develop critical literacy, exposing the text as a space for critique.
Critiquing traditional texts unfortunately reveals that representations of disability are often stereotypical.  Presentations often offer characters who are dejected, need to overcome their disability, and/or need to be cured (Dolmage, 2017, pg. 5). To resist these misrepresentations of disability, we must first identify them.  Dunn (2015) writes, “Fiction can affect the way real people are treated. It can open readers’ minds to entrenched discriminatory attitudes, or it can be complicit with those attitudes, making them worse” (1). 
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We have students read Dunn’s (2015) introduction and first chapter of Disabling Characters: Representations of Disability in Young Adult Literature as a guide for critical thinking. Dunn instructs that, “If characters with disabilities are depicted as pitiable victims, or as those who must be rescued by others, or as unlikely heroes who save the day, the novel can simply perpetuate harmful views of disability and cast people with disabilities as ‘other’” (2). She goes on to describe multiple tropes that exist and promote ableist views, including literature that portrays characters with disabilities as “inevitably passive, ever cheerful, long-suffering, and dead by the close of the book” (3). By naming these stereotypes and tropes, students can begin to identify and resist them as they read.  
Students are also given the Anti-Defamation League’s article “Evaluating Children’s Books that Address Disability” as a guide for further thinking about disability representation. This resource contains specific recommendations for texts to avoid, such as those that “include disabilities only in tokenistic ways'' or “never show people with disabilities as independent, but rather depict them as overly helpless.” It instead encourages the inclusion of texts that “promote empathy,” “positive images,” and “represent people with disabilities from different racial and cultural backgrounds.” Such tangible criteria is helpful for students learning to select authentic and appropriate texts for their future classrooms.  
To connect Dolmage’s and Dunn’s description of harmful representations of disability with the lived experience of disability, we offer Stella Young’s TED talk, titled “I’m not your inspiration, thank you very much” to further solidify the social and cultural impacts of representation. Stella Young was a well-known disability rights activist, comedian, and journalist. In her TED talk she discusses how disability is not present to inspire and shares overcoming stories and rhetoric that continue to promote these harmful representations. She states that “Disability doesn’t make you exceptional, but questioning what you know about it, does” and she asks the audience to think about disability as more than a site of pity or inspiration.
An Example in Practice: YAL and its Potential for Discussion of Disabilities  
As an extension of this work with students, we then have them apply their learning to YA texts. One novel that is appropriate for such work, and which we highly recommend, is Dusti Bowling’s (2017), Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus. This complements the inclusion of Disability Studies in the English Arts curriculum well. In evaluating this text, we have found that it offers students new and informed ways of thinking about disability, while also providing areas of critical engagement with the representations of disability.
The novel tells the story of 14-year-old Aven Green who, at the outset, faces one of the most difficult challenges a middle-schooler can imagine: moving. Her family’s transition from Kansas to Arizona fills Aven with apprehension. She is unsure of many things, including the weather in the new area, her ability to make friends, and her parent’s job which will be running an old western theme park. The move to Arizona also requires Aven to repetitively explain her disability, being born without arms, and worry about being accepted.  At her first home, she was just as ordinary as everyone else. Throughout the novel, readers follow Aven’s adventures as she finds friendship and acceptance. She meets Connor, a classmate with a different disability, and Zion, who is often labeled and ignored, and Aven realizes that she is not alone. The three friends embark on a journey to be seen, respected, and valued for their differences, all while researching the mystery that lies beneath the theme park where her family relocated.  
When discussing the novel with students through a disability studies lens, teachers can prompt them to consider how Bowling presents Aven’s disability. Questions might include: How is the book about more than Aven’s disability? In what ways do we get to know Aven as a character–what are the qualities of her personality? They can also explore how the book challenges stereotypes and tropes, asking students: What stereotypes about disabilities does Aven debunk?  Finally, readers can consider: How do Aven’s parents raise her, and why do you think they choose the strategies that they do? This last set of questions may raise the ‘overcoming narrative’ discussed in Dunn’s (2015) work and Stella Young’s TED talk, ultimately leading them to the ADL’s notion of characters needing to be seen as independent. With regards to Connor, teachers could also ask: Why do you think people’s reactions to Connor are so negative? How do we see Aven and her parents respond in more thoughtful ways? How does Bowling use humor to show us these aspects? We also ask students to be critical of the text: To what extent is this narrative about overcoming? In what ways do Aven or Connor uphold any tropes or stereotypes of disability, if at all? How does Aven, at times, mirror the epitome of Dunn’s description of disabled characters as “ever cheerful” or as an “inspiration” as defined by Stella Young? How can these critical readings support our understanding of representation and culture?  
A number of activities could help guide students toward an understanding of disability as socially constructed and to help them consider the perspectives of disabilities studies. For instance, students might note the ways that Aven’s world is not set up to make her life easier and note the adjustments she has to make. They might then suggest changes to Aven’s school that would make her experiences better, including a way for her to eat in the cafeteria that is more conducive to her needs (rather than Aven having to find another place to eat). A similar activity could apply to Connor, whose life is limited by others’ reactions to him when society could more readily adjust to enhance his life. 
As a social action project (Boyd & Darragh, 2019), students could create materials to educate others (especially middle schoolers) on misconceptions around disabilities and provide suggestions for affirming everyone, regardless of race, class, gender, sexuality, or ability. They might research legislative policy related to individuals with disabilities and analyze it in terms of the medical and social models, writing lawmakers to encourage changes that align more readily with the social model. As blogging was quite important in Aven’s life, they might seek out narratives online written by people with disabilities and synthesize their learning from those in a presentation for their classmates.
Additional YAL for Studying Disability

We have taught several texts that include characters with disabilities, both physical and mental, and guided students through analyzing them in similar ways. We have also engaged students in literature circles and provided choices for this work, as we find that students tend to gravitate toward the areas they are most ready to explore and critique. Other such texts have included: Marcello in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork (2009); Out of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper (2010); The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B by Teresa Toten (2013); Cinder by Marissa Meyer (2012); and Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo (2015). 

Each of these texts offer not only inclusion of disability, but spaces for critical engagement with the representations of disability. For example, students can read about characters who represent different disabilities and consider how their worlds limit their participation. In both Cinder and Six of Crows, students can determine how social exclusion disables characters more than their impairments. In Marcello and the Real World and The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B, students can explore the ways in which mental disability is represented. In reading Out of My Mind, they may question structures, such as education or medicine, where disability is often confined to specific spaces, perhaps even removing disability completely from participation at all.

Considerations and Conclusions 

In our experiences working with preservice teachers to develop and/or enhance their understandings of disabilities studies and apply it to texts, they are eager and enthusiastic about taking on these endeavors. Implementing culturally responsive and inclusive teaching are their genuine goals, but they often ask for more concrete examples that illustrate how to achieve these. In this post, we hope we’ve shared some of the practices and resources we have found valuable for leading students through discussions of ability and disability and planning for their future classrooms.  

It is also our hope that students can begin to translate this work into their teaching practice, not just in terms of the texts they choose but in how they think about and work with their students. If Aven were in their classroom, for example, how might they think about changes to their structure, rather than expecting Aven to alter herself to ‘fit in’? How might they help their class respond to Aven in ways that illustrate empathy and understanding? We thus feel that YA lit and accompanying pedagogies have vast potential for debunking stereotypes, cultivating understanding of difference, and creating a better society for all individuals. 

References:

Anti-Defamation League. (2013). Evaluating children’s books that address disability. Education Division. adl.org
Boyd, A. & Darragh, J.  (2019).  Reading for action: Engaging youth in social justice through Young Adult Literature. Rowman & Littlefield.  
Dolmage, J. T. (2017). Academic ableism. University of Michigan Press.
Dunn, P. A. (2015). Disabling characters: Representations of disability in young adult literature. Peter Lang.
Janks, H.  (2000).  Domination, access, diversity, and design:  A synthesis for critical 
literacy education.  Educational Review, 52(2), 175-186.
Luke, A. (2014). Defining critical literacy. In J. Z. Pandya & J. Ávila (Eds.), Moving critical literacies forward: A new look at praxis across contexts (pp. 19– 31). New York, NY: Routledge.
Riley, K.  (2014).  Enacting critical literacy in English classrooms:  How a teacher learning community supported critical inquiry.  Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 58(5), 417-425.
Shakespeare, T. (2017). The social model of disability. In L. J. Davis (Ed.), The disability studies reader (5th ed.) (pp. 195-203). Routledge.
Sharpe, C. (2016). In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Duke University Press.

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Indigenous YA Literature in Teacher Education by Dr. Celeste Trimble

5/18/2022

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We are pleased to welcome Dr. Celeste Trimble to YA Wednesday today.  She suggests that we use Indigenous YA literature as part of teacher education programs.  I will be taking her advice to heart for this coming academic year as I teach Firekeeper's Daughter.

​Dr. Trimble is an artist, a writer, and an Assistant Professor of Literacy at Saint Martin’s University in Washington State. She specializes in Indigenous literature for youth, queer literature for youth, and the intersections of book culture, youth culture, and the arts.

​Indigenous YA Literature in Teacher Education by Dr. Celeste Trimble
I live in Washington State, one of just a handful of states that have a mandated tribal sovereignty and Indigenous history curriculum for K-12 learners, The Since Time Immemorial (STI) curriculum. A few other states have similar required curricula. In Montana, the statewide curriculum is Indian Education for All. In Oregon, the newly created program is Tribal History/Shared History. Connecticut and North Dakota also have required Native history content in schools, and efforts for similar programs are underway elsewhere. However, Indigenous youth literature is not a part of the STI curriculum, nor is it a part of similar curricula from other states, beyond the inclusion of traditional stories. Here I want to make the case for reading Indigenous youth literature, specifically YA literature, both in teacher education programs as a way to support learning about Indigenous history and contemporary experience for preservice teachers as well as using it as inspiration and motivation for teachers to explore Indigenous youth literature in their future K-12 classrooms.

In 2005, Washington passed legislation in which the language used merely “encouraged” schools to adopt the free and easily accessible STI curriculum, which was vetted by all federally recognized tribal nations in the state. When the state realized that this encouragement was not sufficient enough to motivate most schools and districts to adopt the curriculum, legislation was passed in 2015 changing the word “encouraged” to “must,” making STI mandatory. However, teachers were not prepared to teach about tribal sovereignty, so in 2018 legislation passed requiring teacher education programs to incorporate STI into their courses. 

Even though STI is now mandatory in all K-12 schools and teacher education programs in Washington, it is still not fully implemented in all grade levels across the state. Partially, this is because the financial burden for implementing STI, including supporting teacher training, has fallen on individual districts and tribal nations that are ill equipped to fund it. Partially it is because in the original language, districts weren’t required to adopt it until they adopted a new Social Studies curriculum, although that has since changed. It is possible that teachers, overburdened by more and more material that needs to be “covered,” feel they cannot fit anything else in, although the creators of STI designed the base level of the curriculum to only necessitate a very small time commitment in order to ease this particular struggle. Most likely there are other reasons, too.

But I suspect that the primary reason the Since Time Immemorial Tribal Sovereignty Curriculum hasn’t been enthusiastically adopted is because the majority of adults responsible for making curricular decision in classrooms, schools, and districts do not understand why it is important, do not feel the deep significance and necessity of learning about the past and present of the Indigenous peoples of this land. This is most likely because they never learned about Indigenous history, law, and culture in their own K-12 and higher education experiences either. This is a cycle of erasure and miseducation, and I believe, through my own experiences with students, that reading Indigenous youth literature is one way to begin to break this cycle.

I am a professor in a teacher education program and teach courses in other departments around campus as well. It is both a delight and an intentional form of activism to include Indigenous authored texts on every reading list. Consistently, students tell me they have never read a book by a Native author before. Additionally, as students begin to realize their lack of knowledge of Indigenous history and culture, they share stories from their own K-12 educational experiences of the erasure of Native voices and histories, as well as the experiences of outright miseducation they have endured. Of course, there are sometimes exceptions, students who had that one teacher who did engage critically with Indigenous histories, cultures, and texts in their classrooms. This shouldn’t be the exception, though.

When we read books for youth written by Indigenous authors within the college classroom, the preservice teachers in my classes (predominantly but not exclusively white and female) feel a shift occur. Instead of seeing the Since Time Immemorial tribal sovereignty curriculum as another mandatory set of standards to get through, they begin to wonder how their understanding of this country would be different if they had read these books and had these conversations during their own K-12 years. At midterms, students invariably say, “Why didn’t I know this?” They feel betrayed by their own educations. By the end of semester reflections, the most common refrain is, “I’m so excited to bring these books and this curriculum into my future classroom so my students are not as unaware as I was.” Preservice teachers develop not only the beginning of an understanding of the histories and stories that weren’t given access to in school, but they also develop a desire to make sure Indigenous erasure and miseducation does not occur in their own classrooms. Both of these things are necessary for a successful implementation of STI or other state Indigenous history curriculum where teachers and other stakeholders must be not only prepared to teach but conceptually invested in what they are teaching.

Indigenous YA literature can play two very important roles within and adjacent to tribal sovereignty and Indigenous history curricula. First, it can be the bridge that connects both the educator and the student to the content through emotional engagement and the nourishment of empathic engagement, helping to build the conceptual investment.  But it can also fill in specific informational gaps for the reader. For instance, Washington’s Since Time Immemorial curriculum is focused on tribal nations in Washington State and the greater Pacific Northwest region. However, in order to more fully understand some of the larger concepts in STI, such as treaty rights, sovereignty, Native nations and the law, and government to government relationships, that are specific to the Pacific Northwest region, students need a broader understanding of Indigenous history, culture, and community across all of what we know as the United States and Canada.​
In addition to reading two excellent and highly accessible non-fiction texts for adolescent readers, An Indigenous People’s History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, adapted by Jean Mendoza and Debbie Reese, and Everything You Wanted to Know about Indians but were Afraid to Ask, young readers’ edition, by Anton Treuer, fiction can be an essential component of learning about Indigenous history and peoples. The following two books are excellent examples of learning about tribal history and contemporary experience through YA fiction.
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Angeline Boulley calls her incredible debut YA novel, Firekeeper’s Daughter, an Indigenous Nancy Drew, which doesn’t come close to touching the depth of this book. 
This mystery follows Daunis Firekeeper as she navigates her mixed Anishinaabe and French heritage while becoming a confidential informant for the FBI as they investigate murder and meth in the Sault St. Marie/Sugar Island area of Michigan. This book was an instant New York Times bestseller, which not only shows us that this pageturner is popular with readers of many ages, but that the publishers decided to give it the marketing resources necessary to be a success right out of the gate. What moves readers through the book is descriptive writing that makes it easy to visualize the story, complex characters that many readers will easily identify with, and the desire to know who is responsible for the murders, who is creating and distributing the meth. But readers come away from this text with a much greater understanding of and context for jurisdictional issues within tribal, state, and federal law which is at the heart of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) crisis. Readers begin to see the immense importance of the way Indigenous cultural teachings, such as the Anishinaabe Seven Grandfather Teachings, can be infused into the lives of contemporary Indigenous youth and adults. 
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The Marrow Thieves, YA novel by Cherie Dimaline, is set in the dystopian near future in what we now call Canada. Non-Indigenous people have lost the ability to dream and it is believed that the “cure” for this sickness is housed in the bone marrow of Indigenous peoples. “Residential schools” have been re-opened without the pretense of education but specifically for the harvesting of Indigenous peoples for their marrow, essentially government death camps. Frenchie and his chosen family made up mostly of other Cree, Anishinaabe, and Metís youth, as well as two elders, are travelling north. They are looking for safety, but they are also looking for beloveds and family who have already been taken by the ‘Recruiters,” the government agents abducting people for the schools. Within their travels they meet other Indigenous people in active resistance, and realize they have the key to begin unraveling the schools, the key to their own survival. This key is made up of their culture, their history, and their language. In The Marrow Thieves, Miig, one of the elders, shares Story with all the young travellers. In Story, Miig guides not only the young characters though learning about Indigenous history, how society developed into the dystopia they are living through, but he is also teaching the reader this history. Without it, one cannot understand the intent of the novel. Without history, one cannot understand the importance of what is happening in the present. This is true for the characters and the readers. In order to grasp the meaning of the “new” residential schools in the novel, one needs to understand the history of residential schools of the past, the settler colonialism that created them, and the genocide they enabled, and Dimaline provides this teaching within the text.

Indigenous YA literature, like these two excellent titles, can be an incredible support for teacher education programs preparing students to engage with tribal history curricula, even for those teachers planning on teaching in the elementary grades. For those planning on teaching in the secondary grades, reading these YA novels is also a preparation for the literary resources they might bring to their own classrooms. As Frenchie narrates in The Marrow Thieves, “We needed to remember Story….because it was imperative that we know…it was the only way to make the kinds of changes that were necessary to really survive” (25).
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Make It Classy: Addressing Social Class Themes in Working-Class YA Novels by Dr. Sophia Tatiana Sarigianides

5/11/2022

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​Dr. Sophia Tatiana Sarigianides is Professor & Coordinator of English Education in the English Department at Westfield State University in Western Massachusetts. She teaches courses on young adult literature, English Methods, and the role of race, social class and gender in the ELA classroom. She is the co-author, with Dr. Carlin Borsheim-Black, of the 2019 book,
Letting Go of Literary Whiteness: Antiracist Literature Instruction for White Students, winner of AACTE's 2022 Outstanding Book Award.

Make It Classy: Addressing Social Class Themes in Working-Class YA Novels by Dr. Sophia Tatiana Sarigianides

As with any dominant ideology, middle class and capitalist values creep into every available crevice and artifact of our lives. YAL is no exception as a reflection–and/or a potential site of resistance–to dominant social class values and assumptions.

But if I were asked to explain even my opening line here in January when I began teaching a semester-long graduate course for in-service ELA teachers on the topic of social class in ELA teaching, I could not have done so. 
So many of us who might feel pretty steady addressing gender, sexuality, race in literature, likely still stumble when it comes to social class. What is there to say about social class? How might YA texts give us a site to engage with this important social issue?

Last night, in our last session for the semester, I checked in with the brilliant teachers in the room to confirm which key concepts around social class resonated the most and felt like they could apply instantly to their teaching. A round of nodding heads confirmed that learning about
class-based injuries and how they connect to cultural capital resonated with them from the start.
 

Class-based injuries

Experiencing class-based injuries is a central feature of just about any story focused on social class, especially if it is from a working class perspective. Understanding what it involves and how it’s connected to cultural capital opens up a wealth of opportunities to more deeply study characterization, conflict and theme in working-class YA novels.
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Class-based injury is the suffering that an individual endures as a result of not having the cultural capital–the practices, or materials, or associations–that come with middle or upper-class standing (Bourdieu, 1986). Such suffering usually comes into higher relief when someone of lower-class standing finds themselves in a space or around people of higher social class standing. Schools, as middle class institutions, are such sites for many working class youth. But there are many others as well and recognizing them in YA texts affords us great opportunities for deep discussions about social class and what causes discomfort and pain around social class differences. 

Next, I will share a few ways to see facets of class injury in some YA novels.
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​Class injury through language
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In Jeff Zentner’s In the Wild Light, Cash, under extraordinary circumstances, leaves his rural Tennessee small town to attend a posh Connecticut prep school with his best friend, Delaney. There, in addition to suffering in general as a scholarship student, Cash must share a dorm room with Tripp, a politician’s son, who is in the room the first time Cash calls home and speaks to his beloved grandfather who raised him. Cash holds his conversation with his Papaw on speaker phone, and when he is done, and is feeling just a bit better after being so far from home for the first time, his roommate comments. “‘Ep thar,’” Tripp says, smirking…”’It’s how your gramps says
“up there.”’” 


Even as a poor, rural youth in his home community, no one had ever humiliated his Papaw for the way he spoke before. This source of class-based injury comes from rubbing right up against tremendous class privilege and a sense of entitlement from his wealthy roommate. But the exact site of injury that is inflicted here is language–one of the foremost repositories of class standing as we well know since Shaw’s Pygmalion. Paying attention to class-based injuries through language is one way to open up discussion around social class difference and its implications.

Some questions that a scene like this could raise for discussion might include:

•How does language preserve social class identity?
•How does language reflect societal norms around social class?

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Class injury through expectations of leisure time
I have enjoyed Julie Murphy’s Ramona Blue for years as a great text for teaching about bisexuality that also does not shy away from race issues. But the main facet of this story centers on the experiences of Ramona, who lives in a post-Katrina trailer in Louisiana with her father, her pregnant sister, and the baby’s father. Though smart and determined, Ramona has no plans for after senior year. All she can think of for a future is working even more hours to have money to help her sister support the baby since their family is already struggling financially.

So when Ramona’s childhood friend, Freddie, who is Black, moves into town for good with his grandmother, who is solidly middle class, some of their interactions start to churn up conflicts that center around social class.

For example, when Freddie invites Ramona to join him and his grandmother to swim, so he can keep up his practice since their school does not have a swim team like his old one, Ramona’s first thought is: Why would I exercise when I am on my feet all the time for my three jobs? Here, Ramona’s thoughts expose the way that “exercise” is a middle class concept that relies on leisure time. But how many experiences or expectations like this might readers not see as classed experiences without some guidance?​
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A middle school-based novel that offers very similar analysis opportunities around class injuries is Ann Braden’s The Benefits of Being an Octopus. Also a white protagonist living in an overcrowded trailer because of desperate, class-based circumstances, Zoe’s home life of watching her three young siblings while her mom waits tables before rushing home to put a dinner together, does not leave her time for doing homework, let alone participating in after school activities. In Octopus Braden alerts us to the ways even school projects present academic obstacles for students without the financial means to purchase materials, or the time–or gas money–to get to a store to pick them out. 

Both of these novels invite us to consider questions like:
•How are school-related expectations classed?
•How are college expectations of leisure activities for “well-rounded” students classed?
•How might schools unknowingly inflict class-based injuries?
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Class injury through the wealthy gaze
Ibi Zoboi’s Pride, a “remix” of Pride and Prejudice, invites a very complex examination of the question of what causes class-based injury. In Pride, the scene of class conflict centers on the role of the bourgeoisie–the wealthy Darcy family that renovated the dilapidated building across the street and moved into the neighborhood’s first “mini-mansion”. The proletariat in this story is the Benitez family of five Haitian-Dominican sisters and their parents who are renting an apartment across the street in Brooklyn’s Bushwick. 

In Zoboi’s hands, class-based injury–the pain resulting from not having the cultural capital to successfully “pass” in upper-class settings and circumstances–results directly from gentrification. Once the Darcys occupy their new mini-mansion in what has been a poor neighborhood, Zuri Benitez, the protagonist, starts to register the impact immediately.

“Our family gets along with every single person on this block, which makes block parties run smoothly; which makes walking home when it’s dark real safe; which makes walking to the bodega in a night scarf and pajama pants not a big deal. The Darcys moving in changes all that” (46). 

Though she does not explain this explicitly, Zuri recognizes the way that prior classed actions like leaving the house in sleepwear or yelling out of the window for a sibling can no longer take place without the scrutiny of a new wealthy gaze of sorts affecting everyone’s actions. Though ample examples of the kinds of class-based injuries you might expect take place in this novel, too–where Zuri is insulted by the stuffy Darcy grandmother for her clothing and her demeanor–it is this, more subtle recognition of potential class-based injury that makes Zoboi’s treatment of social class quite sophisticated.

Some questions this text  invites:
•What is the cause of class-based injury in the story?
*What facets of cultural capital are the cause of the class-based injury?
•How, if at all, does the protagonist heal from the class-based injuries?
•Does the novel offer any larger explanations or solutions for the class-based injuries?

Though seemingly not as urgent as attending to matters tied to race and, with the current political climate in conservative states, sexuality and gender, social class nonetheless intersects with all of these social categories making an understanding of its contours critical to a range of social justice goals. One simple way to begin to make a foray into the complex world of engaging social class in ELA is recognizing how many facets of working-class YA stories cannot be analyzed or appreciated without taking note of sites of class-based injury.

References & Additional Resources

Bourdieu, P. (1986). The Forms of Capital. In Richardson, J. (Ed.) Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, 241-258.
Godard, N. (2022). Beyond Marx: Cultural Social Class Analysis in the ELA Classroom. English Journal, 111(4), 20-26.
Parton, C. (2022). Exploring Place- and Social Class-Based Ways of Knowing. English Journal, 111(4), 27-33.

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Summit Updates: Register today!

5/4/2022

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​Hi, all.  Gretchen Rumohr here with some important updates to the Summit on the Research and Teaching of Young Adult Literature.  Have you registered yet? 

First of all, we have a snazzy new website where you can learn more about our conference theme, read up on the authors, register for the conference, and book lodging.  
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Our speaker list has been modified slightly. We are excited to welcome Brendan Kiely, Gae Polisner, and Sonia Patel for Thursday, Malinda Lo and Brandy Colbert for Friday, and Varian Johnson for Saturday (Yes!  There will be signings!).  
We have an incredible, interactive schedule that will keep you up to date on recent research and pedagogy in Young Adult literature--and connect with scholars and teachers from near and far.

Take the time to register for the summit today!
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    Dr. Gretchen Rumohr
    Chief Curator
    Gretchen Rumohr is a professor of English and department chair at Aquinas College, where she teaches writing and language arts methods.   She is also a Co-Director of the UNLV Summit on the Research and Teaching of Young Adult Literature. She lives with her four girls and a five-pound Yorkshire Terrier in west Michigan.

    Dr. Steve Bickmore
    ​Creator and Curator

    Dr. Bickmore is a Professor of English Education at UNLV. He is a scholar of Young Adult Literature and past editor of The ALAN Review and a past president of ALAN. He is a available for speaking engagements at schools, conferences, book festivals, and parent organizations. More information can be found on the Contact page and the About page.

    Co-Edited Books

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    Meet
    Evangile Dufitumukiza!
    Evangile is a native of Kigali, Rwanda. He is a college student that Steve meet while working in Rwanda as a missionary. In fact, Evangile was one of the first people who translated his English into Kinyarwanda. 

    Steve recruited him to help promote Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media while Steve is doing his mission work. 

    He helps Dr. Bickmore promote his academic books and sometimes send out emails in his behalf. 

    You will notice that while he speaks fluent English, it often does look like an "American" version of English. That is because it isn't. His English is heavily influence by British English and different versions of Eastern and Central African English that is prominent in his home country of Rwanda.

    Welcome Evangile into the YA Wednesday community as he learns about Young Adult Literature and all of the wild slang of American English vs the slang and language of the English he has mastered in his beautiful country of Rwanda.  

    While in Rwanda, Steve has learned that it is a poor English speaker who can only master one dialect and/or set of idioms in this complicated language.

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