When most of you are reading this I am on the plane to Baltimore for #NCTE19. It is going to be great fun. Just below is a copy of my schedule. Come by. Join in with one of the sessions, sign up to write a blog post, or asking me about the 2020 Summit at UNLV on the Research and Teaching of YA Literature. I am so happy that Chea and Vickie, two graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin. They don't realize how much time they saved me this week by taking this on. Take it away.
Critically Reading Place in YA Depictions of the Rural
“[P]icture a place far, far less than suburbia and then imagine me, a few more rungs down that ladder living in a trailer rented from Fed-Me-Blueberries May Beth for as long as I’ve been alive. I live in a place that’s only good for leaving, is all that needs to be said about it, and I don’t let myself look back..” --Sadie by Courtney Summers
Sadie’s words reflect a frequent representation of rural people and places, invoking images of trailer-park poverty and the desire to leave it without a second thought. Vickie and I (Chea) are both from rural spaces and identify as out-migrated rural people, and though we recognize its lack of nuance and that its an incomplete rendering, there’s something about Sadie’s words and attitude that feel part of us too - that rings true in our bones.
We left because we felt like we needed to. Because it felt like there was nothing there for us. Because the world felt too small. Because getting out felt like the only way to be successful. But now, working in an urban-focused teacher preparation program, we feel out of place and long to go back. But going back isn’t possible right now for many of the same reasons we chose to leave, so we make do with what we have, visiting home as often as we can.
In our lives as rural-identifying teachers and researchers, we’ve wondered about the opportunities (non)rural young people and preservice teachers have to interact with various and nuanced representations of rural identity in young adult literature. We’re also curious about how rural readers seek out or take up those representations because Chea has a hard time remembering reading any books featuring the rural and wanting to, and Vickie never really felt the need to. It’s these questions and experiences that have led us to consider how teachers might approach engaging their students in critical discussions around place in YAL.
We left because we felt like we needed to. Because it felt like there was nothing there for us. Because the world felt too small. Because getting out felt like the only way to be successful. But now, working in an urban-focused teacher preparation program, we feel out of place and long to go back. But going back isn’t possible right now for many of the same reasons we chose to leave, so we make do with what we have, visiting home as often as we can.
In our lives as rural-identifying teachers and researchers, we’ve wondered about the opportunities (non)rural young people and preservice teachers have to interact with various and nuanced representations of rural identity in young adult literature. We’re also curious about how rural readers seek out or take up those representations because Chea has a hard time remembering reading any books featuring the rural and wanting to, and Vickie never really felt the need to. It’s these questions and experiences that have led us to consider how teachers might approach engaging their students in critical discussions around place in YAL.
Rurality and YAL
Scholars have written about how the contextualized experiences of rural places and people are often underrepresented and essentialized, rendering rural places and people into stereotyped “single stories” (See Chimamanda Adichie’s “Danger of a Single Story”). To read more about these ideas, we recommend Dr. Amy Azano’s “The Other Neglected R” and Dr. Sara Webb-Sunderhaus’s “‘Keep the Appalachian, Drop the Redneck’”. Like Alli Behrens and Dr. Rob Petrone, we believe that interacting with representations of the rural and the various and nuanced experiences of the folks who live there are important to the cultivation of the identities and worldviews of students from all geographical backgrounds and classifications (i.e., rural, suburban, and urban).
However, it seems that depictions of the rural in YAL are somewhat hard to come by. A quick Google search for “top urban YA books” turns out several curated lists featuring popular and critically acclaimed YA fiction. However, the search for “top rural YA books” yields far fewer results. Though there are representations of the rural in YAL, there aren’t that many. And those that are available can reflect distorted and stereotyped representations, that - like all texts - should be read critically.
However, it seems that depictions of the rural in YAL are somewhat hard to come by. A quick Google search for “top urban YA books” turns out several curated lists featuring popular and critically acclaimed YA fiction. However, the search for “top rural YA books” yields far fewer results. Though there are representations of the rural in YAL, there aren’t that many. And those that are available can reflect distorted and stereotyped representations, that - like all texts - should be read critically.
Rural YA in Unexpected Places
In “Reading YAL for Representations of Contemporary Rurality,” it struck us how covers can overtly communicate a book’s connection to the rural, which is often connected to the book’s focus and content. Books featuring images of the rural (whether considered stereotypical or not) tend to situate rurality as integral rather than incidental to the plot.
 Miseducation of Cameron Post
|  Shout
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Recently reading Shout by Laurie Halse Anderson, we were completely surprised to find that Anderson’s identity as a rural person and experiences in rural spaces are featured in the text. Likewise, listening to her interview on the We Are YA podcast, Chea got super excited at hearing her describe herself as a country girl. (Hearing authors explicitly mention their rurality isn’t a frequent occurrence.) Shout’s cover art doesn’t nod to her “country” identity, nor does any description of the text. These noticings have encouraged us to think about how teachers might incorporate a critical perspective that asks about the place of a novel - especially the rural when it comes up unexpectedly.
Critically Reading Place in YAL
Because not all YA books featuring the rural are “rural books,” we’ve chosen to discuss three books in which encountering the rural comes as somewhat of a surprise: Shout by Laurie Halse Anderson; Sadie by Courtney Summers; and Exit Pursued by a Bear.
Laurie Halse Anderson describes Shout as “the story of a girl who lost her voice and wrote herself a new one” (p. 1). Through fiery verse, Anderson explores all the “accidents, serendipities, bloodlines, tidal waves, sunrises, disasters, passport stamps, criminals, cafeterias, nightmares, fever dreams, readers, portents, and whispers” (p. 1) surrounding the rape she survived as a teenager. Much of the book focuses on the rape itself and the process she undertook to heal and advocate for survivors of sexual assault. Part of that story involves her identity as a “country mouse” (p.19). Her inclusion and representation of the rural is nuanced, evoking the complicated positive and negative aspects associated with rural living and identity. The rural is positioned as a place of connection and healing as well as a place that is suffocating and boring. The closeness of community and reliance on one another are at once represented as supportive and stifling. Considering how Anderson both constructs and critiques the rural aspects of her identity can help readers from all geographical walks of life think about and question how place works to position people in society.
Laurie Halse Anderson describes Shout as “the story of a girl who lost her voice and wrote herself a new one” (p. 1). Through fiery verse, Anderson explores all the “accidents, serendipities, bloodlines, tidal waves, sunrises, disasters, passport stamps, criminals, cafeterias, nightmares, fever dreams, readers, portents, and whispers” (p. 1) surrounding the rape she survived as a teenager. Much of the book focuses on the rape itself and the process she undertook to heal and advocate for survivors of sexual assault. Part of that story involves her identity as a “country mouse” (p.19). Her inclusion and representation of the rural is nuanced, evoking the complicated positive and negative aspects associated with rural living and identity. The rural is positioned as a place of connection and healing as well as a place that is suffocating and boring. The closeness of community and reliance on one another are at once represented as supportive and stifling. Considering how Anderson both constructs and critiques the rural aspects of her identity can help readers from all geographical walks of life think about and question how place works to position people in society.
Sadie, judging only by the cover and jacket summary, is a murder mystery that won and Edgar Award. While the driving force behind the plot is Sadie’s quest to find her sister’s killer and bring him to justice, other issues, such as rurality, poverty, drug abuse, and child neglect and sexual abuse, surface in the text. After Sadie also turns up missing, the host of a podcast dedicated to chronicling life in dying rural towns attempts to find her. Sadie’s journey and the search for her, spans both rural and suburban spaces, often leading to juxtapositions of the two. Rurality is often only painted in a negative light, describing Cold Creek as a place only good for leaving with Sadie making mental lists of all the things in the suburbs she can’t bear to allow herself to want. Although on a surface level the two different spaces serve as settings for the story, how Summers describes them through the podcast and Sadie’s eyes implores readers to consider how place might be accurately represented or distorted in those descriptions.
Exit, Pursued by a Bear (discussed recently by Stacia Long) chronicles the story of high school cheerleader Hermione Winters. After being drugged and sexually assaulted at a rural summer cheer camp while her parents were out of country, it is difficult for loved ones to reach her because of the rural location. The rural detective assigned to her case is described as unfamiliar with this kind of case and unsure of herself in interactions with Hermione after the assault. The school Hermione attends is also in a small town which impacts how she decides to seek health care (physical and mental) as she works to survive her assault in the healthiest ways possible. While the central focus of the plot is Hermione’s journey after the sexual assault and the rural setting seems incidental, considering how the issues connected to rurality are presented in the text can help bring students to an even deeper understanding of rural places, communities, and the text as a whole.
Teachers and readers of these and other YAL texts that feature representations of the rural could consider the following critical questions:
- How is (rural) place functioning in the book?
- How are rural people, space, communities depicted in the text?
- How does it impact your understanding of what rural is?
- How does it impact your understanding of the themes in text?
- What (dis)connections do you share with the characters’ experiences?
- How do these depictions of (rural) places help us think about how society and identities are constructed?
- What can we do with this new knowledge?
Moving Forward
We firmly believe in the benefits of critically reading place in rural YAL, and we’d love to hear about the ways you are doing this work in your classrooms. Please reach out to us with your stories and any recommendations for rural YA novels to add to our reading lists and share with our students.
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Additional Books
- All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven
- The Hired Girl by Laura Amy Schlitz
- Orbiting Jupiter by Gary D. Schmidt
- The Female of the Species by Mindy McGinnis
- Rani Patel in Full Effect by Sonia Patel
- Crossing Ebenezer Creek by Tonya Bolden
- The Pearl Thief by Elizabeth Wein
- Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand
- Puddin’ by Julie Murphy
- Ramona Blue by Julie Murphy
- Murder on the Red River by Marcie R. Rendon
- Girl Gone Missing by Marcie R. Rendon
- The Mosaic by Nina Berkhout
- The Smell of Other People’s Houses by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock
References
Anderson, L. H. (2019). Shout. New York, NY: Penguin Random House.
Azano, A. P. (2014). Rural. The other neglected “R”: Making space for place in school libraries. Knowledge Quest, 43(1), 61-65.
Summers, C. (2018). Sadie. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press.
Webb-Sunderhaus, S. (2016). Keep the Appalachian, drop the redneck”: Tellable student narratives of Appalachian identity. College English, 79(1), 11-33.
Azano, A. P. (2014). Rural. The other neglected “R”: Making space for place in school libraries. Knowledge Quest, 43(1), 61-65.
Summers, C. (2018). Sadie. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press.
Webb-Sunderhaus, S. (2016). Keep the Appalachian, drop the redneck”: Tellable student narratives of Appalachian identity. College English, 79(1), 11-33.
Until next week.
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