Antero Garcia 
Critical Foundations in Young Adult Literature 
Challenging Genres

Young Adult literature, from The Outsiders to Harry Potter, has helped shape the cultural landscape for adolescents perhaps more than any other form of consumable media in the twentieth and twenty-first century. With the rise of mega blockbuster films based on these books in recent years, the young adult genre is being co-opted by curious adult readers and by Hollywood producers. However, while the genre may be getting more readers than ever before, Young Adult literature remains exclusionary and problematic: few titles feature historically marginalized individuals, the books present heteronormative perspectives, and gender stereotypes continue to persist. Taking a critical approach, Young Adult Literature: Challenging Genres offers educators, youth librarians, and students a set of strategies for unpacking, challenging, and transforming the assumptions of some of the genre’s most popular titles. Pushing the genre forward, Antero Garcia builds on his experiences as a former high school teacher to offer strategies for integrating Young Adult literature in a contemporary critical pedagogy through the use of participatory media.

Table of Content

Acknowledgements; Preface. Young Adult Literature Comes of Age: The Blurring of Genre in Popular Entertainment; Introduction. Reading Unease: Just Who, Exactly, Is Young Adult Literature Made For?; 1. Capitalism, Hollywood, and Adult Appropriation of Young Adult Literature: The Harry Potter Effect ; 2. More than Mango Street: Race, Multiculturalism and YA; 3. Outsiders?: Exclusion and Post-Colonial Theory ; 4. Gender and Sexuality and YA: Constructions of Identity and Gender; 5. Pedagogy of the Demonically Possessed: Critical Pedagogy and Popular Literature; 6. Grassroots YA: Don’t Forget to Be Awesome ; Conclusion. YA and the “Emerging Self”: Looking Ahead at the Genre and Our Classrooms; References; Index.