Untethering Whiteness: Jason Reynolds's Spider-Man and Emancipatory Texts for Black Youth

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 8
  In Roundtable Session: Interrogating and Transgressing Texts and Curricular Materials

Abstract

Critical scholars argue that black youth are not afforded space to dream because speculative texts ostracize them. While comic book companies are inviting black writers to steer their comics featuring black characters, such as Ta-Nehsi Coates’s Black Panther, most of these characters were originally created by a white writer. What is necessary to emancipate such characters, some with racist backstories, in a way that would decolonize the imaginations of readers? To explore this question, I consider the emancipatory effect of the novel Miles Morales: Spider-Man by Jason Reynolds through situating his text within Ebony Elizabeth Thomas’s dark fantastic cycle. I argue that Reynolds’s portrayal of whiteness offers an uneven emancipation from the source material, leaving Miles tethered to whiteness.

Author

• Bevin L Roue, Auburn University