Telescopes to Text Selection: Genre and Representation in Speculative LGBTQ+ Youth Fiction

• In Event: Disrupting Dominant Narratives: (Re)Thinking Text Selection for Liberated Futures

Abstract

Text selection remains of central concern in English Language Arts (ELA) instruction, and scholarship has called attention to contemporary considerations for selecting texts related to digital technologies (Author(s), forthcoming), race and canonicity (Author, 2021), and the ongoing censorship of queer and trans literature (American Library Association, 2020). While various approaches for text selection exist, Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop’s (1990) iconic metaphors of “mirrors,” “windows,” and “sliding doors” persist as perhaps the most powerful heurist for ensuring equity in ELA literary intrusion, and it invites educators to focus on identity and community narratives when teaching literary works. However, while Dr. Bishop’s metaphors ensure diverse representation in classrooms, they can also perpetuate deleterious tropes embedded within certain literary genres. For LGBTQ+ youth literature, for instance, the overrepresentation of contemporary realism has furthered the exclusion of BIPOC and gender nonconforming narratives from classrooms (Jenkins & Cart, 2018; Authors). Addressing this concern, in this article, I present findings from a critical content analysis (Johnson et al., 2017) of 30 years of award-winning LGBTQ+ youth literature and demonstrate the importance of considering genre in critical text selection practices.
Specifically, I draw upon Presenter 1’s (2021) metaphor of “telescopes” to highlight the importance of integrating speculative fiction into ELA instruction. Extending Bishop’s (1990) classic metaphors of mirrors, windows, and sliding doors, telescopes refer to speculative fiction (e.g., fantasy, science fiction, horror, and more) that provides “views of liberating futures and otherwise worlds” in LGBTQ+ youth literature (p. 30). Focused on youth literature, inclusive of both Middle Grades (MG) and Young Adult (YA) literature, this study is based on a constructed database of finalists and award-winning texts (n=250) from three LGBTQ+ focused youth literary awards. Presenting both distant (Moretti, 2013) and close readings of these texts, findings from this corpus highlight speculative fiction’s capacity to inform text selection and ensure more just, intersectional representation of LGBTQ+ young people in schools. Findings also highlight that some telescopes extend inequitable racialized and cisnormative realities endemic to realist literary genres of LGBTQ+ youth literature. This presentation concludes with research and practitioner-oriented approaches to critical text selection, and it does so to (re)think text selection for liberated futures.

Author

• James Joshua Coleman
  Presenting Author