"Breaking Gender Expectations as a Whole": Exploring Adolescents' Critical Rewriting of a Trans Young Adult Novel

• In Event: Millennium Hotel Roundtable Session 9
  In Roundtable Session: Youth Media, Culture, and Texts: Studying Critical Reading Practices

Abstract

This presentation explores the development of a music video by middle school students in response to Kristin Cronn-Mills’s (2012) young adult novel, Beautiful Music for Ugly Children. Students expressed “strong objections to the way that female characters in the book were portrayed.” We map their inquiry into gender identity and representation, and their attempt to critically rewrite the stereotypical portrayals of female characters—as they put it, “to contribute to breaking gender expectations as a whole.” Findings suggest that when critical literacy work is approached from a “queering space” perspective, working for individual and broader social change needs to be rooted in a willingness for participants to question their own gendered identities.

Authors

• Rob Simon, University of Toronto

• Ty Walkland, University of Toronto

• Ben Gallagher, University of Toronto

• benjamin lee hicks, University of Toronto

• Sarah Evis, Toronto District School Board 

• Pamela Baer