New Directions in Childhood Studies: Innocence, Trauma, and Agency in the Twenty-first Century (Children and Youth in Popular Culture) 1666940283, 9781666940282

Citation preview

New Directions in Childhood Studies

CHILDREN AND YOUTH IN POPULAR CULTURE Series Editor: Debbie Olson, Missouri Valley College Children and Youth in Popular Culture features works that interrogate the various representations of children and youth in popular culture, as well as the reception of these representations. The series is international in scope, recognizing the transnational discourses about children and youth that have helped shape modern and post-modern childhoods and adolescence. The scope of the series ranges from such subjects as gender, race, class, and economic conditions and their global intersections with issues relevant to children and youth and their representation in global popular culture: children and youth at play, geographies and spaces (including World Wide Web), material cultures, adultification, sexuality, children of/in war, religion, children of diaspora, youth and the law, and more. Advisory Board Noel Brown, Liverpool Hope University; LuElla D’Amico, Whitworth University; Karen J. Renner, Northern Arizona University; Adrian Schober, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne Titles in the Series New Directions in Childhood Studies: Innocence, Trauma, and Agency in the Twenty-First Century, Edited by James M. Curtis Screening Children in Post-apocalypse Film and Television, Edited by Debbie Olson Cold War Children’s Television: Philadelphia as a Case Study, By Vibiana Bowman Cvetkovic Childhood and Innocence in American Culture: Heartaches and Nightmares, Edited by James M. Curtis Growing up in Latin America: Child and Youth Agency in Contemporary Popular Culture, Edited by Marco Ramírez Rojas and Pilar Osorio Lora School Gun Violence in YA Literature: Representing Environments, Motives, and Impacts, By Laura Brown Vigilante Feminists and Agents of Destiny: Violence, Empowerment, and the Teenage Super/heroine, By Laura Mattoon D’Amore Childhood, Agency, and Fantasy: Walking in Other Worlds, Edited by Ingrid E. Castro Children and Childhood in the Works of Stephen King, Edited by Debbie Olson Child and Youth Agency in Science Fiction: Travel, Technology, Time, Edited by Ingrid E. Castro and Jessica Clark Critical Childhood Studies and the Practice of Interdisciplinarity: Disciplining the Child, Edited by Magdalena Zolkos and Joanna Faulkner Posthumanist Readings in Dystopian Young Adult Fiction: Negotiating the Nature/ Culture Divide, By Jennifer Harrison

New Directions in Childhood Studies Innocence, Trauma, and Agency in the Twenty-First Century Edited by James M. Curtis

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE Copyright © 2024 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Curtis, James M., 1984- editor. Title: New directions in childhood studies : innocence, trauma, and agency in the twentyfirst century / edited by James M. Curtis.   Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, [2024] | Series: Children and youth in popular culture | Includes bibliographical references and index.  Identifiers: LCCN 2023049725 (print) | LCCN 2023049726 (ebook) | ISBN 9781666940282 (cloth) | ISBN 9781666940299 (ebook)   Subjects: LCSH: Children--United States--History--21st century. | Children--Study and teaching--United States--History--21st century. | Children's mass media--United States--History--21st century.  Classification: LCC HQ792.U5 N49 2024  (print) | LCC HQ792.U5  (ebook) | DDC 305.230973--dc23/eng/20231026  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023049725 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023049726   The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

Introduction: Constructing the Twenty-First-Century Child James M. Curtis



PART I: PICTURING A NEW KIND OF CHILDHOOD

1

Chapter 1: Rainbows in the Window: Static Childhood in COVID-19 Picture Books Cara Byrne and Kristin Kondrlik

7 9

Chapter 2: Picturing Political Agency in Childhood: Visual Rhetoric of Child Activism in Narrative Picture Books Meghan Whitfield

33

Chapter 3: [Re]Interpreting the Deaf Child’s Solitude: A Counternarrative to Cece Bell’s El Deafo S. Leigh Ann Cowan

51

PART II: THE RULE OF LAW AND TRANSGRESSIVE CONSTRUCTIONS OF AMERICAN CHILDHOOD Chapter 4: Because What You Don’t Know Can Kill You: Law, Adolescence, and YA Literature Jamie M. Fine Chapter 5: “These Are the Rooms We’re Not Supposed to Go In . . . But Let’s Go Anyway!”: Celebrating the Mobile Child, Embracing Nontraditional Kinship Structures, and Deconstructing Neglect in The Florida Project Joseph V. Giunta

v



73 75

105

vi

Contents

PART III: TECHNOLOGY AND THE POSTHUMAN CHILD Chapter 6: Roblox and the Value in Suspending Playbor Time Sumaria Butt

133

Chapter 7: Happy Endings, Only $1.99: Extricating the Dark Side of Fairy Tales in Hope: The Other Side of Adventure and Its Online Legacy Imogen Nutting and Ryan Twomey PART IV: THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY AND THE NECESSITY OF TRAUMA-INFORMED NARRATIVES

135

157

181

Chapter 8: Standing Out, Not Sticking Out: “Curing” Abnormal Childhood in Rob Harrell’s Wink Allyson Wierenga

183

Chapter 9: The Trauma of Childhood and Emerging into Adulthood in A Court of Thorns and Roses Kirsten Bilger and Michael G. Cornelius

213

Index

235

About the Contributors



239

Introduction Constructing the Twenty-First-Century Child James M. Curtis

For at least the past three decades, American cultural critics have struggled to locate the dividing line between childhood and adulthood, with some going so far as asserting that what we are witnessing in the twenty-first century is the virtual “death of childhood”1 as we have known it. To be sure, in the cultural realm of narratives written for children and young adults, audiences are now seeing much more inclusion of traditionally “adult” themes and content the likes of which have rarely been seen by young readers of the past. However, while many decry the inclusion of “dark” or even simply more adult-oriented themes in children’s literature, the fact remains that the “child” in children’s literature exists now as little more than an outdated cultural construct, one that still relies largely on archaic, white, Anglo-centric idealizations of children and “innocence.” In other words, the “childhood” many adults expect to see in outlets of American culture (like children’s literature) is as imaginary as the fictional worlds into which those children are placed; in any case, it certainly bears little to no resemblance to the actual, lived experience of American children. This lack of verisimilitude becomes increasingly problematic when viewed through the lens of Rudine Sims Bishop’s seminal article “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors.”2 While Bishop’s focus was mainly on the continued need for diverse voices in the “all-white world of children’s literature” (to use Nancy Larrick’s phrase), many writers and scholars in the field of children’s culture have used Bishop’s ideas as a clarion call for a plurality of diverse voices—from the disabled, to the neurodivergent, the non-heteronormative, and so on—in child-centered narratives. If, as Bishop argues, reading (for children) “becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books,” then children need to be able to find their mirrors in order 1

2

James M. Curtis

to feel socially included and valued. In such a context, the need for diverse, authentic voices in the world of children’s narratives becomes all the more important. However, when we reach a moment in our cultural history when our ideas about childhood do not match the realities of actual children, we risk holding up a “mirror” to children that is unrealistically idealized, inviting—instead of the “self-affirmation” that Bishop mentions—feelings of inadequacy and judgment that have the potential to negatively impact all children who engage with these narratives. One fairly recent thread of children’s literary scholarship posits the necessary inclusion of trauma-focused narratives in the wider world of children’s literature and culture. This sort of approach relies on several facts: for one, virtually any child who regularly uses an internet-enabled device has a myriad of “adult” content at their fingertips, offering innumerable opportunities to be exposed prematurely to trauma and its impact. Secondly, in the age of the twenty-four-hour news cycle, children with these devices are bombarded daily with dozens of stories prominently featuring the worst aspects of human nature. Considering some of the potentially disturbing, confusing, and (often) horrific content that many twenty-first-century American children have full access to, it is easy to see why some argue that child readers need narratives that deal directly with trauma in order to actually understand some of the horrible atrocities they are exposed to on a daily basis. Harkening back to Bishop’s ideas, while such trauma-centered children’s narratives certainly offer children “windows” through which they can better understand the nature of trauma and traumatic events, their positive potential as “mirrors” for American children cannot be overvalued. According to a recent study by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (a branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services), “more than two-thirds of children reported at least one traumatic event by age 16.”3 These traumatic events include: “psychological, physical, or sexual abuse, community or school violence, domestic violence, national disasters or terrorism, commercial sexual exploitation, refugee or war experiences, neglect, physical or sexual assault, [and] serious accidents or life-threatening illnesses.”4 What this data indicates is that—contrary to the cultural notion of the sacrosanct, “innocent,” safe space of American “childhood”—trauma for the vast majority of American children is the rule and not the exception. Considering the colossal impact of trauma on the developing mind, it is even more imperative that these children also have “mirrors” through which they can better understand the nature of trauma and its impact on other children who have suffered through similar experiences. From a critical perspective, the notion that the “childhood” of the twentieth century is effectively “dead” leaves room for exploring the current, twenty-first-century definition of American childhood. After all, the market

Introduction

3

for children’s narratives and media remains as saturated as ever, and—despite its continued reliance on outdated constructions of “childhood”—there is an emergent trend in contemporary children’s narratives to actively engage with the ever-blurring line between children’s and adult-oriented content. These types of narratives do not shy away from the everyday realities of trauma, disaster, and death. In fact, they deal directly with those issues in new and inventive ways in order to guide children through (as opposed to shielding them from) harsher, historically “adult” matters. For anyone interested in children and childhood in the twenty-first century, the ways in which those same narratives accomplish this task certainly deserves sustained study. To that end, the proposed collection provides a thorough investigation of children’s narratives created well into the twenty-first century, and moreover, this collection seeks to be the first of its kind to provide a more contemporary construct of the American child and to interrogate what that construction might mean for contemporary American society and culture. THE COLLECTION In “Picturing a New Kind of Childhood”—the first section of this collection— critical attention is focused on the construction of the twenty-first-century child in literature that incorporates a visual element (i.e., picture books and graphic novels). Appearing first, Cara Byrne and Kristin Kondrlik’s “Rainbows in the Window: Static Childhood in COVID-19 Picture Books” examines children’s visual narratives published during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, positing that the image of the child as depicted in these pandemic-era picture books is one of passive inactivity, which does not allow child-readers to understand or even explore the everyday realities faced by their adult counterparts during this fearful and uncertain time. Byrne and Kondrlik further argue that such depictions ultimately evince a severe lack in our understanding and appreciation for the challenges young children faced during the pandemic. Next, Meghan Whitfield’s “Picturing Political Agency in Childhood: Visual Rhetoric of Child Activism in Narrative Picture Books” focuses on the representation of child-activists in American picture books in order to understand how contemporary children’s texts negotiate space for child-activist identity in America. Whitfield’s analysis addresses a gap in scholarship regarding the rhetorical functions of picture-book illustrations in social movements and further complicates assumptions of childhood innocence. Then, in “[Re]Interpreting the Deaf Child’s Solitude: A Counternarrative to Cece Bell’s El Deafo,” S. Leigh Ann Cowan critically examines Cece Bell’s adoption and emulation of phonocentric ideals in her graphic novel El Deafo

4

James M. Curtis

and, through the use of comparative autoethnography, presents a counternarrative to the glorification of oralist practices. Unlike other critics who may applaud Bell’s choice to focalize her narrative on a deaf child in a genre that overwhelmingly favors able-bodied child-characters, Cowan complicates such praise by arguing that—rather than centering the experiences of the marginalized deaf children who are not comfortable in a hearing world—Bell publishes her own success story, which reinforces and pushes for acceptance of dominant phonocentric ideologies. In the collection’s second section—“The Rule of Law and Transgressive Constructions of American Childhood”—we explore legal constructions of American childhood and what it means when children transgress beyond these prescribed borders. First, Jamie M. Fine’s “Because What You Don’t Know Can Kill You: Law, Adolescence, and YA Literature” remarks upon a significant broadening of legal culture—one already long-existent in the adult portion of the body politic—to include an adolescent legal culture, centering important conversations and information about laws, legal gray areas, and political debates in contexts created for adolescent educational access and designed to encourage further research, conversation, and action. Accordingly, this chapter examines the rise of adolescent legal culture, the counter-publics that YA literature encourages, and the important change in adolescent legal engagement that allows readers to rehumanize their own experiences, to underscore their needs, and to claim their own voice in the conversation. Then, in Joseph V. Giunta’s “‘These Are the Rooms We’re Not Supposed to Go In . . . But Let’s Go Anyway!’: Celebrating the Mobile Child, Embracing Nontraditional Kinship Structures, and Deconstructing Neglect in The Florida Project,” Giunta draws linkages between ideological constructs and material investments (or lack thereof) in the local Florida community of Kissimmee that result from its proximity to a massive tourist capital, and how protagonist Moonee dismisses the structural and personal constraints that directly affect her and—instead—constructs an epic tale of her own existence. In this chapter, Giunta’s research interrogates myriad forms of “neglect” present in the film The Florida Project and demonstrates how, by deconstructing popular understandings of traditional family care structures, we might better assist in contributing to more comprehensive perceptions of commonly marginalized childhoods. The collection’s third section—“Technology and the Posthuman Child”— focuses on the influence of technology on children and the ways in which humanist constructions of the child collapse in the face of technology that places the child in various, nontraditional roles. First, in “Roblox and the Value in Suspending Playbor Time,” Sumaria Butt argues that video games like the highly successful Roblox can help us analyze how children are

Introduction

5

uniquely implicated in a market of derivatives, and further asserts that the child of the twenty-first century is fully mediated by the rhythms of late capitalism as both producer and consumer. In this chapter, Butt maintains that if we understand Roblox as a complex nexus of several economies, it serves as a useful case study for how new definitions of childhood are forming at a time when we are becoming more deeply enmeshed in our technologies. Next, in Imogen Nutting and Ryan Twomey’s “Happy Endings, Only $1.99: Extricating the Dark Side of Fairy Tales in Hope: The Other Side of Adventure and Its Online Legacy,” the authors explore how the dark fairy-tale games like Hope play upon a public interest in the loss of innocence around childhood stories, while being worryingly appealing to actual children. By using a range of literature around fairy tales, nostalgia, and digital folklore to highlight how the game disrupts traditional narratives in order to display the corruption of childhood innocence in the modern world, Nutting and Twomey argue that by comparing the reflections of children who played the game and later posted online, we can glean insight into the most memorable elements of the game and how children felt playing a game that broke a previously innocent story. The fourth and final section—“The Twenty-First Century and the Necessity of Trauma-Informed Narratives”—examines the ways in which trauma is incorporated widely into twenty-first-century children’s and YA culture and the various cultural outlets that necessitate exposure to certain traumatic situations. Beginning with “Standing Out, Not Sticking Out: ‘Curing’ Abnormal Childhood in Rob Harrell’s Wink,” Allyson Wierenga argues that by weaving cancer into its portrait of middle school, Wink provides readers with a new way to investigate the often-taboo topic of childhood cancer; moreover, Wierenga examines how cancer is an important lens through which to view American childhood and further asserts that if cancer unnerves because of its ability to shatter what society deems normal, then a definition of childhood in which cancer is included, like that depicted in Wink, suggests that childhood itself is not a normative state. Finally, Kirsten Bilger and Michael G. Cornelius’s “The Trauma of Childhood and Emerging into Adulthood in A Court of Thorns and Roses” focuses specifically on Sarah J. Maas’s highly successful A Court of Thorns and Roses series to highlight the inherent trauma depicted during the transition from childhood to adulthood as it appears across many successful YA series. More specifically, Bilger and Cornelius demonstrate that Maas depicts contemporary childhood as being defined in part by trauma; however, despite the seemingly necessary inclusion of trauma in the twenty-first-century bildungsroman, the authors assert that in defining childhood through trauma, Maas is careful to demonstrate that trauma need not define children, especially as they move toward adulthood.

6

James M. Curtis

NOTES 1. Victor Strasburger, Death of Childhood: Reinventing the Joy of Growing Up. Cambridge Scholars, 2020. 2. Rudine Sims Bishop, “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors.” Essay. In Collected Perspectives: Choosing and Using Books for the Classroom, ix–xi. Boston, MA: Christopher-Gordon, 1992. 3. “Understanding Child Trauma,” SAMHSA, 2023. https:​//​www​.samhsa​.gov​/child​ -trauma​/understanding​-child​-trauma. 4. Ibid., n.p.

PART I

Picturing a New Kind of Childhood

7

Chapter 1

Rainbows in the Window Static Childhood in COVID-19 Picture Books Cara Byrne and Kristin Kondrlik

While literature designed for children has existed for hundreds of years, children’s picture books as we know them today are a twentieth-century phenomenon.1 These books are often rectangular or square, contain twenty or so spreads that combine images and words, and are designed for an audience of children from infancy to late childhood (zero to nine years old). These books have served several purposes throughout the years. Early classics like Dick and Jane and Dr. Seuss primers have been used to help children learn to read, especially as these books integrate sight words like “the” and “would” and contain simple sentences that help children learn basic sentence structure. However, as these books often cannot be read without assistance, picture books also help build the bond between children and their caretakers. As prolific children’s picture book creator Mo Willems explains: “My job, I feel very strongly, is to do 49% of the work. I’m creating the scaffolding for the kids and the adults to put in the performance, to put in the meaning, to put in the ideas.”2 In creating stories to be read both through engaging artwork and words, those who read with children often add an additional dimension to the storytelling experience. While picture books have often served a pedagogical and bonding function, they also have been an artistic mode through which authors and illustrators share engaging and meaningful stories. In a 1928 interview, May Massee, who served as the editor of the American Library Association’s The Book List and as the children’s book editor of Viking Publishing House, argued that “Cultural redemption of America is through children’s books. The first Ideas of a nation when it is just beginning 9

10

Cara Byrne and Kristin Kondrlik

to read, must be ideas that are worth something.”3 In other words, children’s picture books are not simply teaching tools meant to help caretakers read with a young child; these brief books inform children about their world, what they should pay attention to, and what the expectations of childhood are. It is no wonder, then, that children’s picture books have explored complex and timely messages and stories, helping provide a starting point for conversation between adults and young people using relatively simple language and a wide variety of artistic styles. Recently, picture books like those by Renee Watson and Nikole Hannah-Jones; Nikkolas Smith’s The 1619 Project: Born on the Water; and Kwame Alexander and Kadir Nelson’s The Undefeated have depicted the horrors of enslavement and its legacy of racism and discrimination. These books use both vivid illustrations that depict enslaved people and storytelling to give young readers a foundational understanding of this history. Similarly, to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a number of picture books were published in 2021, including Amanda Davis and Sally Wern Comport’s 30,000 Stitches: The Inspiring Story of the National 9/11 Flag; Sean Rubin’s This Very Tree: A Story of 9/11, Resilience, and Regrowth; and Ann Magee and Nicole Wong’s Branches of Hope: The 9/11 Survivor Tree. All these books highlight how communities came together to rebuild, grieve, and move on after the event and provide a starting point for conversation about this difficult and harrowing historical moment. Books like these take on challenging and somber topics and provide frameworks for adults to begin a conversation about patriotism, terrorism, and nation. Studying picture books helps adults recognize not only what engages young readers, but also what values and information adults feel are necessary and foundational for young people. As with the 9/11 picture books and those about enslaved Americans, authors and illustrators viewing these moments in history and writing about the long-term implications of these events provide a framework for young people to develop their knowledge of American history. As the genre of children’s picture books is a newer genre—one that is constantly transforming and emerging—we also see how the purpose of children’s picture books changes as time progresses. March 2020 saw a growing demand for a new kind of picture book focused on the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of thoughtfully reflecting on a complicated past event or primarily teaching children how to read, these pandemic-themed picture books attempt to make sense of a life-changing and constantly evolving global event. During the COVID-19 pandemic, people all over the world used the genre of children’s picture books to succinctly and engagingly spread information about the virus and ways to prevent its spread. Pediatricians, social workers, teachers, parents, and children’s book creators put together brief picture books about staying at home, washing one’s hands to prevent the spread of

Rainbows in the Window

11

germs, and learning more about the invisible virus and its impact on their lives. These books were shared on personal websites, Facebook, or YouTube, or by organizations that sponsored the work, including schools, governments, hospitals, and nonprofits. Described as “emergency children’s literature” by Gabriel Duckels and Amy Ryder, these books demonstrate “the social value of storytelling and visual narratives in responding to crises and disasters.”4 Most of the COVID-19 books stick to the familiar picture-book formula of images—whether stock photos or pencil-drawn sketches or collages—and three to five short sentences on each page of a roughly twenty-page book. They also tend to follow Perry Nodelman’s definition of children’s literature in that they “tend to represent visions of childhood pleasing to adults in terms of images and ideas of home, and its happy endings often involve returning to or arriving at what is presented as home.”5 The idea that a children’s book represents more of how adults view and define childhood is not a new concept in children’s literature studies. However, we can further our understanding of the limitations of the genre by analyzing how COVID-19 picture books created during the first couple of years of the pandemic rarely represent the complexity of childhood during this crisis. Instead, they often fall back on idyllic images of home and the hope of the pandemic ending without affecting children beyond some small changes to their everyday lives. In this chapter, we analyze several notable picture books inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic, including some of the initial e-books shared publicly during the spring of 2020 and some of the more traditionally published picture books, such as LeUyen Pham’s Outside, Inside; Brian Floca’s Keeping the City Going; and Patrick Guest and Jonathan Bentley’s Windows, published during fall 2020 to spring 2021. While these books often attend to the chaotic and worrisome aspects of the impact of the coronavirus, we argue that they, like most COVID-19 picture books, also attempt to maintain a fixed, innocent view of childhood that conflicts directly with the harsh realities of the pandemic. By focusing on the losses and sacrifices made by adults and perpetuating the myth of innocence, these books do less to prepare children for living during the coronavirus pandemic and more to provide children and grown-ups alike with reassurance that children will not be affected—physically, mentally, or socially—by the pandemic in the long term. In these books, we can see a limitation of viewing children’s picture books as an archive of childhood during COVID-19, as they provide a skewed view of what children actually experienced and of the repercussions of the pandemic. These books help us better understand the function of children’s picture books as potential “time capsules”; we argue that they illustrate more about adult assumptions about children than what children actually experience and endure, which makes them limited and potentially harmful snapshots of this particular moment in time.

12

Cara Byrne and Kristin Kondrlik

When stay-at-home orders, layoffs, and shutdowns went into effect in the spring of 2020, children’s picture books about COVID-19 were spread primarily digitally, especially as shipping, production, and manufacturing of print books slowed down. One of the first significant children’s picture books about COVID-19 was offered as an e-book by major publisher Nosy Crow Press. In Coronavirus: A Book for Children about COVID-19, children’s picture book editors Elizabeth Jenner, Kate Wilson, and Nia Roberts, in consultation with Graham Medley, a professor of infectious disease modeling, and Axel Scheffler, a well-known children’s illustrator who illustrated The Gruffalo series, defined some of the new terms children were hearing and explained why many of their lives were changing.6 By answering questions like “What is the coronavirus?” and “Why are people worried about catching the coronavirus?” Jenner et al. balance scientists’ and physicians’ knowledge of COVID-19 in early 2020 with clear statements about what is still unknown. In emphasizing that the virus largely affects elderly populations and that keeping a distance from others outside of their homes can alleviate some risk, the authors ask children to take an active role in helping their parents and keeping themselves and their communities well. Scheffler includes illustrations that show how the virus can impact adults, including an elderly man being rolled into an ambulance by stretcher and another man with an unshaven face in bed saying, “I feel really awful!”7 Children, on the other hand, are illustrated washing their hands while singing “Happy Birthday,” playing board games with siblings, and commanding their pet dog to be quiet while their mother attends a remote work meeting. The book emphasizes that while adults are busy working (whether providing medical care in hospitals, delivering food, or even communicating on a computer at home) and are at risk for getting sick, children are tasked with keeping up with healthy behaviors, supporting those around them, and knowing that “One day, this strange time will be over.”8 Through this book, children receive both answers to some of their questions and the assurance that the future is hopeful, despite the uncertainty and scariness of the present. Others outside of children’s book publishing also saw the potential of children’s picture books in helping children and caretakers through this crisis. The Emory Global Health Institute at Emory University held a COVID19 picture e-book competition, asking adult writers and illustrators to create picture books for children ages six through nine that “include age-appropriate, factual information on COVID-19, reassure the reader they are safe and that it is ok to feel upset, and describe actions taken by medical professionals and others.”9 The contest attracted two hundred sixty entries and was judged by seventy professionals with “backgrounds in medicine, public health, education, publishing and the arts.”10 The winning picture book was Beth Bacon and Kary Lee’s Covid-19 Helpers (2020), which met the criteria of

Rainbows in the Window

13

the contest by explaining that “COVID-19 is spread by tiny droplets in the air” and celebrating the contributions that researchers, health-care workers, and leaders made to help mitigate the spread.11 The central “helper” of this e-book is a child—whom the authors say no longer attends school, movie theaters, or birthday parties—but was doing “something very important” and “helping.”12 This form of help is not explicitly described, but every mention of how important children’s actions are is accompanied by an illustration of a child wearing a surgical mask covering her mouth and nose and looking out a window, whether staring motionless, waving to the mail carrier, or simply resting her chin on her fists gazing upward. While the picture book is brief and concise, this recurring image of a child waiting at a window, watching as the world moves on while they stay stationary, is one that is not only heavily featured in this award-winning book but also in a number of other COVID-19–themed picture books. Covid-19 Helpers, like many other titles, emphasizes that the best and most essential service that children could provide during this period was staying home. Several, including Jamie McGaw’s Even Superheroes Stay Home (2020), even emphasize that “staying home” is central to a child’s ability to act like a superhero.13 Unlike the superhero stories many children are accustomed to that celebrate heroic figures engaged in action-packed conflicts or physical altercations, many COVID-19 picture books articulated new scripts focused on quiet household tasks. For instance, McGaw’s superhero child protagonist is heroic because he quietly reads books, listens to his grandmother on the phone, and look for his dad’s glasses. These books illustrate that the major challenges of staying home for kids are boredom and desire for a return to what was. These books also constantly remind children of what is at stake if they leave their homes. Why We Stay Home: Suzie Learns about Coronavirus (2020), written by fourth-year medical students Samantha Harris and Devon Scott and illustrated by Harriet Rodis, for instance, focuses on children’s home-bound responsibilities.14 In this book, Suzie keeps her sister Millie awake at night to share how happy she is that she is home with her and their parents. However, Millie reminds Suzie of the serious reason why they are home and what she needs to do in order to keep vulnerable populations like the girls’ grandparents and their neighbor Mr. Jones, “whose body has a hard time fighting off germs,” well.15 Children are explicitly told over and over again that while they are not at risk of becoming ill with COVID-19, they can carry and transmit the disease, so they must contain and eliminate it through distance and hand washing. While the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and public health documents provided adults with similar messages, children’s books often illustrate children’s obligation to stay home as their special skill or “superpower” during the pandemic. Yet, this image of waiting and pausing

14

Cara Byrne and Kristin Kondrlik

activity ignores what many children were experiencing in their homes, which included change of routines, new stressors, anxiety, and fear of the unknown. Over the course of two and half years, well over four hundred children’s picture books were published about the pandemic. Our larger research project analyzes a diverse range of e-books and print books that aim to teach children why wearing a mask is important, what a virus is, and how their world has momentarily changed. Through analyzing these books, it has been difficult to ignore a prevalent and pervasive message about how children need to become comfortable with pausing their lives and staying at home while adults actively (and anxiously) try to treat those who became ill with COVID and attempt to mitigate the virus’ impact. Writers and illustrators frequently accompany this message with an image of a child looking out a window. Sometimes, the child smiles and offers a hand-drawn picture of a rainbow. Other times, the child looks bored or perplexed. However, no matter the emotion behind the gaze, the child appears motionless and waiting behind the window-glass pane. While other picture books about complex topics—like slavery, death, or 9/11—provide a scaffold for conversation and demonstrate the values and beliefs authors and illustrators have about both the concept itself and about children themselves, COVID-19 picture books respond more immediately to an evolving crisis. These books tell us more about what adults wanted or wished for children’s lives to have looked like rather than reflecting the realities that many children faced. As Amy Cummins writes about Coronavirus: A Book for Children About COVID-19 (2020), this book “departs from some conventions of the picture book genre,”16 but it also “meets an urgent need.”17 Similarly, many COVID-19 picture books can be celebrated for the attention they paid to helping children initially process the pandemic, though these books also show readers how these books do more to provide adults with support than to empathize with children’s struggles. This is true both in picture books by novice children’s book writers and illustrators and by those who have published extensively in the field. Caldecott honorees LeUyen Pham and Brian Floca both wrote and illustrated picture books about life during the pandemic. Floca’s Keeping the City Going (2021), which was first offered for free online as a YouTube animated short before its adaptation and publication as a print picture book, honors “essential workers” unable to stay home due to the nature of their jobs. Floca illustrates children peering outside windows to see how medical professionals, delivery drivers, grocery store clerks, and other essential workers accomplished their necessary jobs. Pham also imagines children staying home and watching out of windows while adults busily attempt to treat sick patients, pay bills, and work via their computers. While COVID-19–themed picture books, including these titles by seasoned picture book writers, can tell us a lot about early understandings of the pandemic, they can show us even more about adult assumptions regarding

Rainbows in the Window

15

children and the childhood they hoped they would have during the global pandemic—which is largely a static, frozen one. In Outside, Inside, written and illustrated during the spring and summer of 2020 and published as a print picture book on January 5, 2021, Pham offers an imaginative take on social distancing. Pham, who has illustrated over a hundred children’s books and has written several of her own, contributed the illustrations to The Princess in Black and the Case of the Coronavirus,18 a COVID-19 e-book written by Shannon Hale and Dean Hale and offered online by Candlewick Press as part of their digital resources for children in the spring of 2020, “Stay Home with Candlewick Press.”19 The Princess in Black early chapter book series follows prim and proper Princess Magnolia as she transforms into the mask-wearing and monster-fighting Princess in Black. While the previous eight books in the series show Princess Magnolia fighting monsters at the beach, at a science fair, and in her friends’ kingdoms, The Princess in Black and the Case of the Coronavirus follows Princess in Black as she “is facing a problem she can’t defeat by herself [:] [. . .] a germ so tiny, we can’t even see it.”20 With the assistance of some of the other familiar characters in the series, the princess explains that by washing your hands while singing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” staying at home and canceling plans, and “making some space” by social distancing, we can prevent the spread of the coronavirus.21 The booklet emphasizes the same information shared by the CDC in early April 2020, but some small updates were made later—including adding facemasks to all the characters (and a goat and the princess’s unicorn, Frimplepants) on the pages advocating for social distancing. Like other e-books published early on during the pandemic, the central goal of this easily accessible e-book was to promote healthy behaviors and show children that, while they should not play with friends in ways they are accustomed to, they could still play in their homes. Children were expected to adopt a heightened awareness of how germs can travel between people while continuing to play and exist as normal within their homes, as the Princess in Black promises: “working together, we can solve this problem!”22 While also a pandemic-inspired children’s book illustrated by Pham, Outside, Inside serves a different purpose than Hale, Hale, and Pham’s The Princess in Black booklet. Instead of describing stay-at-home orders and how viruses spread, Pham uses poetic language to explain that “Something strange happened on an unremarkable day just before the seasons change” before illustrating different scenes of children “who went inside and waited,” looking out windows at empty sidewalks and quiet streets.23 An inquisitive black cat appears on each page, gazing at its changing environment. These scenes include images of children staring at a laptop while their anxious parent is on the phone and standing beside an elderly man as he approaches the sliding-glass doors of a hospital to thank a group of nurses and physicians on

16

Cara Byrne and Kristin Kondrlik

the other side wearing personal protective equipment (PPE). Pham explains that while “Everyone just went inside, shut their doors, and waited,” that actually, “some people needed to be where they needed to be.”24 She includes an extensive spread of drawings of medical workers involved in a variety of activities, from treating a young child’s broken arm to trying to comfort and treat patients who are intubated and in critical care. She does not label or explain everything going on in the scenes she presents; however, Pham provides a realistic and grim vision of the heroism of health-care workers and the incredible challenges they faced while providing medical care. The young girl who graces the cover of the book and who can be seen throughout the book is not the narrator, but she is the central representative of what children experienced during the stay-at-home orders. At the very beginning of the book, the child happily holds the black cat while sitting inside her home by a window. Her illustrated story frames the book as bookends, as she only appears in a handful of spreads, but her interior position throughout most of the book is an important counternarrative to the busy and overwhelmed health-care workers working outside the home on the other pages. While her life appears stagnant at home, as she is frequently featured looking out a window, on one page, her father marks her height on the wood trim of an entryway inside her house, which accompanies the line, “Inside, we kept growing too.”25 Pham recognizes that children grew physically during this period, yet there is still a heavy emphasis on the quiet, static nature of the rest of their lives as they wait for the time when they can go outside again, freely hugging loved ones and playing with friends. Throughout Pham’s book, “outside” refers to physical spaces outside the home, whether open-air parks, streets, hospitals, or grass-covered spaces where animals freely roam, and to how children perceive other people, like the way one looks and the way in which one’s actions influence others. “Inside” refers to different homes, whether home is in an apartment complex, a brick house in a rural setting, or close quarters in a densely packed neighborhood, to the spaces that families occupy within these homes—kitchens, living rooms, bedrooms. “Inside” also refers to the deeply personal aspects of individuals—their feelings, worries, and choices. Windows are liminal spaces, allowing for access to both outside and inside concrete and metaphysical spaces, as children gaze at the empty streets they are not allowed to step upon. The book itself, too, provides a window or glimpse into places children are not allowed to occupy or cannot see, like intensive care units in hospitals, where patients are intubated and surrounded by medical staff wearing PPE. Through witnessing these somber moments, child readers are let into what makes the pandemic so scary and challenging for many adults. Two spreads in particular emphasize the connection between children and the role windows play during the pandemic. On the first spread, which appears

Rainbows in the Window

17

a few pages before the end of the book, Pham states: “On the OUTSIDE, we are all different[,]”26 while illustrating thirty-six children peering out of windows in fifteen different structures. The children are of a diverse range of races, genders, and ages. While some smile thoughtfully as they gaze to the side or above, some frown or hide part of their faces so an observer looking at them from outside cannot see their entire face. None of the children speak, and none look directly at the reader; instead, they direct their gazes somewhere the reader cannot trace. Through this avoidance of direct eye contact, Pham asks the reader to think about the child in the window and imagine what they are looking at instead of providing the reader a definitive object of the child’s attention or calling out the readership as the object of the child’s direct gaze. While this spread features many children waiting at the window, readers gain little knowledge about what they are thinking, looking at, or feeling from this illustration. This page provides a subtle nod to the distinct appearance of each child and the diverse kinds of structures in which they live, but the next page turns the structures and the children into black silhouettes against a purple sky. Each child has their arms outstretched and a pinkish red heart on their chest, emphasizing that “But on the inside, we are all the same.”27 While this is a hopeful remark that pushes against any stereotypes or dehumanization that might occur based on the children’s backgrounds—a highly emphasized message during the summer of 2020 when Black Lives Matter rallies and anti-Asian hate crimes were on the rise—it also creates a uniform message about children: always patiently at the window, waiting for what is to come next, but with little depth or complex thought or emotion. In her author’s note, Pham explains that her “career has been devoted to drawing the world as [she] would like to be, [her] version of a happy world,”28 and Outside, Inside captures this sentiment. Reviewers have noted that Pham emphasizes both the “adversity and resulting growth experienced individually and collectively,”29 which can be seen in her attention to essential workers. It is a book that attempts to share Pham’s own individual vision, one in which adults are shown as active participants in the wider world during the pandemic, especially in their workplaces, while children are not given the same degree of complexity and are instead often shown waiting. In illustrating essential workers wearing masks and delivering mail or providing medical care, hugging and making things for their children, adult lives are illustrated in a more dynamic way and show they are “outside” during the pandemic. In this way, windows frame and freeze children. Conversely, windows are frequently used as a metaphor by children’s literature scholars as a way of helping adults understand the power of children reading a wide array of stories and to encourage them to read diverse books. Rudine Sims Bishop specifically calls books “windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors.” She explains that books can give us mirrors, “transform[ing]

18

Cara Byrne and Kristin Kondrlik

the human experience and reflect[ing] it back to us [. . .] in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience.”30 These mirrors provide an introspective sense of belonging and connection to those who share similarities with the reader and their communities. A number of the pandemic-themed picture books attempt to provide these mirrors, especially when they include children living in different kinds of homes, in different countries, and of different races. Reading “mirror” books also allows reading to become “a means of self-affirmation,”31 showing readers that their lives are important enough to include in literary worlds. However, Sims Bishop states that books can also be windows, “offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange.”32 Windows, in this sense, refer to books that present the experiences of those whom the reader might not identify with, whose environment and characteristics and experiences are not like their own. Windows are portals to the alien, new, or strange; they show what is outside of the reader. Books like Outside, Inside try to provide windows into places unfamiliar to different readers, whether the intimate spaces within hospitals or a number of different households, as each spread represents a number of people. There are, however, limits to the depth that can be achieved by these glimpses; they show moments instead of offering a more descriptive story about diverse characters. When windows provide an effective glimpse into another world, Sims Bishop states that these windows can also be sliding-glass doors, and “readers have only to walk through to become part of whatever world has been created and recreated by the author.”33 Sims Bishop’s metaphor has offered a framework to support why children should read books that provide a diverse range of experiences and people in them, promoting the idea that they should see themselves in “mirror” texts and learn to humanize and better understand others through “window” books. Recently, Sims Bishop’s work has been adapted by authors like Grace Lin,34 Uma Krishnawami,35 and Debbie Reese and Ebony Elizabeth Thomas36 in order to further critically engage with how children of marginalized backgrounds, in particular, are presented in picture books. Pandemic-inspired picture books engage with the idea of a window as a way to see what others are doing, especially when children are not able to leave their homes. However, a reader’s view from outside of a home into a window can only show them the child who is sitting by it and watching the outside world longingly. In Outside, Inside, Pham offers adult and child readers alike many mirrors and windows and provides them with the opportunity to see their own experience with heartache, hard work, or hope during the pandemic, as well as to glimpse at someone else’s. The metaphor of the window calls on us to be empathetic and to recognize those who cannot stay home. Despite

Rainbows in the Window

19

the recognition of stress and hardship throughout her book, the ending of Outside, Inside is hopeful. Like many other COVID-19 books, it ends with a reunion between a child and an older adult hugging in a sunny, flower-filled space outside of the home. While Pham does not shy away from showing children the painful and scarier aspects of the pandemic—namely, the older people who have died and are suffering after being infected in COVID-19— she maintains a more hopeful and limited vision of children and their contributions to the ever-changing landscape of the pandemic. Like Outside, Inside, Floca’s Keeping the City Going comes from his close observation of the world around him and from his immense gratitude for the frontline workers whom he saw outside his window while living in New York City during the spring of 2020.37 First offered as an animated short on YouTube38 in May 2020 and later adapted into a print picture book published in April 2021, Floca focuses on the movement of those still “out on the street,” like firefighters, postal service workers, utility workers, paramedics, doctors, and nurses. Unlike those who are able to stay at home and receive food deliveries and packages, these individuals may be “family, friends, or strangers” who are not staying at home “because we need them.”39 Even more so than Pham’s work, Floca emphasizes the distinction between us/we (the people—including children—who are staying home) versus them (the people “keeping our city going” through their essential employment).40 This book imagines the reader as part of the “we” staying at home, as well; while Floca emphasizes the selflessness of those delivering letters and packages, he explains that “just maybe, they’re bringing the one thing we ordered that we don’t really need . . . but we’ve been stuck here at home, and we’re bored, and we bought it. (We’ll try not to do it again.)”41 Unlike the three essential workers illustrated hauling heavy boxes and pushing mail carts on the street while wearing white masks over their noses and mouths, the unmasked child on the same spread looks upon a small dinosaur toy and smiles.42 This juxtaposition of the harsh reality of the essential worker and the frivolous actions of the child strengthens the divide between these two groups. This book achieves the goal of highlighting underappreciated essential workers: both those who can be seen on the street and those who are not in visible areas—like those working under the street maintaining plumbing and hospital workers, who are only seen when commuting home. Notably, children are never part of the group that “keeps the city going.” At best, they are those who show gratitude, and at worst, they get in the way of adults (like the mail carriers) trying to maintain systems during the challenging pandemic. Like in Pham’s book, windows help emphasize this message. Keeping the City Going begins rather simply with a spread with several sentences on one side and a small image on the other. On the left-hand side of the page, the black text “We are here at home now, watching the

20

Cara Byrne and Kristin Kondrlik

world through our windows, and wondering what will happen next. Outside, we see the city we know, but not as we’ve seen it before”43 appears at the bottom of the all-white page. On the right side, readers see a monocular view of two children tentatively peeking behind curtains in a window on a brick building. The children’s faces are mostly obscured, but it is clear they are looking out, capturing the children’s inquisitive nature. The same two children, an older boy and a younger girl, appear at the window several times throughout the book. They are always looking down at the scenes described, though they do not appear to be engaged in any other activity other than watching the busy adults on the street below. While the children are stationary at their window, the adults they watch are seen both walking on the street and in the windows of the vehicles they drive. In the earliest animated version of this book and in the print version, Floca emphasizes vehicles. Fed-Ex delivery trucks, garbage trucks, fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars are all shown speeding from place to place or parked outside the window where the children can see them. The people within the vehicles are often visible through the passenger- or driver’s-side window. However, unlike the children whose window is depicted as a way for them to see beyond a private space, the vehicle windows provide a glimpse into the hard work of the workers, as they wear masks and engage in important activities in the public sphere. The book ends with the children joined at the window by grown-ups. Instead of standing stationary, with the adults and with others in their community, they open the windows that have been shut throughout the book and join others in the city to make some noise. The tradition of cheering at one’s window, which started in March 2020 in cities like New York City, asked those staying at home to bang pots, play musical instruments, and cheer for the essential workers who were sometimes ending a shift or continuing their route nightly at 7 p.m. for several minutes.44 This practice also unveiled the communities that hid quietly behind windowpanes for most of the day. While this practice of nightly cheering only lasted for a couple of months,45 Floca’s work maintains this sense of gratitude and ends with the note, “Thanks to the people keeping our city going.”46 These people, the clear “them/they” in the book, are never children. Again, children are present in the book, announcing that “we are all still here, and we are here together,” especially when cheering at the window, but children’s lives are once again imagined as stationary but able to be viewed by the reader as the reader watches the children looking out their home’s window. Floca explains that writing Keeping the City Going in 2020 was challenging for a number of reasons, including that “the nature of the pandemic was evolving, often unpredictably, as the book was being made, and could be expected to continue to evolve even after the book was finished.”47 Both Pham and Floca’s books were written in 2020, in the initial chaos of the

Rainbows in the Window

21

pandemic, and published in print form in 2021, a time when new variants emerged, vaccines were slowly becoming available to adults,48 and debates about stay-at-home orders and mask wearing were rampant. As we write this chapter in late 2022, we are still in a pandemic state, and there is still much we do not know about this virus and its impact on health. Millions of people have died from the virus, including thousands of children. When writing about an ongoing crisis and faced with the personal and communal stresses, questions, and worries that come with it, these children’s book authors have addressed the pandemic in a way that few other writers for children have. Though these books very clearly take on the early pandemic, neither author ever uses the words COVID-19, pandemic, virus, or disease. This choice allows the book to be significant years later after stay-at-home orders have been lifted, as they were in 2021. It also allows this book to capture a more universal message about community and childhood. However, the pervasiveness of the image of a child in a window needing to stay home and away from others and watching as adults wear masks covering their noses and mouths shows that these books are very much about the initial social impact of COVID-19. They also provide a way to decenter the child’s experience of the pandemic by showing that waiting and watching at a window are the defining activities of kids growing up during this traumatic event. Like Keeping the City Going and Outside, Inside, the picture book Windows, published in late 2020, written by Patrick Guest, and illustrated by Jonathan Bentley, similarly features children watching out of windows, waiting for a time when this “new world” feels more like the comfortable and social world they are used to.49 Like Pham’s Outside, Inside, the children in Windows who peer out of their home’s windows are from different countries and ethnic backgrounds and also show different emotions about having to stay at home. Some children smile at the clouds that look like different shapes overhead, while other children are fearful of the unrecognizable or mysterious elements of their neighborhood that have changed or that they never noticed before. Yet, like in the other COVID-19 picture books, the children similarly stay transfixed and unmoving from their positions watching and waiting. Even though the children long to see others, one enjoys watching an adult play music from her home’s balcony, while another waves from their home’s window to a mask-wearing nurse walking on the street. Guest, a health-care worker who moved out of his family home to protect his family in case he contracted COVID, wrote this book in order to stay connected to his family and celebrate the resilience he saw in all his children.50 The book ends with a happy reunion of grandparents and children hugging in a sweet embrace, similarly emphasizing the turn from waiting at a window to reconciliation and return to normalcy.

22

Cara Byrne and Kristin Kondrlik

The windows in these COVID-19–themed picture books do not merely present a way for readers to see stationary children watching an active world they cannot access; these books also link windows to a yearning to be outdoors and for the world to return to the way it once was. The genre of children’s picture books also often relates to adult nostalgia for childhood, a time of normalcy, innocence, and happy simplicity. Windows also situate the child in a position where they are frozen, fixed in one spot—waiting and watching, but not truly participating or effecting change. Like the rainbow drawings hanging in the windows, children, too, provide hope for adults that children themselves are okay and not affected by the pandemic in the way that adults are. Instead, children are simply waiting for a happier time, when the pandemic is over and life returns as it was before the pandemic started. These books do not imagine children facing loss, death, or illness themselves. Instead, the focus is light, happy, and restorative. The book itself is a window—allowing readers to view the children sitting and watching out their own windows. While the readership is often assumed to be children, adults are the ones who craft this vision and often read these picture books alongside young people, so the window into childhood that we see is still very limited and from an adult’s perspective. While the children on the pages of these books stay transfixed at the window, watching and waiting, more often children who had the privilege and ability to stay at home—or had to enter the outside world—were moving, changing, and adapting. These books show active examples of adults engaged in these kinds of activities but very rarely children. This lack of a dynamic children’s point of view in these picture books indicates a more pervasive lack of empathy for children’s perspectives. Perhaps it is easier to gloss over the complex feelings and challenges children face than it is to acknowledge young people’s strife. Just as a child sitting in a window is a pervasive image in many COVID-19 picture books, rainbows are also a frequent symbol that focus on hope for the future and gloss over children’s complex experiences of the pandemic. Stemming from early in the pandemic, when children were asked to paint rainbows and place these drawings in their windows, rainbows are tied to children aligning themselves with the hopeful possibilities of what comes after the pandemic. While the children in Guest’s Windows stay close to the window, watching the world around them, they also put drawings of rainbows and teddy bears in their own windows as a way to lift the spirits of onlookers passing by. An entire spread of the picture book replaces the children peering out of windows with rainbows, hand-drawn pictures of hearts, and stuffed bears and bunnies. Similarly, in Outside, Inside, a rainbow image appears on a cup filled with crayons and markers that a child uses to create illustrations of her with her grandparents and of a bouquet of pink flowers. On the back of the book, underneath the book jacket, Pham also features a rainbow drawn

Rainbows in the Window

23

on a sidewalk with several hearts above it and the word Together beneath it. This sidewalk contrasts the only human figure on the page, who wears a mask and walks in the opposite direction of this cheery message. One can also see a rainbow illustration hanging in the window of one of the townhouses. Likewise, several COVID-19 books, including Theresa Trinder and Grant Snider’s There Is a Rainbow and Maggie Faga and Fabio Gioffre’s A Rainbow for Dad, reference placing a rainbow drawing in one’s front window, encouraging children to color in a rainbow shape and hang it up or telling the story of kind children who make rainbows as a service to their communities. These picture books often use the rainbow to signal the idea that the pandemic has introduced a scary and intimidating storm, but we are all waiting for a rainbow to come and show us how the world became better and more beautiful because of the trial we lived through. A rainbow can join two friends together—like in Julia Seal’s Alone Together and Eoin McLaughlin’s While We Can’t Hug—or help a child work through their broad range of feelings— as represented by the colors of the rainbow—like in Andrew Joyner’s Love Was Inside. But often, the rainbow signifies hope and reminds us of a coming happier future. As Michelle Robinson states in her book The World Made a Rainbow, “The light couldn’t shine if it never knew the dark. And rainbows can’t color the world without rain.”51 COVID-19–themed picture books often serve an important function in bringing positivity and hope to their readers during the pandemic, especially in emphasizing that children would come out of the pandemic largely unscathed and unchanged. In Share Your Rainbow: 18 Artists Draw Their Hope for the Future,52 well-known children’s picture book illustrators, including Vashti Harrison, Lane Smith, Adam Rex, and Oge Mora, contributed drawings imagining the beautiful world that will come after the pandemic has ended. With all the proceeds from the book going to the nonprofit World Central Kitchen, which helped address food insecurity during the pandemic, the collaborative book focused on community-building and positivity. Illustrators imagine children sitting on a busy bus (Magdelena Mora) and eating ice cream at the beach with a friend (Molly Idle). Each page uses rainbow hues to emphasize not what is—stay-at-home orders and the closures of many public spaces, including restaurant dining rooms, playgrounds, and amusement parks—but what might be again—including being reunited with loved ones. The cover image, illustrated by Caldecott winner Dan Santat, features a smiling young boy resting his elbows on the windowsill of a brick building with a taped image of a hand-drawn picture of a rainbow appearing over his head. Once again, the reader views a child from the exterior of their home as they look out a window, patiently waiting for the stay-at-home orders and the pandemic to end. While the book is a catalog of all of the activities, public places, and

24

Cara Byrne and Kristin Kondrlik

people the illustrators miss, none of the illustrations imagine children in their homes or express the illustrators’ own complex feelings about staying home. Perhaps it is easier to present children through this hopeful lens, one that frequently places the reader on the outside of children’s homes, viewing the children from their windows. In only seeing a small part of the child from the vantage point of the small frame of the window, readers rarely see much more than their face. The less we see, the less readers need to acknowledge the complexities of children’s own experiences during the pandemic. The rainbow in the window is a powerful metaphor, not only in these books, but also for how adults understand childhood during this period. A rainbow is supposed to be transient—a beautiful, magical, and natural occurrence that leaves nearly as quickly as it appears. By placing permanent images of rainbows in a window, these illustrations make permanent and static what should not be. In the same way, these picture books also take children’s lives and experiences and attempt to freeze them. While adults must still work, make challenging decisions, and attempt to stay well in the face of an intimidating illness, many COVID-19 picture books do not illustrate or show the dynamic changes that children experience as well. Their routines, their education, their roles in their families, and their access to spaces all changed dramatically, but very few pandemic-themed picture books acknowledge this. Many picture books reflect a prevalent discourse about children that focuses on their resiliency and flexibility without showing how the pandemic has had a tremendous impact on them. Since the publication of free e-books like Coronavirus: A book for children about Covid-19 and Covid-19 Helpers and print books like Keeping the City Going, Outside, Inside, and Windows, children’s relationships with COVID have changed. As of December 22, 2022, since the start of the pandemic, 15.2 million U.S. children have tested positive for COVID.53 Between September 2021 and February 2022, about eight million of these cases were reported in the United States, meaning that well over half of children’s cases occurred in a five-month period.54 During this surge, children, who make up 22.2 percent of the total U.S. population, accounted for 22.8 percent of new cases, with children under four accounting for almost half of these cases. Floca, Pham, and Guest and Bentley’s books were published months prior to the Omicron variant spread—before children were able to be vaccinated and when rates of infection were lower. We can no longer promise children that they will not get COVID, that they will stay well so long as they properly wash their hands and wear their masks, or that all will return to the way things were before. Authors for children should never make promises or absolute statements about wellness—no matter how hopeful or optimistic they want to be. Many of the more traditional picture books about the pandemic, featuring beautiful illustrations and hopeful messages, give us an optimistic, though

Rainbows in the Window

25

limited, vision of what children and adults alike have lived through during the past two years. These children’s books do not show the uglier and more difficult realities many children faced during the pandemic. In their 2021 article in the Journal of Pediatrics, Pietro Ferrara et al. emphasize the “hidden pandemic” of children witnessing and experiencing domestic and family violence. Worldwide, there has been a “dramatic rise” in intimate-partner violence and femicide, including mothers being murdered by the father of their child or children, as well as an average 20 to 30 percent increase in documented domestic violence.55 The pandemic also saw a sharp increase in child homicide and gun violence.56 For children directly experiencing physical abuse, home is not safe.57 Given these rates, for many children, home was not a place of boredom and temporary fun during stay-at-home orders, but rather a place of incredible pain and trauma. The window did not offer a safety net or way to view the pain and troubles children faced. They were not sitting bored and wistful at the window as so many COVID-19 picture books illustrate them; instead, they were suffering and adapting and constantly negotiating the spaces they were in. The picture books and messages about the quiet nature of childhood during the pandemic these books promote do not acknowledge or speak for so many children whose lives became as challenging as adults.’ An additional risk arises in how these vulnerable children are falling through the cracks and going unseen now, in the supposedly “post-pandemic” period. Nearly three years after the pandemic started, child development specialists and educators have noted how young children have experienced “pandemic learning loss,” especially those who lost some of the invaluable resources that in-person education provided that remote or online learning could not.58 While researchers are learning more and more about how children were impacted by the pandemic, the publication of children’s picture books that engaged in the realities of experiencing the pandemic in March 2020, such as Outside, Inside, Keeping the City Going, and Share Your Rainbow, has stalled. While hundreds of picture books about COVID-19 were published during the first two years of the pandemic, the rate of publication of texts about COVID-19 has slowed down tremendously, and visual cues of the pandemic, such as mask wearing, incessant hand washing, stay-at-home orders, and mandatory remote learning, have all but disappeared from recent children’s picture books. This phenomenon means that the books from early on during the pandemic may serve as representative texts for what it was like at the beginning of the pandemic. The hundreds of pandemic-themed children’s picture books published in 2020 and 2021 represent a novel phenomenon of using the picture book genre to quickly attend to a public health crisis. Julie Danielson calls Keeping the City Going “an exquisite time capsule of a sort for last year[,]”59 and Aisha

26

Cara Byrne and Kristin Kondrlik

Saeed calls Pham’s Outside, Inside “a time capsule of our moment in history, when the world came together as one to do the right thing.”60 As these books were written and published in the midst of a chaotic time, when not much was known about a terrifying virus making many people incredibly ill, writing and illustrating the world in the most heroic, community-oriented, and hopeful way preserves some sense of protecting children then and now—without actually acknowledging or engaging with actual children. The absence of children’s voices and experiences in these books becomes painfully obvious as one compares how active adults are and how passive children are. This silencing and omission of children’s voices limits the archive and does not provide a true glimpse into their experiences during the pandemic. This essay is also limited in this regard. Such limitations can be problematic but inherent features of archives created about marginalized groups. Critic Saidiya Hartman notes the limitations of archives. She specifically writes of archives that tell of the lives of enslaved people and the Middle Passage, as these archives are almost always written, expressed, and illustrated by those who were not enslaved. These storytellers provide accounts of the horrors and violence that enslaved people faced without having lived through these experiences themselves. Hartman contends that she must work “with and against the archive”61; she cannot “give voice” to the women who were murdered and died while enslaved. She instead challenges her readers “to reckon with the precarious lives which are visible only in the moment of their disappearance.”62 We are not making a comparison between enslaved people who traveled through the Middle Passage and children living during the pandemic, but when we look at the “time capsule” of children’s picture books, we stress that these books present a static vision of childhood and point to a severe deficiency in our understanding and appreciation for the challenges young children faced during the pandemic. If we want these picture books to serve as time capsules, let us note how they capture adult desires for children to be unaffected by the pandemic, showing a hopeful and optimistic view of communities coming together and the temporary inconveniences the pandemic created for children. Importantly, we must acknowledge the limitations of these books and challenge ourselves to see the hidden childhood that exists on the other side of the window. In her book The Stolen Year: How COVID Changed Children’s Lives, and Where We Go Now, Anya Kamenetz explores the failures of the U.S. government and public services to support the necessary infrastructure that would have helped children through the crisis of 2020–2021 and the ways in which we can “redress the wrongs done to children during this time.”63 With hopeful recognition of the ways in which children have survived, she argues that we must “honor children’s rights” by creating an “expanded vision of

Rainbows in the Window

27

civic responsibility” and overhauling government systems, such as special education and child welfare, that overly burden those who have fewer resources.64 Few of the children’s picture books about COVID-19 that we have explored in this essay provide insights into the childhoods that Kamenez recognizes. While many COVID-19 picture books provide hope, love, and peace during a chaotic and challenging time, they do not inform readers on what children’s interior lives were like and how they, like adults, changed during the stay-at-home orders. During COVID-19, children were anything but static or inert. NOTES 1. Deborah Stevenson, “History of Children’s and Young Adult Literature,” in Handbook of Research on Children’s and Young Adult Literature, edited by Shelby Wolf, Karen Coats, Patricia Enciso, and Christine Jenkins (London: Routledge, 2011): 179–93. 2. Mo Willems, “Author Mo Willems Discusses New Children’s Book,” interview with Jamie Wax, CBS Interactive, CBS News, September 15, 2022, video, 6:06, https:​ //​www​.cbsnews​.com​/video​/author​-mo​-willems​-discusses​-new​-childrens​-book/. 3. Rowe Wright, “Women in Publishing: May Massee,” Publisher’s Weekly 114, No. 13 (September 29, 1928): 1335. 4. Gabriel Duckels and Amy Ryder, “Emergency Children’s Literature: Rapidly Representing COVID-19 in Digital Texts for Young People in the United Kingdom.” In COVID-19 and Education in the Global North, edited by Ruby Turok-Squire (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2022): 140, https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1007​/978​-3​ -031​-02469​-6. 5. Perry Nodelman, The Hidden Adult: Defining Children’s Literature (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008): 243. 6. Elizabeth Jenner, Kate Wilson, Nia Roberts, and Axel Scheffler, Coronavirus: A Book for Children (London: Nosy Crow, 2020), https:​//​nosycrow​.com​/wp​-content​/ uploads​/2020​/04​/Coronavirus​-A​-Book​-for​-Children​.pdf. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Emory University Global Health Institute, “EGHI COVID-19 Children’s eBook Competition,” accessed December 29, 2022, https:​//​ebookcovid19​.devpost​.com/. 10. Rebecca Baggett, “Winning COVID-19 children’s books address facts, emotions surrounding Pandemic,” Emory University News Center, May 18, 2022, https:​//​ news​.emory​.edu​/stories​/2020​/05​/er​_covid​_19​_book​_winners​/campus​.html. 11. Beth Bacon and Kary Lee, COVID-19 Helpers (Rollingbay, WA: Pixel Titles, 2020), https:​//​globalhealth​.emory​.edu​/​_includes​/documents​/sections​/programs​/covid​ -19​_helpers​_bacon​_lee​_eghi​.pdf. 12. Ibid.

28

Cara Byrne and Kristin Kondrlik

13. Jamie McGaw, Even Superheroes Stay Home (Self-published, Jamie McGaw: 2020), https:​//​www​.jamiemcgaw​.com​/even​-superheroes​-stay​-home. 14. Samantha Harris, Devon Scott, and Harriet Rodis, Why We Stay Home: Suzie Learns about the Coronavirus (Self-published, Learning with Suzie and Millie: 2020), https:​//​massaimh​.org​/wp​-content​/uploads​/2020​/05​/why​-we​-stay​-home​.pdf. 15. Ibid. 16. Amy Cummins, “Audience, Genre, and Accuracy in Coronavirus: A Book for Children,” CEA Critic 82, no. 3 (2020): 215. 17. Ibid., 217. 18. Shannon Hale, Dean Hale, and LeUyen Pham, The Princess in Black and the Case of the Coronavirus (Somerville, MA: Candlewick, 2020), https:​//​princessinblack​ .com​/download​/pib​-coronavirus​.pdf. 19. Candlewick Press, “Stay Home with Candlewick Press,” Candlewick Press, accessed December 29, 2022, https:​//​stayhome​.candlewick​.com/. 20. Hale, Hale, and Pham, The Princess in Black and the Case of the Coronavirus. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. LeUyen Pham, Outside, Inside (New York: Roaring Brook Press, 2021). 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid. 29. Aisha Saeed, “Review of Outside, Inside, by LeUyen Pham,” Kirkus Reviews, November 18, 2020, https:​//​www​.kirkusreviews​.com​/book​-reviews​/leuyen​-pham​/ outside​-inside​-pham/. 30. Rudine Sims Bishop, “Windows and Mirrors: Children’s Books and Parallel Cultures,” Perspectives on Teaching and Assessing Language Arts, Illinois Association of Teachers of English (Fall 1990): 83. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid. 33. Rudine Sims Bishop, “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors,” Perspectives: Choosing and Using Books for the Classroom 6, no. 3 (1990), n.p., https:​//​ scenicregional​.org​/wp​-content​/uploads​/2017​/08​/Mirrors​-Windows​-and​-Sliding​-Glass​ -Doors​.pdf. 34. Grace Lin, “Windows, Mirrors and Glasses: Grace Lin on Seeing the World Through Diverse Books,” Publisher’s Weekly, August 18, 2022, https:​ //​ www​.publishersweekly​.com​/pw​/by​-topic​/childrens​/childrens​-authors​/article​/90101​ -windows​-mirrors​-and​-glasses​-grace​-lin​-on​-seeing​-the​-world​-through​-diverse​-books​ .html. 35. Uma Krishnaswami, “Why Stop at Windows and Mirrors?: Children’s Book Prisms,” Horn Book Magazine (1945) 95, no. 1 (2019): 54. 36. SLJ Staff, “An Updated Look at Diversity in Children’s Books,” School Library Journal, June 19, 2019, https:​//​www​.slj​.com​/story​/an​-updated​-look​-at​-diversity​-in​ -childrens​-books.

Rainbows in the Window

29

37. Brian Floca, “Keeping the City Going: An Interview with Brian Floca,” Interview with Jules Danielson, Seven Impossible Things before Breakfast, June 15, 2021, http:​//​blaine​.org​/sevenimpossiblethings​/​?p​=5362. 38. Brian Floca, Keeping the City Going (video), posted by William Rainey Harper Panthers, YouTube, May 21, 2020, https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​ =qkv52VAFbBk. 39. Brian Floca, Keeping the City Going (book) (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2021). 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid. 44. Andy Newman, “What N.Y.C. Sounds Like Every Night at 7,” New York Times, April 10, 2020, https:​//​www​.nytimes​.com​/interactive​/2020​/04​/10​/nyregion​/nyc​-7pm​ -cheer​-thank​-you​-coronavirus​.html. 45. Charles Passey, “Remember Last Year’s 7 p.m. Cheer? Some New Yorkers Are Still at It,” Wall Street Journal, July 11, 2021, https:​//​www​.wsj​.com​/articles​/ remember​-last​-years​-7​-p​-m​-cheer​-some​-new​-yorkers​-are​-still​-at​-it​-11626024038. 46. Floca, Keeping the City Going (book), 2021. 47. Floca, “Keeping the City Going: An Interview with Brian Floca.” 48. For children in the United States, vaccines would not become available until the end of 2021 (ages five to twelve years old) or the summer of 2022 (ages six months to five years old). 49. Patrick Guest and Jonathan Bentley, Windows (New York: Starry Forest Books, 2020). 50. Carolyn Webb, “The children’s book author who moved out, twice, to protect his family,” The Age, July 13, 2020, https:​//​www​.theage​.com​.au​/national​/victoria​ /the​-children​-s​-book​-author​-who​-moved​-out​-twice​-to​-protect​-his​-family​-20200713​ -p55bjk​.html, accessed December 29, 2022, https:​//​www​.patrickguest​.com​.au​/books/. 51. Michelle Robinson and Ashley Hamilton, The World Made a Rainbow (New York: Bloomsbury, 2020). 52. R.J. Palacio, Brian Biggs, Catia Chien, Vashti Harrison et al., Share Your Rainbow: 18 Artists Draw Their Hope for the Future, illustrated edition (New York: Random House, 2020). 53. American Academy of Pediatrics and Children’s Hospital Association, “Children and COVID-19: State Data Report” (Itasca, IL: American Academy of Pediatrics and Children’s Hospital Association, 2022), https:​//​downloads​.aap​.org​/AAP​/PDF​/ AAP​%20and​%20CHA​%20​-​%20Children​%20and​%20COVID19​%20State​%20Data​ %20Report​%2012​.15​.22​%20FINAL​.pdf​?​_ga​=2​.145758388​.189651309​.1672339335​ -1851977002​.1672339333. 54. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “CDC COVID Data Tracker,” accessed December 29, 2022, https:​//​covid​.cdc​.gov​/covid​-data​-tracker​/​#demographics. 55. Pietro Ferrara, Giulia Franceschini, Giovanni Corsello, Julije Mestrovic, Ida Giardino, Mehmet Vural, Tudor Lucian Pop, Leyla Namazova-Baranova, Eli Somekh, Flavia Indrio, and Massimo Pettoello-Mantovani, “Children Witnessing

30

Cara Byrne and Kristin Kondrlik

Domestic and Family Violence: A Widespread Occurrence during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Pandemic,” Journal of Pediatrics 235 (2021): 305–06.e2. 56. DN Haddad and EJ Kaufman, “Rising Rates of Homicide of Children and Adolescents: Preventable and Unacceptable,” JAMA Pediatrics, published online December 19, 2022, doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2022.4946. 57. Statistically, children are the primary victims of family violence and/or those who most often witness domestic abuse. 58. Sarah Mervosh, “Pandemic Learning Loss: The Role Remote Learning Played,” New York Times, November 28, 2022, https:​//​www​.nytimes​.com​/2022​/11​/28​ /briefing​/pandemic​-learning​-loss​.html. 59. Floca, “Keeping the City Going: An Interview with Brian Floca.” 60. Saeed, “Review of Outside, Inside, by LeUyen Pham.” 61. Saidiya Hartman, “Venus in Two Acts.” Small Axe 12, no. 2 (2008): 12. 62. Ibid. 63. Anya Kamenetz, The Stolen Year: How COVID Changed Children’s Lives, and Where We Go Now (New York: Public Affairs, 2022), 331. 64. Ibid., 332.

BIBLIOGRAPHY American Academy of Pediatrics and Children’s Hospital Association. Children and COVID-19: State Data Report. Itasca, IL: American Academy of Pediatrics and Children’s Hospital Association, 2022. Bacon, Beth, and Kary Lee. COVID-19 Helpers. Rollingbay, WA: Pixel Titles, 2020. Baggett, Rebecca. “Winning COVID-19 children’s books address facts, emotions surrounding Pandemic.” Emory University News Center, May 18, 2022. Candlewick Press. “Stay Home with Candlewick Press.” Accessed December 29, 2022. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “CDC COVID Data Tracker.” Accessed December 29, 2022. Cummins, Amy. “Audience, Genre, and Accuracy in Coronavirus: A Book for Children.” CEA Critic 82, no. 3 (2020): 212–17. Duckels, Gabriel, and Amy Ryder. “Emergency Children’s Literature: Rapidly Representing COVID-19 in Digital Texts for Young People in the United Kingdom.” In COVID-19 and Education in the Global North, edited by Ruby Turok-Squire. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2022. Emory University Global Health Institute. “EGHI COVID-19 Children’s eBook Competition.” Accessed December 29, 2022. Ferrara, Pietro, Giulia Franceschini, Giovanni Corsello, Julije Mestrovic, Ida Giardino, Mehmet Vural, Tudor Lucian Pop, Leyla Namazova-Baranova, Eli Somekh, Flavia Indrio, and Massimo Pettoello-Mantovani. “Children Witnessing Domestic and Family Violence: A Widespread Occurrence during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Pandemic.” The Journal of Pediatrics 235 (2021): 305–06.e2.

Rainbows in the Window

31

Floca, Brian. “Keeping the City Going: An Interview with Brian Floca.” Interview with Jules Danielson. Seven Impossible Things before Breakfast, June 15, 2021. Floca, Brian. Keeping the City Going (book). New York: Simon and Schuster, 2021. Floca, Brian. Keeping the City Going (video). Posted by William Rainey Harper Panthers. YouTube, May 21, 2020. Guest, Patrick, and Jonathan Bentley. Windows. New York: Starry Forest Books, 2020. Haddad, DN, and EJ Kaufman. “Rising Rates of Homicide of Children and Adolescents: Preventable and Unacceptable.” JAMA Pediatrics. Published online December 19, 2022. Hale, Shannon, Dean Hale, and LeUyen Pham. The Princess in Black and the Case of the Coronavirus. Somerville, MA: Candlewick, 2020. Harris, Samantha, Devon Scott, and Harriet Rodis. Why We Stay Home: Suzie Learns about the Coronavirus. Self-published, Learning with Suzie and Millie: 2020. Hartman, Saidiya. “Venus in Two Acts.” Small Axe 12, no. 2 (2008): 1–14. Jenner, Elizabeth, Kate Wilson, Nia Roberts, and Axel Scheffler. Coronavirus: A Book for Children. London: Nosy Crow, 2020. Kamenetz, Anya. The Stolen Year: How COVID Changed Children’s Lives, and Where We Go Now. New York: Public Affairs, 2022. Krishnaswami, Uma. “Why Stop at Windows and Mirrors?: Children’s Book Prisms.” The Horn Book Magazine (1945) 95, no. 1 (2019): 54. Lin, Grace. “Windows, Mirrors and Glasses: Grace Lin on Seeing the World Through Diverse Books.” Publishers Weekly, August 18, 2022. McGaw, Jamie. Even Superheroes Stay Home. Self-published, Jamie McGaw: 2020. Mervosh, Sarah. “Pandemic Learning Loss: The Role Remote Learning Played.” New York Times, November 28, 2022. Newman, Andy. “What N.Y.C. Sounds Like Every Night at 7.” New York Times, April 10, 2020. Nodelman, Perry. The Hidden Adult: Defining Children’s Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. Palacio, R.J., Brian Biggs, Catia Chien, Vashti Harrison et al. Share Your Rainbow: 18 Artists Draw Their Hope for the Future. Illustrated edition. New York: Random House, 2020. Passey, Charles. “Remember Last Year’s 7 p.m. Cheer? Some New Yorkers Are Still at It.” Wall Street Journal, July 11, 2021. Pham, LeUyen. Outside, Inside. New York: Roaring Brook Press, 2021. Robinson, Michelle, and Ashley Hamilton. The World Made a Rainbow. New York: Bloomsbury, 2020. Saeed, Aisha. “Review of Outside, Inside, by LeUyen Pham.” Kirkus Reviews, November 18, 2020. Sims Bishop, Rudine. “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors.” Perspectives: Choosing and Using Books for the Classroom 6, no. 3 (1990), n.p. Sims Bishop, Rudine. “Windows and Mirrors: Children’s Books and Parallel Cultures. Perspectives on Teaching and Assessing Language Arts.” Illinois Association of Teachers of English (Fall 1990): 83–92.

32

Cara Byrne and Kristin Kondrlik

SLJ Staff. “An Updated Look at Diversity in Children’s Books.” School Library Journal, June 19, 2019. Stevenson, Deborah. “History of Children’s and Young Adult Literature.” In Handbook of Research on Children’s and Young Adult Literature. Edited by Shelby Wolf, Karen Coats, Patricia Enciso, and Christine Jenkins. 179–93. London: Routledge, 2011. Webb, Carolyn. “The children’s book author who moved out, twice, to protect his family.” The Age, July 13, 2020. Willems, Mo. “Author Mo Willems Discusses New Children’s Book.” Interview with Jamie Wax, CBS Interactive, CBS News, September 15, 2022. Video, 6:06. “WINDOWS—A new book by Patrick and Jonathan Bentley—available now.” Patrick Guest: Children’s Book Author. Accessed December 29, 2022. Wright, Rowe. “Women in Publishing: May Massee,” Publisher’s Weekly 114, Issue 13 (September 29, 1928): 1334–35.

Chapter 2

Picturing Political Agency in Childhood Visual Rhetoric of Child Activism in Narrative Picture Books Meghan Whitfield

Since the 2016 election cycle, the United States has experienced numerous interrelated crises that have resulted in acts of social activism across the country. The children’s book publishing industry has responded to this historic moment: picture books published in the United States over the past five years increasingly reflect the tensions of American culture, with social movements and activism among the burgeoning themes. For example, The Pink Hat by Andrew Joyner (2017) celebrates solidarity in the Women’s Movement. The story follows a pink hat—symbol of the 2017 Women’s March in Washington, D.C.—as it finds its way onto the head of a young girl marching for women’s equality. Joyner cites the children who participated in the Women’s March as inspiration for this story, and the book brings to the fore questions that have proliferated through the social sciences concerning children’s roles in activism and the ethics of including child participants. Such questions have spilled into the study of children’s literature as picture books increasingly depict children as agents of change. These texts lean into the politics of childhood, reorienting child identities around activist identities and problematizing traditional notions of childhood innocence. Longitudinal studies indicate developmental windows for discussions about sensitive social subjects and suggest the window may close by the time a child enters third grade (approximately age eight for students in the United States). These studies imply that the time to talk with children about 33

34

Meghan Whitfield

social issues happens at a young age.1 For many children, picture books are part of early childhood literacy experiences that not only shape their literacy journeys but may also be part of complex identity negotiation. Images in picture books serve as inroads for children to understand narrative and abstract concepts. When picture books explore social movements and activism, publishers, educators, and families must closely examine the content of the text as well as the messages the illustrations communicate. Illustrations possess generative power, not only to evoke morality, but also to shape it in relation to the external world at the same time internal values and beliefs are forged within readers. Existing research in children’s literature focuses on roots of inequality, injustice, and exploitation through text and plot points with few studies devoted exclusively to visual elements. Although scholars emphasize the inherent multimodal nature of picture books as crucial for full understanding,2 young children often engage with images before learning to read the accompanying text, inviting researchers to analyze illustrations in isolation to understand what and how they communicate. Additionally, scholars discuss the intertextuality of images contained within the same work3 without addressing how images work across texts to build collective knowledge.4 Picture books are part of the complex, constitutive process of forming culture, offering images of possible social worlds and roles for children as they grow. During early childhood, picture books play a formative role in developing children’s sense of being in the world,5 contributing to a complicated web of associations that continue to develop throughout life.6 The stories children read help them construct social expectations—their sense of what is ethical conduct with others—and frame an understanding of their own specific rights and responsibilities.7 Narrative picture books featuring social movements or activism not only socialize children into political worlds but also contribute to their sense of what it means to be an activist and more broadly, a person in society. Understanding the rhetorical work of images is critical for social participation because picture books may be a child’s first introduction to important, ongoing cultural conversations. CHILD ACTIVISM AND VISUAL RHETORIC Brian Martin defines activism as “an action on the behalf of a cause, action that goes beyond what is conventional or routine.”8 Activism results from a desire to defy dominant, marginalizing social structures, and it challenges social norms and decision-making processes.9 The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) laid the foundation for children’s human rights around the globe over thirty years ago, inspiring legislation and research to

Picturing Political Agency in Childhood

35

advocate for change.10 Among its provisions, Article 12 recognizes children as political agents, “assure[ing] to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child.”11 Activism offers children a way to express their ideas in advocating for change, and in so doing, reorients child identities (away from age, dependency, or vulnerability status) toward activist identities aligned with moral causes or issues.12 In bringing social movement studies into conversation with childhood studies, scholars aim to understand and define child activism and, by extension, child-activist identity, in ways that center children’s political agency.13 While Article 12 requires no minimal age requirement and no burden of proof for capacity in guaranteeing participation rights for children, it does guarantee that the child’s views are “given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.” Although participation is “foundational for developing engaged citizens who can support a democracy,”14 the current structure of government and political systems favor adult decision-making processes, which are often mirrored in institutionally structured activism for children. Given the weight of the CRC in global child advocacy, it is important to note that, as of this writing, the United States has not ratified the document. The growing number of children engaged in social movements and the increased number of activist-oriented children’s literature offers young readers “creative worlds in which to explore and confront” these themes, making them more accessible.15 In the United States, children are often given opportunities to participate through institutionally mediated activities, such as school-based service-learning projects. Picture books can be used to introduce young children to the social issues service-learning projects are meant to address. In most cases, adults plan and direct such experiences for children, primarily focused on volunteering or collecting charitable donations without teaching children to interrogate the “underlying social and global conditions and developing strategies for action” themselves.16 Children’s literature not only offers one way to demonstrate that children are capable of social action, but it can also support students in understanding these complicated social issues.17 Children’s literature inscribes values of participation in ways that help realize the child’s right to be heard.18 These articulations beg the question: Does children’s literature also prescribe ways to participate? Research on children’s participation in social movements provides a starting framework for understanding how picture books represent child activism. Rodgers develops a topology of child participation in social movements to describe children’s historical roles and to understand the potential for future activism.19 Organizers may use children as strategic participants in a variety of ways: children may be asked to join protests as a way for organizers to

36

Meghan Whitfield

signal a desire for a peaceful protest, or children may participate as symbols of hope or innocence.20 Children may become participants-by-default when parents or caregivers involve them in social movement activities, such as bringing young children to a march.21 Active participation differs significantly in assuming that children know the goals of the movement and participate voluntarily, potentially becoming movement leaders or establishing their own activist organizations.22 Intergenerational information sharing, community-based activism, and teaching critical thinking strategies are recognized as crucial ways to involve children and youth in social action.23 Theories of visual rhetoric emphasize the immediacy, verisimilitude, and concreteness of situations that images impart to viewers.24 Representational images, or those designed to represent real people, objects, or situations, are metonymic rhetorical constructions used to stand in for complex issues or social problems. In creating effective representational images, rhetors give enhanced presence to the objects, concepts, or values that substantiate a position.25 Visual texts are constructed to “encourage certain attributions of meaning and discourage others.”26 Images can become part of long-term campaigns to prompt public debate in order to quicken the pace of social change, contributing to a repertoire of knowledge that shapes public life and constructs meaning while also developing collective narratives and making it possible to understand “what it means to be” in a given context.27 Interpreted in context, images elicit viewers to create identifications among themselves, the subject, and internal and external value systems in ways that shape social engagement. Explaining and interpreting images as socially situated cultural artifacts assumes that images may be analyzed intertextually; that is, disparate images work together to build shared knowledge. Context may be drawn from the pages contained in picture books: picture book meanings spring from larger cultural, political, and social forces, enmeshed in complex power relations and managed through language.28 Visual rhetoric emphasizes the social situatedness of images and viewers negotiated through visual texts. Illustrations must be interpreted in context, not only to determine meaning, but also to understand their performative, generative work. Real-world context underscores the creation and meaning of images contained within the same picture book as well as across picture books and other media. In the same way that artwork can be used “to articulate and shape public knowledge,”29 picture books construct visual histories built from social and cultural influences. This understanding of visual rhetoric and its cultural work enables an analysis of how illustrations across texts represent childhood activism and position children as political agents both as readers of and subjects in children’s literature. Rodgers’s topology for child participation30 grounds the working definition of activism in this analysis, which examines the ways in which picture books

Picturing Political Agency in Childhood

37

characterize children as political agents through illustrations. Understanding the ways in which child-activists are represented, particularly who participates or initiates social change and what “counts” as activism, offers insights for the ways that children are socialized into sociopolitical realities, as well as possibilities for social engagement that these texts present to children. Picture-book illustrations not only visualize and reflect realities but also show possibilities about what could be in the world. CRITICAL CONTENT ANALYSIS AS RESEARCH METHODOLOGY The theoretical framework and methodology for this chapter relies on an understanding that literature has the power to create worlds for children, offering windows into new cultures and mirrors for self-reflection. In the case of activism-oriented picture books, this potential means that children weave complex webs of associations about what it means to be an activist; that is, identity negotiation processes are influenced, at least in part, by the possibilities represented in children’s literature. A transactional theory of reading, which emphasizes the impact of a reader’s background knowledge and critical reflections in consuming a text and generating meaning from it, supports this viewpoint.31 As a research methodology, critical content analysis assumes that texts are written in specific ways to point readers toward certain meanings through written and visual narrative strategies.32 This critical content analysis of illustrations in which children are portrayed as activists is framed by social movement theory, specifically the historical roles children have assumed in past social movements. Although novels, graphic novels, and other children’s media contain images of children engaged in activism, this analysis focuses on picture books because these texts are read by young children, at times without the guidance of an adult reader, and provide children with a myriad of images related to what it means to be an activist and to take social action. Critical multicultural analysis (CMA) informs the research approach and visual content analysis for this study. CMA draws from feminist post-structural traditions and focuses on the cultural meanings embedded in books.33 Incorporating CMA as a framework recognizes both the persuasive power and special appeal that images hold for young children because “children are immersed in a visual culture in which images are integral to their experiences and interactions.”34 This conceptual frame and research method was selected because, ultimately, this study is about the identity work involved in producing and consuming children’s literature, questioning the ways in which picture books depict possibilities

38

Meghan Whitfield

for activism in terms of who participates as an activist, and which actions “count” as activism. Sixteen picture books published in the United States from 2016 to 2021 were identified for this analysis. The selected picture books, identified from Diverse BookFinder35 and Social Justice Books,36 depict children who are involved in some form of social action and include texts written for children from four to eight years old set in the post–Civil Rights era in the United States. Nonfiction books, fictional books that historicize social action, and texts originally published before 2016 were excluded from the study to focus on the ways that contemporary, fictional picture books represent child activism in the present sociopolitical environment. With CMA as a critical frame, illustrations were first analyzed to determine if and how social action represented aligns with real-world examples of child participation. Given the importance placed upon community-based activism that emerged in the literature review, the question turned to if and how children acted in community and which characters took the lead for social action. An analysis chart was developed for each of the texts to categorize the roles of child-activists represented, the nature of child participation, and the activities depicted as activism. Comparing the charts following the analyses allowed patterns and themes to emerge organically across the texts. DEPICTIONS OF CHILD ACTIVISM The analysis of picture-book illustrations indicated that child-activist protagonists frequently act with knowledge and understanding of a social issue. Such social action springs from collaborative relationships; however, these texts also represent the action as child-led or child-initiated. While half of the texts included images of children engaged in protests, rallies, or marches, explicit connections with specific social movements or causes are often absent. The books also highlight political socialization processes, portraying children as engaged with adult decision-making systems to bring about change, although in some instances, adult decision-making systems were adapted to encourage child participation. Finally, this activism emerges from children’s experiences and background knowledge of social problems. The following discussion indexes a few examples of texts within the themes that surfaced during the analysis. Children as Active Participants Active participation in social movements requires children not only to be aware of injustice, but also to resist injustice actively and voluntarily.

Picturing Political Agency in Childhood

39

Recognizing the active roles of children in social movements requires an acknowledgment of children’s political agency and brings into question children’s dependence on adult knowledge. Because decision-making processes favor adults and adult systems, the real-world political activities of children most often occur in association with social issues rather than traditional political parties. Active participation reorients child identities away from markers of age and dependency status toward activist identities aligned with moral causes.37 Whether children participate with existing organizations, assume leadership positions within movements, or establish new organizations, their activism arises from knowledge of injustice and commitment to challenge established social norms. Such action takes place in relation to other people within institutional contexts. Depictions of child participation overwhelmingly featured children as active participants initiating and leading social action. Responsibility for social action in these books was placed on children, resulting in two potential roles for adults. The first places adults in supporting roles as children are focalized as change makers. For example, Rocket Says Clean Up!38 shows a young girl going to Puerto Rico to visit her grandparents. Upon discovering a plastic six-pack yoke wrapped around a turtle, Rocket looks around to find trash strewn across the beach and decides to make a change. She mobilizes her family and the community to help with the clean-up, assuming responsibilities that might be associated with adults, such as speaking with the press. You Are Revolutionary39 portrays child-initiated, child-led activism to combat homelessness: children create signs, organize clothing drives, and speak at rallies to generate awareness of homelessness in the community. The only mediated illustration in the text collection occurs in this text and depicts a child’s hands on a computer keyboard writing a letter-to-the-editor, which has the rhetorical effect of the reader participating along with the character. In other texts, adults are eliminated entirely, placing responsibility for change squarely upon the shoulders of children. For example, the illustrations in Change Sings: A Children’s Anthem40 highlight a young girl who recruits other children to undertake several social actions, such as cleaning up a park, feeding the hungry, and building a ramp for a person in a wheelchair. Similarly, I Am One: A Book of Action portrays a young girl with a candle, breaking down barriers and gathering a group of children to build a community space together.41 The theme of absent adults is not new or exclusive to activist-oriented children’s literature, and it is often viewed as empowering for children. However, eliminating grown-ups from these narratives is counterintuitive to research-based practices, and, importantly, masks the privilege of knowledge, resources, and materials. In Sophia Valdez, Future Prez, for instance, Sophia goes to City Hall—without the aid of adults—to petition for a park to be built in place of a landfill in her community.42 Similarly, The

40

Meghan Whitfield

Protest depicts children creating signs and making phone calls in preparation for a demonstration.43 Even in texts portraying children acting alongside adults, illustrations often show that children with activist literacies know, to some degree, potential ways to bring about change and face no barriers to accessing people and materials needed. The burden of knowledge of injustice is a thread that runs throughout the books, and often, the child-activist’s knowledge comes from experiences that have impacted the child’s life in some way. In Amara and the Bats, Amara moves to a new house and learns there are no bats in her new neighborhood. The experience prompts her to learn about bats and their habitats, educate her peers, and participate in conservation efforts.44 The only bilingual picture book in the collection, Alejandria Fights Back! / ¡La Lucha de Alejandria!, illustrates a community’s struggle for fair housing. Alejandria’s activism begins when her family nearly loses their home. She plays an active role in obtaining assistance from local organizations that assist tenants, and she participates in a demonstration.45 In Lubaya’s Quiet Roar, Lubaya’s parents see something on the news that prompts them to participate in a demonstration, and they enlist Lubaya to provide artwork for protest signs.46 Each of these texts draw attention to the ways children’s background knowledge and experiences spur their participation. Of the sixteen books included in the analysis, seven mention specific social movements or causes in the illustrations, including women’s rights, racial justice, climate justice, and housing. Although one book names climate activism as a social issue, four of the books specifically address some aspect of climate activism, garnering more representation than any other social issue in the collection. Because these texts were published after the Youth Climate Movement began, the rise of climate-related books is likely evidence of a trend known as “the Greta effect,” which connects the emergence of youth climate activist Greta Thunberg in 2018 with the increase in the number of climate-related children’s books.47 The disparity in representation invites questions of what children (should) know, how knowledge is represented, and silences around what is/not represented. Collaboration Collaborative, community-driven activism allows children to connect with larger social movements and forms the bedrock for meaningful, active participation. Ongoing information sharing among children and adults is vital for sustaining the momentum of social movements, and intergenerational collaboration is considered essential for real-world participation.48 As understanding of child-activist identity shifts toward agency, the importance of

Picturing Political Agency in Childhood

41

community-driven action comes into focus. Aligning personally held ideas with those of moral causes provides young participants with a sense of belonging within local communities and connections to global communities. Three themes related to collaboration emerged from the books under study. The first includes texts that depict children acting in isolation with minimal to no support from adults, as in You Are Revolutionary49 and Milo’s Museum.50 Each of these books shows children initiating and leading social action alone. Similarly, I Am One51 and Sofia Valdez, Future Prez52 highlight the stories of children who begin their activism in isolation but recruit other children (and, in some cases, adults) to join a cause. A second theme portrays children acting in community with other children. The Protest offers one example of children acting together on behalf of the community.53 Most of the books portrayed children acting in community, indicating the responsibility all people share for making change. The third theme combines recommendations for intergenerational information sharing with collective action. The Pink Hat offers a clear, visual metaphor for this collaborative style. Written and published in celebration of and in solidarity with the Women’s Movement, the book follows the journey of a knitted pink cap, a symbol of knowledge and responsibility, from the hands of an older woman to the head of a young girl. The young girl wears the hat to a march with dozens of other pink hat–wearing people.54 The pink hat becomes a character on its own, suggesting that the work and knowledge of the previous generation is being passed to the coming generation. A similar visual metaphor is achieved in We Are Water Protectors with illustrations that invoke the leadership of a new generation as irrevocably intertwined with previous generations advocating for indigenous sovereignty.55 The lineage depicted in both books underscores the intergenerational aspects of each movement; the value of shared, intergenerational knowledge; and the continuing solidarity and collaboration among all participants. What Counts as Activism The spectacle of traditional activism is perhaps its most pervasive, readily identifiable form; however, emphasizing action over exhibition offers a more inclusive approach to what counts as activism. Definitions for activist activities can be expanded to include the small, everyday actions that challenge social norms that arise from a desire to defy dominant, marginalizing social structures. The question remains whether a child-reader would associate small, everyday actions with activism or if the ubiquity of marches, rallies, and demonstrations have been conflated as its definition. Making this distinction is important as children connect their everyday actions with larger

42

Meghan Whitfield

political realities in which they act, and developing such critical awareness shows children that protest is but one part of being an activist. Over half the books included images of children engaged in marches, rallies, or protests, emphasizing demonstrations as the endgame of activism. For example, Lubaya’s Quiet Roar follows a young girl who creates a protest sign with her family before joining a march.56 The visuals highlight the (dis)connections between children’s knowledge and the movement. Nearly transparent white protest signs against a sky-blue background in the endpapers immediately signal protest as a theme in the book. Lubaya draws images of the Statue of Liberty crying, animals, and the earth. None of Lubaya’s signs connect with a larger social movement, although other protesters’ signs allude to racial and environmental justice. While most of the books inscribe values for making children’s voices heard, other texts prescribe ways to participate, as in If You’re Going to a March. This book follows four activist families as they prepare for and participate in a march.57 The illustrations show children what to expect, suggesting items to carry in a backpack, sayings to write on signs, and ways to interact with police. Children hold signs that read, “Speak Up,” “Do the MATH (and science),” “HATE has NO HOME HERE,” and “PEACE begins with ME”; however, images from the march tie more directly with several social movements, including racial justice, marriage equality, women’s rights, and climate. While the children’s signs do not connect with specific social movements, the myriad of movements represented in the final pages of the text has a rhetorical effect that indicates the children might march on behalf of any (or all) the causes represented. The nuance required for active participation58 becomes muddled in such visualizations: depicting the same action (e.g., marching) as the response to multiple social movements contributes to the belief that marching is the end goal of activism. Moreover, it suggests that all social issues can (and should be) addressed through demonstrations. Socialization Socialization and agency are two dimensions of participation in social movements that should be acknowledged simultaneously. In effect, children go through a learning process that leads to active involvement, and through the process, they adopt the beliefs and values of the movement.59 Participating with family members or caregivers at a young age facilitates ideological indoctrination, and exposure to the language, strategies, and tactics of a movement enables more active involvement. Children’s literature can be one aspect of ideological learning that shapes internal beliefs in relation to external value systems. While literature may be used to socialize children into ideological positions, it can also be used to socialize children into ways to

Picturing Political Agency in Childhood

43

participate. Examples of family-mediated participation occurs in a handful of the books included in this analysis. Lubaya’s Quiet Roar and If You’re Going to a March focalize children participating as part of familial involvement. Illustrations in these texts do not indicate that the child-activists align explicitly with a social movement; rather, they are socialized into specific ways to participate, which is, in these instances, creating signs and attending marches. Although current democratic systems deter children from participating in political parties, picture books show children engaging with adult decision-making processes. The underlying messages in these books teach children specific ways to bring about change within adult systems, supplemented by endings that show activists achieving their goals. Two types of socialization processes emerged from the books. The first type portrays children acting within adult decision-making systems to bring about change. In Sofia Valdez, Future Prez, Sophia petitions her local government, organizes participants, and holds demonstrations to replace a landfill with a park. The final illustration shows the community working together to build the park as Sophia watches the progress, pencil and blueprints in hand.60 The ending highlights not only Sophia’s successful campaign, but also her ability to bring together people and resources. The second type of socialization indicates that adult decision-making processes can be adapted for school-based democratic participation, specifically campaigns and elections. Grace Goes to Washington explicitly depicts United States civic engagement as political socialization. Endpapers illustrate the three branches of government with checks and balances. Grace takes a field trip to Washington, D.C., inspiring her to create a “Friendship Mall” at her school. To make her idea a reality, Grace gives a speech to adult decision-makers.61 A young girl’s school-based activism supports her grandmother’s activism to save a park in A Vote Is a Powerful Thing. In this book, participating in a movement outside of school inspires the child to launch a campaign to visit a nature reserve for a class field trip. The field trip draws attention to the nature park, which is ultimately saved as a result of the intergenerational effort.62 Critical multicultural analysis (CMA) questions the ways the endings of stories shape understanding of what happened or what continues to happen.63 Reading the illustrations of this text collection against one another offers a better understanding of the outcomes of each story. Illustrations from several books indicate that social movements end when people march. Ending with the spectacle of traditional activism sends a message that demonstrations are the solution to social injustices rather than one part of sustained efforts for social change or that change automatically happens as a result of demonstrations. The books that did not end with demonstrations instead concluded with illustrations indicating success. Put simply, these

44

Meghan Whitfield

books have happily-ever-after endings in which the child-activists obtain the desired result rather than engaging with the ever-present political and economic challenges that necessitate activism in the first place. Grace succeeds in her campaign to build the “Friendship Mall” at her school64; Rocket succeeds in mobilizing a community to clean the beach65; Lily and her friends save a community garden66; Sofia successfully lobbies for a park to replace a landfill.67 In the same way that books ending with demonstrations send a message that marches are the answer to social injustices, these texts suggest that obtaining a desired result is a natural, even foregone, conclusion. The result is both patronizing and unrealistic, as such endings assume that children need a tidy, happy ending to a story or are otherwise incapable of appreciating ongoing activist work. Moreover, the happily-ever-after endings present an unrealistic view of activism in which the ongoing work of activists becomes confused with celebration. Small victories deserve celebration but with a forward focus. CONCLUSION Children must be recognized as political actors and problem solvers, capable of critiquing systems that contribute to injustice and aligning with causes to effect change. Each of the books features the experiences that generate the social awareness and resolve of child-activists to respond. The action is aligned with causes the child-activists perceive as necessary and worthwhile. Further, the books recognize the political agency of children, both acknowledging and commending their active participation, and often the child-activists represented come to the decision to act without the intervention of adults. While these books empower children as changemakers, eliminating intergenerational collaboration contradicts existing research that guides real-world child activism: intergenerational solidarity and information sharing is integral for child activism and sustaining social movements.68 Intergenerational collaboration represents one inroad for socializing children as activists. Participating with family members at a young age may provide an impetus for future involvement as children become aware of and learn to interpret political opportunities for themselves. Developing an activist identity within a movement enables active participation, in terms of both ideological commitments and participation. Social action based on the lived experience and background knowledge children bring to situations thwarts the myth of childhood as a safe, innocent space. Activist-oriented children’s books provide one avenue for inscribing social values and prescribing ways to participate. Read intertextually, the illustrations in activist picture books create a portrait for what it means to be an activist. Importantly, the production of

Picturing Political Agency in Childhood

45

activist texts that prioritize specific ways to participate either create possibilities for or place limitations upon the ways that children understand activism and the social injustices that drive the need for change. Picture books are thought by some to be innocuous, value-neutral entertainment for children; however, this perspective ignores the political nature of childhood and children’s literature. Individuals and groups interested in influencing future generations begin with children’s books.69 Because children may learn to read images before they learn to read the accompanying text, understanding what and how illustrations communicate is vital. As this work has shown, activist picture books create an impetus for interrogating the performative and generative potential of illustrations. NOTES 1. Gloria Boutte and Meir Muller, “Engaging Children in Conversations about Oppression Using Children’s Literature,” Talking Points 30, no. 1 (2018): 2–9. 2. Lawrence R. Sipe, “How Picture Books Work: A Semiotically Framed Theory of Text-Picture Relationships,” Children’s Literature in Education 29 no. 2 (1998): 97–108. 3. John H. Bickford, “Assessing and Addressing Historical Misrepresentations within Children’s Literature about the Civil Rights Movement,” History Teacher 48, no. 4 (2015): 693–736; Walter Werner, “What Does This Picture Say: Reading the Intertextuality of Visual Images,” International Journal of Social Justice Education 19, no. 1 (2004): 64–77. 4. Barry Brummett, Rhetorical Dimensions of Popular Culture (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1991): 69–106. 5. Jonathan Todres and Sarah Higinbotham, Human Rights in Children’s Literature: Imagination and the Narrative of Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). 6. Desmond Manderson, “From Hunger to Love: Myths of the Source, Interpretation, and Constitution of Law in Children’s Literature,” Law and Literature 15, no. 1 (2003): 87–141. 7. Todres and Higinbotham, Human Rights in Children’s Literature, 11. 8. Brian Martin, “Activism, Social and Political,” in Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice, ed. Gary Anderson and Katherine Herr (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2007), 19. 9. E. Kay M. Tisdall and Patricio Cuevas-Parra, “Beyond the Familiar Challenges for Children and Young People’s Participation Rights: The Potential of Activism,” International Journal of Human Rights 26, no. 5 (2022): 792–810, doi: 10.1080/13642987.2021.1968377. 10. Tisdall and Cuevas-Parra, “Beyond the Familiar,” 2.

46

Meghan Whitfield

11. “United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC),” United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, adopted November 20, 1989, accessed June 19, 2022. www​.ohchr​.org​/en​/professionalinterest​/pages​/crc​.aspx. 12. Tisdall and Cuevas-Parra, “Beyond the Familiar,” 5. 13. See Rodgers, Children in Social Movements, 6–22. 14. Jonathan Todres, “Children’s Right to Participate: Insights from the Story of Malala,” in Literary Culutres and Twenty-First Century Childhoods, ed. Nathalie op de Beeck (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 26. 15. Todres, “Children’s Right to Participate,” 26–27. 16. Kathy Short, “The Right to Participate: Children as Activists in Picture Books,” in Critical Content Analysis of Children’s and Young Adult Literature: Reframing Perspective, ed. Holly Johnson, Janelle Mathis, and Kathy Short (New York: Routledge, 2016), 137. 17. Kathy Short, “Children’s Agency for Taking Action,” Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature 50, no. 4 (2012), 41. 18. Todres and Higinbotham, Human Rights in Children’s Literature. 19. Diane M. Rodgers, Children in Social Movements: Rethinking Agency, Mobilization, and Rights (New York: Routledge, 2020). 20. Rodgers, Children in Social Movements, 24. 21. Rodgers, Children in Social Movements, 44. 22. Rodgers, Children in Social Movements, 63. 23. Tisdall and Cuevas-Parra, “Beyond the Familiar,” 12. 24. J. Anthony Blair, “The Rhetoric of Visual Arguments,” in Defining Visual Rhetorics, ed. Charles A. Hill and Marguerite Helmers (Mahwah: NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum), 41–61. 25. Hill, “Psychology of Visual Images,” 25–40. 26. Barry Brummett, Rhetoric in Popular Culture, 5th edition (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage), 2017, 167. 27. Brummett, Rhetoric in Popular Culture, 69. 28. Maria José Botelho and Masha Kabakow Rudman, Critical Multicultural Analysis of Children’s Literature (New York, NY: Routledge, 2009). 29. Victoria Gallagher and Kenneth S. Zagacki, “Visibility and Rhetoric: The Power of Visual Images in Norman Rockwell’s Depictions of Civil Rights,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 91, no. 2 (2005): 178, doi: 10.1080/00335630500291448. 30. Rodgers, Children in Social Movements, 20–22. 31. Louise M. Rosenblatt, Literature as Exploration (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1983). 32. Kathy Short, “Critical Content Analysis of Visual Images,” in Images in Books for Young People: Reading Images, ed. Holly Johnson, Janelle Mathis, and Kathy Short (New York: Routledge, 2019). 33. Botelho and Rudman, Critical Multicultural Analysis. 34. Short, “Critical Content Analysis of Visual Images,” 7. 35. Diverse BookFinder is a grant-funded comprehensive online catalog of picture books established and maintained through Bates College. The collection includes

Picturing Political Agency in Childhood

47

more than three thousand picture books published from 2002 to present. See www​ .diversebookfinder​.org. 36. As a project of Teaching for Change, Social Justice Books was established in 2017 to identify and promote high-quality multicultural and social justice–oriented children’s books for educators. The website maintains more than eighty booklists for children’s and young adult literature; the booklist entitled “Activism and Organizing” includes eighty-three titles for readers in every age range, along with resources for introducing activism to middle and high school students and for organizing youth. See www​.socialjusticebooks​.org. 37. Tisdall and Cuevas-Parra, “Beyond the Familiar,” 5. 38. Nathan Byron and Dapo Adeola, Rocket Says Clean Up! (New York: Random House, 2020). 39. Cathy Wang Brandt and Lynnor Bontagao, You Are Revolutionary (Minneapolis, MN: Beaming Books, 2021). 40. Amanda Gorman and Loren Long, Change Sings: A Children’s Anthem (New York: Viking, 2021). 41. Susan Verde and Peter H. Reynolds, I Am One: A Book of Action (New York: Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2020). 42. Andrea Beatty and David Roberts, Sofia Valdez, Future Prez (New York: Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2019). 43. Samantha Thornhill and Shirley Ng-Benitez, The Protest (New York: Lee & Low Books, Inc., 2021). 44. Emma Reynolds, Amara and the Bats (New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2021). 45. Leticia Hernandez-Linares et al., Alejandria Fights Back! / ¡La Lucha de Alejandria! (New York: The Feminist Press, 2021). 46. Marilyn Nelson and Philemona Williamson, Lubaya’s Quiet Roar (New York: Dial Books for Young Readers, 2020). 47. Donna Ferguson, “‘Greta effect’ leads to boom in children’s environmental books,” Guardian, August 11, 2019, https:​//​amp​.theguardian​.com​/environment​/2019​ /aug​/11​/greta​-thunberg​-leads​-to​-boom​-in​-books​-aimed​-at​-empowering​-children​-to​ -save​-planet. 48. Tisdall and Cuevas-Parra, “Beyond the Familiar,” 9. 49. Brandt and Bontagao, You Are Revolutionary. 50. Zetta Elliott and Purple Wong, Milo’s Museum (Brooklyn, NY: Rosetta Press, 2016). 51. Verde and Reynolds, I Am One: A Book of Action. 52. Beatty and Roberts, Sofia Valdez, Future Prez. 53. Thornhill and Ng-Benitez, The Protest. 54. Andrew Joyner, The Pink Hat (New York: Schwartz & Wade, 2017). 55. Carole Lindstrom and Michaela Goade, We Are Water Protectors (New York: Roaring Brook Press, 2020). 56. Nelson, Lubaya’s Quiet Roar. 57. Freeman and Kim, If You’re Going to a March. 58. Rodgers, Children in Social Movements, 63.

48

Meghan Whitfield

59. Rodgers, Children in Social Movements, 106. 60. Beatty and Roberts, Sofia Valdez, Future Prez. 61. Kelly DiPucchio and LeUyen Pham, Grace Goes to Washington (Los Angeles: Disney Hyperion, 2019). 62. Catherine Stier and Courtney Dawson, A Vote Is a Powerful Thing (Chicago: Albert Whitman & Company, 2020). 63. Botelho and Rudman, Critical Multicultural Analysis, 5. 64. DiPucchio and Pham, Grace Goes to Washington. 65. Byron and Adeola, Rocket Says Clean Up! 66. Thornhill and Ng-Benitez, The Protest. 67. Beatty and Roberts, Sophia Valdez, Future Prez. 68. Deszcz-Tryhubczak & Jaques, “Towards Intergenerational Solidarity,” xi–xxvii. 69. Julia L. Mickenberg and Philip Nel, “Radical Children’s Literature Now!” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 36, no. 4 (2011): 446, doi: 10.14811/clr. v42i0.437.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Bickford, John H. “Assessing and Addressing Historical Misrepresentations within Children’s Literature about the Civil Rights Movement.” History Teacher 48, no. 4 (2015): 693–736. Bishop, Rudine Sims. “Mirrors, Window, and Sliding Glass Doors.” Perspectives: Choosing and Using Books for the Classroom 6, no. 3 (1990): ix–xi. Blair, J. Anthony. “The Rhetoric of Visual Arguments.” In Defining Visual Rhetorics, edited by Charles A. Hill and Marguerite Helmers, 41–61. Mahwah: NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004. Botelho, Maria José. “Reframing Mirrors Windows, and Doors: A Critical Analysis of the Metaphors for Multicultural Children’s Literature.” Journal of Children’s Literature 47, no. 1 (2021): 119–26. Botelho, Maria José, and Masha Kabakow Rudman. Critical Multicultural Analysis of Children’s Literature. New York, NY: Routledge, 2009. Boutte, Gloria, and Meir Muller. “Engaging Children in Conversations about Oppression Using Children’s Literature.” Talking Points 30, no. 1 (2018): 2–9. Brummett, Barry. Rhetoric in Popular Culture, 5th ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2017. Brummett, Barry. Rhetorical Dimensions of Popular Culture. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1991. Deszcz-Tryhubczak, Justyna, and Zoe Jaques. “Towards Intergenerational Solidarity in Children’s Literature and Film.” In Intergenerational Solidarity in Children’s Literature and Film, edited by Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak and Zoe Jaques, xi– xxvii. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2021. Ferguson, Donna. “‘Greta effect’ leads to boom in children’s environmental books.” Guardian, August 11, 2019. https:​//​amp​.theguardian​.com​/environment​/2019​/aug​

Picturing Political Agency in Childhood

49

/11​/greta​-thunberg​-leads​-to​-boom​-in​-books​-aimed​-at​-empowering​-children​-to​ -save​-planet. Gallagher, Victoria, and Kenneth S. Zagacki. “Visibility and Rhetoric: The Power of Visual Images in Norman Rockwell’s Depictions of Civil Rights.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 91, no. 2 (2005): 175–200, doi: 10.1080/00335630500291448. Hill, Charles A. “The Psychology of Rhetorical Images.” In Defining Visual Rhetorics, edited by Charles A. Hill and Marguerite Helmers, 25–40. Mahwah: NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004. Manderson, Desmond. “From Hunger to Love: Myths of the Source, Interpretation, and Constitution of Law in Children’s Literature.” Law and Literature 15, no. 1 (2003): 87–141. Martin, Brian. “Activism, Social and Political.” In Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice, edited by Gary Anderson and Katherine Herr, 19–27. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2007. Mickenberg, Julia L., and Philip Nel. “Radical Children’s Literature Now!” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 36, no. 4 (2011): 445–73, doi: 10.1353/ chq.2011.0040. Nel, Philip. “A Manifesto for Radical Children’s Literature (and an argument against radical aesthetics). Barnbroken 42 (2019): 1–25, doi: 10.14811/clr.v42i0.437 Rodgers, Diane M. Children in Social Movements: Rethinking Agency, Mobilization and Rights. New York: Routledge, 2020. Rosenblatt, Louise M. Literature as Exploration. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1983. Short, Kathy. “Children’s Agency for Taking Action.” Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature 50, no. 4 (2012): 41–50. Short, Kathy. “Critical Content Analysis of Visual Images.” In Critical Content Analysis of Visual Images in Books for Young People: Reading Images, edited by Holly Johnson, Janelle Mathis, and Kathy Short, 3–22. New York: Routledge, 2019. Short, Kathy. “The Right to Participate: Children as Activists in Picture Books.” In Critical Content Analysis of Children’s and Young Adult Literature: Reframing Perspective, edited by Holly Johnson, Janelle Mathis, and Kathy Short, 137– 54. New York: Routledge, 2016. Sims, Rudine. “What Has Happened to the ‘All-White’ World of Children’s Books.” Phi Delta Kappan 64, no. 9 (1983): 650–53. Sipe, Lawrence R. “How Picture Books Work: A Semiotically Framed Theory of Text-Picture Relationships.” Children’s Literature in Education 20, no. 2 (1998): 97–108. Tisdall, E. Kay M., and Patricio Cuevas-Parra. “Beyond the Familiar Challenges for Children and Young People’s Participation Rights: The Potential of Activism.” International Journal of Human Rights 26, no. 5 (2022): 792–810, doi: 10.1080/13642987.2021.1968377. Todres, Jonathan, and Sarah Higinbotham. Human Rights in Children’s Literature: Imagination and the Narrative of Law. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

50

Meghan Whitfield

Todres, Jonathan. “Children’s Right to Participate: Insights from the Story of Malala.” In Literary Cultures and Twenty-First-Century Childhoods, edited by Nathalie op de Beeck, 25–40. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-32146-8_2. United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), 1989. www​.ohchr​.org​/ en​/professionalinterest​/pages​/crc​.aspx. Accessed 19 June 2022. Werner, Walter. “‘What Does This Picture Say?’ Reading the Intertextuality of Visual Images.” International Journal of Social Education 19, no. 1 (2004): 64–77.

CHILDREN’S BOOKS Allen, Tessa. Sometimes People March. New York: Balzer + Bray, 2020. Beatty, Andrea, and David Roberts. Sofia Valdez, Future Prez. New York: Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2019. Brandt, Cindy Wang, and Lynnor Bontagao. You Are Revolutionary. Minneapolis, MN: Beaming Books, 2021. Byron, Nathan, and Dapo Adeola. Rocket Says Clean Up! New York: Random House, 2020. DiPucchio, Kelly, and LeUyen Pham. Grace Goes to Washington. Los Angeles: Disney Hyperion, 2019. Elliot, Zetta, and Purple Wong. Milo’s Museum. Brooklyn, NY: Rosetta Press, 2016. Freeman, Martha, and Violet Kim. If You’re Going to a March. New York: Sterling Children’s Books, 2018. Gorman, Amanda, and Loren Long. Change Sings: A Children’s Anthem. New York: Viking, 2021. Hernandez-Linares, Leticia, Robert Liu-Trujillo, Carla Espana, and Rise-Home Stories Project. Alejandria Fights Back! / ¡La Lucha de Alejandria!. New York: The Feminist Press, 2021. Joyner, Andrew. The Pink Hat. New York: Schwartz & Wade, 2017. Lindstrom, Carole, and Michaela Goade. We Are Water Protectors. New York: Roaring Brook Press, 2020. Mucha, Amy B., and Addy Rivera. A Girl’s Bill of Rights. Minneapolis, MN: Beaming Books, 2021. Nelson, Marilyn, and Philemona Williamson. Lubaya’s Quiet Roar. New York: Dial Books for Young Readers, 2020. Reynolds, Emma. Amara and the Bats. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2021. Stier, Catherine, and Courtney Dawson. A Vote Is a Powerful Thing. Chicago: Albert Whitman & Company, 2020. Thornhill, Samantha, and Shirley Ng-Benitez. The Protest. New York: Lee & Low Books, Inc., 2021. Verde, Susan, and Peter H. Reynolds. I Am One: A Book of Action. New York: Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2020.

Chapter 3

[Re]Interpreting the Deaf Child’s Solitude A Counternarrative to Cece Bell’s El Deafo S. Leigh Ann Cowan

Cece Bell’s El Deafo is a coming-of-age memoir in graphic novel format. The story follows Bell, who was deafened by meningitis at age four (post-lingual deafness), from elementary to middle school during the mid-1970s and early 1980s. The memoir focuses on how she struggled and coped with her deafness in a phonocentric (i.e., hearing-speaking–dominant) environment and how she compared herself to hearing peers. In the end, it is her assistive hearing technology that leads her peers to accept and celebrate her, in turn leading to Bell’s self-acceptance. Using critical discourse analysis and comparative autoethnography, this chapter examines Bell’s adoption and emulation of phonocentric ideals in El Deafo and presents a counternarrative to the glorification of oralist practices. BACKGROUND ON DEAF MAINSTREAMED EDUCATION To contextualize the discussion of a deaf child mainstreamed in America, this section includes a description of terms and brief overviews on deaf mainstreamed education and how deaf students interact with their hearing peers.

51

52

S. Leigh Ann Cowan

Terminology Mainstream: to be “mainstreamed” is to attend a public school that primarily caters to non-disabled students. The practice is called inclusive, despite clear evidence that it is exclusive of deaf students: “For reasons that may include insufficient teacher training and administrative leniency towards the interpretation of [least restrictive environment (LRE)], children with disabilities are disproportionately placed in more restrictive environments rather than LRE, or simply integrated in general education classrooms, but not provided with an inclusive education.”1 I use the term mainstreamed throughout this chapter because it evokes a more accurate picture of many deaf individuals’ experiences, including my own. Deaf/ness: the trend of using d/Deaf to refer to deaf people (the capitalized /D/ representing culturally deaf people, and the lowercased /d/ representing non-signing deaf people) signifies a nonexistent and divisive binary; therefore, I use the lowercased /d/ to mean all individuals on the deafness spectrum, regardless of culture. I also use deafness instead of the terms hearing loss or hearing impairment, except when directly quoting. Deaf Mainstreamed Education In 1888, deaf journalist William M. Chamberlain wrote: It is an established fact that the combined system [signed language and spoken English] reaches very many more cases in a beneficial manner than does the oral [spoken English only]. The combined system takes all [deaf students] and educates them by means of such methods as are adapted to their individual cases. The oral system picks and chooses, rejecting a large percentage of applicants as incapable, or weak-minded, who are simply average deaf people, and who, sent to combined schools, turn out very well. The shining examples of the work of the oral schools are mostly semi-mutes [persons with residual hearing, usually post-lingually deafened], and the comparison is notoriously unfair. Those who can profitably avail themselves of oral instruction constitute a very small proportion of the whole.2

Over one hundred years later, deaf advocate Gina A. Oliva points out these exact issues in her 2004 work, Alone in the Mainstream, and pinpoints a vicious cycle: [T]hese struggles have not been a result of deafness per se, but rather of educators’ and policymakers’ decisions about how to deal with deaf and hard of hearing children. The viewpoints of d/Deaf adults themselves, who used to be those children, have infrequently reached the masses. And thus, many solitary

[Re]Interpreting the Deaf Child’s Solitude

53

children even today may think they are the first and only child to have such struggles.3

Because policymakers ignore deaf adults, mainstreamed deaf children continue to be left behind socially and academically. Even as of 2023, despite historical and ongoing efforts from deaf and allied communities, little has changed to improve the education of deaf students. Increased global legislation requiring “inclusive” education for disabled children means that deaf students are often placed into classrooms with hearing teachers and students, with or without appropriate accommodations. Most of these deaf students will be the only deaf student in the class, and sometimes in the entire school. In one case study on deaf children in mainstream classrooms, Khalid Alasim points out that: Many studies have shown that deaf students experience difficulties participating and interacting with general education teachers and hearing peers; some studies have indicated that inclusion of deaf students in regular education classrooms actually contributes to these students’ loneliness and social isolation; and other studies have emphasized that inclusion has a negative influence on deaf students’ communication and interaction skills.4

This last point is crucial, as communication affects identity development. Researching the social inclusion of deaf children in mainstream environments, Adva Eichengreen (deaf herself) and her team note that “Communication barriers in the family, parental stress or exclusion from peer interactions at school may negatively affect the development of [deaf] children’s socio-emotional skills, sense of belonging and sense of self-identity.”5 This is true in two respects: 1) deaf children who cannot access their families and peers’ language(s) will not identify as belonging to these groups; and 2) deaf children who do not have access to other deaf people, either as peers or as role models, are less likely to develop a positive deaf identity. Deaf students who are able to communicate effectively with their hearing peers generally form better relationships with hearing people and may not need a deaf in-group identity. Some deaf adults, like Bell, look back with some fondness on their mainstream education: “Having residual hearing, using amplification aids, being able to speech read and having clear articulation were described by several participants as very helpful in preventing communication difficulties, social rejection and stigma. They expressed appreciation for the intensive habilitation they had undergone and were proud of their speech and hearing abilities.”6 For most deaf students, however, “spoken language difficulties . . . are the greatest barriers that limit [their] participation and interaction.”7

54

S. Leigh Ann Cowan

Deaf-Hearing Peer Interactions As long as a deaf child is not being overtly bullied by hearing peers, adults tend to assume the deaf child is “all right,” ignoring that ostracism often takes the form of social neglect or teacher-sanctioned discriminatory behavior. For example, when I did not understand a teacher’s instructions, my classmates would prod me and convey a few overenunciated and simplified words. Once, in third grade, I did not realize we were supposed to line up reverse-alphabetically—the opposite of what we normally did—so three classmates physically pushed me toward the back of the line, while another classmate looked at me and said, “PUT YOUR NAME AL-PHA-BET BACK-WARD,” finger drawing a large circle in the air as their eyes and mouth widened. They then turned and gave a proud nod to the teacher, who nodded back approvingly at the demeaning way my peer had interacted with me. In her study on deaf-hearing peer interactions, linguist Claire L. Ramsey points out that: “Although hearing children were certainly rude or gruff with each other from time to time, they had a larger pragmatic repertoire from which to select when they wanted to interact with hearing peers. When [interacting with] deaf peers, [they] had relatively few choices and . . . virtually always resorted to the most directive, least ‘polite,’ discourse forms.”8 In Ramsey’s context, hearing children use a very limited signing vocabulary with deaf students, but this phenomenon was also observable in my oral mainstreamed experience, as my above example illustrates. In addition to not recognizing their own demeaning behavior, adults tend to assume that deaf children with more residual hearing or who use cochlear implants are less isolated than their profoundly deaf counterparts, but the literature does not support this belief. Oliva writes that “children’s degree of hearing loss had no significant impact on their sociometric standing or their self esteem. Even children classified as ‘only’ hard of hearing can be rejected [or neglected] by their hearing classmates and thus suffer.”9 Likewise, a literature review by Xie et al. finds that “fewer communication interactions occurred between children who were [deaf] and their hearing peers when compared to the interactions between those with normal hearing, even when children had a cochlear implant.”10 In other words, there is little meaningful or friendly deaf-hearing interaction between peers in mainstream settings, regardless of deaf children’s hearing levels or device use. One study has found that some deaf adults who recount having minimized their deafness—that is, refused to identify as a deaf person—associate this minimization with their ability to have close relationships with hearing peers.11 Most studies, however, find that deaf children “have many barriers to communicating, initiating and/or entering into social groups, and maintaining interactions with hearing peers, even though today they are more likely to

[Re]Interpreting the Deaf Child’s Solitude

55

be identified in early life and fitted with advanced sensory aids from a very young age.”12 There are, of course, exceptions to the rule. Some deaf children do very well academically and socially in mainstream schools, but exceptions should never be the basis for policy, as is the case in deaf education. POSITIONALITY/AUTOETHNOGRAPHY Despite having attended mainstream school twenty years later than Bell, I have had some remarkably yet unsurprisingly similar mainstreamed experiences to those she describes in El Deafo, reinforcing that little has changed in mainstream deaf educational policy. Like Bell, I am a white deaf woman raised orally in a middle-class hearing family. I did well academically only because I could read. As far as I can remember, I have never been able to understand my teachers’ speech despite being forced to wear hearing aids. My deaf brother and I were deprived of sign language growing up and learned ASL in adulthood. I received and pursued a mainstreamed education for the majority of my life, as up until my young adulthood, adults praised me for my intelligible speech and for my work ethic “despite my hearing loss,” giving me a sense of superiority to “other deaf people,” such as my brother, who struggled in school. This experience aligns with many orally successful deaf students,’ including Oliva’s: “Over the years, I have met people who would put me on a pedestal, declaring that I was somehow unique, better, different than ‘those other deaf people.’ In their effort to lift me up, they put others down, albeit unintentionally.”13 To be clear, an “orally successful” deaf person is one who is able to convincingly perform and/or capably socialize in a majority hearing-speaking world, has an ability to speak comprehensibly and lipread accurately, and has an at least an average academic record—unattainable privileges for most deaf, mainstreamed, language-deprived people, who are considered “oral failures.” My family and educational background are why I did not identify myself as deaf until the second year of my undergraduate studies, when I met a signing deaf person. Up until that moment, I had only been vaguely aware of sign language as something used by those “other deaf people.” Seeing it in action for the first time, I felt like the world had slipped into place. Thus, my fascination with the narrative in El Deafo. Despite our similar childhood experiences, Bell chose to remain firmly in the hearing world rather than immersing herself in the deaf community as I did. I decided to undertake a comparative autoethnography, a reflexive research approach that creates informed knowledge and opportunities to formulate and participate in a counternarrative against the dominant paradigm.14 While I acknowledge that a memoir is a personal story that does not necessarily

56

S. Leigh Ann Cowan

engage with theory, stories are neither static nor neutral. Creators are chiefly concerned with telling stories, usually with a goal of imparting meaningful messages to an audience. These stories are contingent upon the creator’s own experiences and perceptions, yet audiences [re]interpret creators’ works based on their own experiences and perceptions. The creator’s intentions and meanings might be overlooked, ignored, or warped by the audience’s gaze. This interactive nature of storytelling is why we must critically evaluate portrayals of people in media, how these representations impact broader discourse, and the role of stories in [re]shaping social attitudes and ideologies. Bell’s memoir is evocative—an appeal to emotion—a story “not only of oppression and marginalization but also of steadfast determination and positive life transformations.”15 Bell’s goal is to capture and express her remembered feelings about her childhood. In other words, El Deafo is factitious (artfully expressed) rather than factual. The narrative truth and the writer’s credibility lie in whether the “author’s actual experience is portrayed in a way that is lifelike, ‘true, coherent, believable, and connects the reader to the writer’s world,’” and how the story is “used, understood, and responded to for and by us and others,”16 which is the focus of this chapter. The fact that Bell is an adult writing from a child’s perspective about events that took place decades earlier is not necessarily problematic. In his work “Writing the Deaf Self in Autoethnography,” Noel O’Connell emphasizes the subjectivity of “an adult’s sentiment and outlook” and that one must write from their imagination, using their “own sense of reality based on [their] subjective experience.”17 It is because Bell wrote this memoir as an adult that she successfully expresses the story. For example, I recall yelling in frustration at my parents that I can hear them but not understand them. Like the characters in Bell’s novel, my parents failed to appreciate the subtlety of this seeming contradiction, and I could think of no way to convey the difference. Bell herself likely could not illustrate the way she perceived sounds until later in adulthood, when she drafted El Deafo. As an adult, she finally has the experience and vocabulary to explain what she could not as a child. FORMAT AND ORGANIZATION OF EL DEAFO Readers who open El Deafo are immediately immersed in the story. There is no indication on the cover or title page that the book is a memoir and that the author is technically the narrator. Unobservant readers might even miss that the author’s name is the same as the main character’s. Lack of disclosure aside, literary criticism and some psychological theories (e.g., Laingian theory) generally hold that children are unreliable narrators. The stories children tell are exaggerated and fantastical, which Bell’s alter ego emphasizes.

[Re]Interpreting the Deaf Child’s Solitude

57

Readers’ takeaways for this story depend on their awareness that the events and people described are based in reality, not fiction. Although memoirs and autobiographies tend to deal with the authors’ childhoods, it is almost always explicit that these are adults recounting events. While there is a growing trend of autobiographical graphic novels focusing on authors’ childhoods, including Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (2000), Stitches by David Small (2009), and Messy Roots by Laura Gao (2022), these graphic memoirs all either include the word memoir in a subtitle or begin with an introduction to provide the reader with context. Bell, however, does not. The fact that Bell includes an afterword indicates a belief that readers will not close the book before reading it. Why Bell chose to include an afterword rather than a preface is unclear. Bell’s afterword is brief and summative, which might incentivize the reader to finish it, but the brevity is due to a lack of information about her adult choices, purposes, and goals in writing her graphic novel. Her afterword explains that deafness is a spectrum and emphasizes that speaking and/or signing are choices to be made by individuals. It also explains that the novel expresses feelings, not accuracy of events. Lastly, Bell confesses that as a child, deafness was a shame to hide, but as an adult, deafness is a small part of her life. Certainly, some readers would be satisfied with this afterword. Others, like myself, may come away with more questions, such as: If speaking and signing are choices, at what point is a deaf child able to choose, rather than their parents making the decision? And why is deafness a “small” part of Bell’s life as an adult when, as a child, it was portrayed as all-encompassing? What changed? With this afterword, Bell attempts to avoid claims that might offend either the hearing or the deaf communities. For example, in the graphic memoir, Bell repeatedly affirms that sign language is useless to her (without acknowledging that it is because she has not learned the language that it is useless). Yet her afterword states that “sign language is the preferred means of communication in the Deaf community,”18 though she does not add that sign language is “useful” to those who use it. Rebecca L. Oxford, whose expertise lies in applied linguistics, notes that critical discourse analysis (CDA), which “focuses on the link between language and power” reveals “forms of language that manipulate the public’s understanding . . . failing to give the whole picture.”19 By foregrounding the politically and socially dominant views of oralism and backgrounding views that are “deemphasized, hidden, or omitted, especially when they might be expected to be present”20—such as the perspectives of signing deaf community members—Bell passively reinforces bias against those who do not or cannot assimilate into hearing society. Additionally, her choice to include the afterword comes down to her intended audience. The story is geared toward hearing readers and mainstreamed deaf students who may find her story useful to explain their

58

S. Leigh Ann Cowan

struggles to the hearing people in their lives. In the memoir, Bell takes time to explain and illustrate how oral deaf children navigate a hearing world. Examples include Bell and a friend being drawn underwater as they speak, resulting in distorted sounds21; Bell explaining how lipreading works—context clues, residual hearing, and visible phonemes22; and Bell noting that the English she had no trouble understanding before she was deafened “all sounds like a foreign language to me.”23 These especially reinforce that her intended audience are hearing readers, and that her purpose is an appeal to emotion that might make these readers more conscientious of how they speak (as opposed to sign, gesture, or write) to deaf children. [DYS]CONSCIOUS AUDISM AND PSYCHO-EMOTIONAL DISABLISM This critique is not to single out Bell, as many deaf people can and do express audist behaviors and beliefs. Deaf persons who view themselves through the medical model are more likely to pursue and use hearing aid technology in the hopes of assimilating into hearing society. These assistive devices can become visible markers of deafness, which can serve to “entrench broader prejudices against hearing-impaired people who did not buy into this vision [of cure and conformity].”24 This negative potential is not to say that hearing assistive technology is inherently anti-deaf or audist, but to point out that: Despite progress in auditory enhancement technology, there continues to be ongoing stigmatization related to awkwardness in communication, aging, and having a mechanical appellation on the body. . . . The “hearing aid effect,” which devalues the process of assuming a [deaf] identity, continues to pervade societal attitudes, including those of not only older adults, but also parents of dependents with hearing differences.25

Because Bell portrays herself as accepting and benefiting from her aids, even if her relationship with the devices is complicated, we can interpret her ideology, her desired ontology, as aligning with the phonocentric ideals of assimilation. This interpretation brings us to a discussion on deaf scholar and activist Genie Gertz’s theory of dysconscious audism, which is “a phenomenon that is defined as a form of audism that tacitly accepts dominant hearing norms and privileges. . . . ‘Dysconscious audism’ adheres to the ideology that hearing society, because it is dominant, is more appropriate than the Deaf society.”26 One might argue that Bell, who, as an adult, is acquainted with the deaf community enough to include it in both her graphic novel and in

[Re]Interpreting the Deaf Child’s Solitude

59

her afterword, is consciously audist; she explicitly embraces hearing norms. However, it is also important to recognize that Bell is writing herself as a child, and as a child, she could not have been truly aware of the implications of audism. Yet we also cannot label Bell’s child self as unconsciously audist because even with exposure to signed language and to signing deaf adults, she rejects that identity. From surveying several deaf and mainstreamed adults about their childhood exposures to signing deaf people, Oliva found that some, like Bell, rejected such exposure. Oliva writes that: In addition to their fear and mistrust of sign language, participants further felt the need to dissociate from other d/Deaf people. They were never exposed to deaf or hard of hearing adults, or they were only exposed to those who had other severe disabilities or who were employed in unskilled occupations. Most of them grew up never having met a single positive adult d/Deaf role model.27

In the memoir, Bell is exposed to sign language through a church program with only hearing people taking the class. She admits some intrigue when she spots a signing deaf couple in public, but then withdraws again. She does not see herself in the hearing signers or in the deaf signers, and therefore does not see how sign language might be useful. I was exposed to ASL by chance as an adult through another deaf student I had met during a time when I was more frustrated than ever with lack of language access at my university. Perhaps it was because we were the same age that I felt instantly connected to the idea of the deaf community, whereas the only other deaf people her own age that Bell encountered were her six non-signing kindergarten classmates outfitted with hearing aids. Still, even with these classmates, she metaphorizes that they were each on their own planets, though in the same universe.28 These children’s stories are entirely missing from Bell’s narrative. We might look to Gina Oliva’s Alone in the Mainstream to find their schooling and social experiences. The uniqueness of each deaf child’s linguistic needs might have clued Bell in to the need for full access to a shared language, such as ASL, but if Bell saw this, she chose to overlook it in favor of remaining comfortably in the hearing world. We also must contend with the fact that: The disciplines of normality are preconditions of participation in every aspect of social life, yet they are unnoticed by most adults who can conform to them without conscious effort. Children are very aware of the requirements of normality; among children, conformity to standards of normality in body size, carriage, movement, gesture, speech, emotion expression, appearance, scent, ways of eating, and especially control of bodily functions such as salivation, passing gas, urination, and defecation, are enforced by teasing, taunting, and the threat

60

S. Leigh Ann Cowan

of social ostracization, beginning at an early age. . . . Those of us who can learn to be or seem ‘normal’ do so, and those of us who cannot meet the standards of normality usually achieve the closest approximation we can manage. . . . The disciplines of normality, like those of femininity, are not only enforced by others but internalized.29

In the case of a sensory disability like deafness, when one is taught that their body lacks something that it ought to have in order to participate in and contribute to society, one might be more eager to hide the difference, seek a nonexistent cure, or attempt to “overcome” the difference. Disability studies theorist Donna Reeve terms this psycho-emotional disablism, which is a “form of social oppression that undermines emotional well-being, self-esteem and ontological security, impacting on ‘being’ rather than ‘doing’ as seen in examples of structural disablism such as inaccessible buildings.”30 A psycho-emotionally disabled person may decide to abandon their prosthetic to avoid being marked out as different or feel forced to use a prosthetic or assistive device for the comfort of others. Deaf persons might abandon their hearing aids and immerse themselves in the deaf community to avoid feeling isolated in or ostracized by the hearing community, or fashion their hair so that it covers a hearing aid and obscures their “true identity.” In the 1950s, hearing aid manufacturers Sonotone and Acousticon not only advertised smaller models, but also published advice on how wearers could hide their devices through certain hairstyles or by carrying in the aid in a vest pocket.31 These practices of concealment still continue in 2023, so it is no surprise that one of the ways Bell made herself more comfortable as a deaf child in a hearing world was to hide her deafness—by wearing her Phonic Ear receiver under her shirt and by wearing her hair over her behind-the-ear (BTE) hearing aids—desperately trying to appear as a hearing person to fit in with her classmates. Throughout El Deafo, despite most of her classmates accepting or not even noticing her hearing aids, Bell worries people will be scared and run away if they see her Phonic Ear.32 This never happens, though other children sometimes curiously comment on her deafness and/or devices, which seem to make Bell herself want to run away, not the other way around. Bell is likely not exaggerating her social dread. Even if hearing students are not overtly disrespectful or cruel to deaf classmates, Ramsey points out, “communication between the two groups of children [is] constrained,”33 both in the sense of being severely restricted/limited and appearing overly forced/controlled. The visibility of Bell’s assistive hearing device and stereotypes about deaf people inhibit genuine connections—hearing children’s communication with Bell is geared toward her difference, rather than finding common ground. At the same time, Bell’s anxiety about such constant reminders spurs her to

[Re]Interpreting the Deaf Child’s Solitude

61

downplay the difference—mimicking and internalizing the behaviors of hearing children in the hopes of controlling her image so that she will be allowed to participate socially. In the face of casual nonacceptance from her peers, Bell tries to resist being deaf by acting as though she can hear. When trying to make a new friend, Bell thinks, “Maybe I can pass myself off as a hearing person,”34 but her lipreading skills reveal her. Since such attempts to pass as hearing are unsuccessful, Bell instead hopes that high academic achievement will make her classmates think of her as smart instead of deaf,35 as though smartness and deafness are mutually exclusive. Oliva points out that “[t]he juxtaposition of positive academic experiences with poor social experiences is almost universal to the solitary mainstream experience,”36 which Bell and I both experienced, and is reinforced by our eerily similar childhood friends. Although Bell may be minimizing the number of characters by combining or omitting a few, it is significant that Bell has only four friends throughout the memoir and generally only socializes with one at a time. In my experience, it was difficult to keep up with more than one close friend due to hearing aid and lipreading fatigue, especially when much concentration had to be dedicated to teachers. Like my child self, Bell clings to one person, even when miserable doing so—just so she will not be alone. As a literary device, Bell uses these friends to show how hearing individuals potentially interact with deaf persons; through her friendship with Martha, Bell indicates the type of interaction she prefers. Bell highlights Martha as her best and most supportive friend. Significantly, Martha, Bell’s younger neighbor, speaks to Bell as though Bell were hearing. Bell casts Martha as her sidekick, the Robin to her Batman. They spend much time together, until one day, while playing tag, Bell runs into a tree branch and injures her eye. Martha blames herself for the incident and ends the friendship. By the end of the memoir, Bell and Martha are friends (and hero/sidekick) again. It is this dynamic that stands out, especially because in Bell’s imagination, quasi-friends Laura and Ginny are both villains rather than allies. To understand this contrast, we must understand the origin and function of El Deafo (the personality) in the narrative. The first sentence of the graphic memoir is: “I was a regular little kid.” The use of past tense is important, especially because there is never any reconciliation or normalization of deafness or the use of hearing aids. I argue that having to create a superhero to cope with using assistive technology is less about normalizing its use than it is about mythologizing it, creating a symbol out of it to make it easier for one to understand. Symbols are also a means by which we reinforce values and morality. In Cyborg Manifesto, Donna Haraway writes:

62

S. Leigh Ann Cowan

Technologies and scientific discourses can be partially understood as formalizations, i.e., as frozen moments, of the fluid social interactions constituting them, but they should also be viewed as instruments for enforcing meanings. The boundary is permeable between tool and myth. . . . Indeed, myth and tool mutually constitute each other.37

However, the symbol of a hearing aid is ineffective unless it is given meaning by being put to use. Someone must consent to wearing the hearing aid to give life, so to speak, to the symbol. Michel Foucault discusses the body “as object and target of power . . . that is manipulated, shaped, trained; which obeys, responds, becomes skillful, and increases its forces.”38 The bodies of those who do not conform to ideals are especially valuable, then, as canvases: “A body is docile that may be subjected, used, transformed, and improved.”39 What body is more docile than that of a child who desperately wants to fit in with her peers? Bell, then, becomes part of the symbol, just as Bruce Wayne is part of the symbol (the costume) of Batman. Moreover, the symbol of the hearing aid is oralist conformity, or “normalcy.” Despite Bell’s support of this symbolism, the symbol also takes on the opposite meaning: ostracization. The very device that is supposed to normalize her body also marks her as Other. This dissonance necessitates a coping mechanism: the creation of Bell’s alter ego, El Deafo. One can be certain that had Bell never become sick and lost her hearing, or had been mainstreamed with no assistive technology, she likely would not have fantasized about a superhero persona. SUPERCRIP NARRATIVES A closer look at what the superhero figure itself symbolizes is revealing of what El Deafo means for Bell. This excerpt from Enter the Superheroes: American Values, Culture, and the Canon of Superhero Literature is particularly salient: While the flashiness and the aesthetics of the superheroes are certainly a contributing factor to their appeal, their success can also be attributed to their blatant personifications of society’s morals. Specifically, superhero stories embody American culture’s dichotomy of good and evil. Superheroes represent a set of timeless values; their motivation to do good, their passion for justice, and their opposition to evil are ageless, and people have admired the pursuit of such values for nearly all of existence. Pick any superhero. No matter which one is chosen, a superhero is likely to have these characteristics: 1. His/her origins are, in some way, informed by a tragedy.

[Re]Interpreting the Deaf Child’s Solitude

63

2. He/she is obsessed with achieving his/her goals. 3. With few exceptions, he/she is a solitary figure. 4. His/her goal is unattainable. 5. He/she has a weakness. These characteristics humanize heroes who possess god-like abilities.40

Throughout the memoir, Bell certainly presents a good/evil dichotomy between herself and anyone who doesn’t treat her the way she wants to be treated—i.e., as a hearing person. If her friends draw attention to her deafness, her imagination paints them as supervillains bent on El Deafo’s destruction. Her superpower is her assistive listening device, specifically the Phonic Ear. Contracting meningitis is a tragedy; the effect of this tragic illness is Bell’s deafness. Bell’s obsession is to belong to a phonocentric environment. This goal is unattainable, as she cannot pass for hearing, and she will never have full access to the hearing world. The few exceptions to her solitude are her inconsistent friendships. Her weakness, as explored in the story, is her lack of access to the technology she relies on, such as when the Phonic Ear is broken. Because her hearing aid comes with a microphone and receiver for in-school use, Bell claims to have “super hearing”—her “god-like” ability. She uses this power as a sort of omniscience: She is able to eavesdrop on the private conversations of teachers who are wearing the microphone, as well as determine their locations outside the classroom. Superhero stories present the idea that gaining superpowers is desirable, and one way to gain that power is through technology.41 Using Bell’s go-to superhero as an example, technology is Batman’s key to success as a superhero. Technology “makes it appear that anyone could be Batman if he were to put on the utility belt and start fighting crime.”42 El Deafo lives up to this potential in Bell’s imagination. To further the superhero symbolism in El Deafo, we see throughout the graphic memoir that Bell wears her Phonic Ear under her shirt at school, while her alter ego wears it on the outside. This practice reflects the superhero trope of disguise, but also highlights the dissonance between Bell’s desperation to hide her reliance on the aids and her desire to use them as more than aids. With this background on American superhero narratives and formulas, we can now turn to Sami Schalk’s article, “Reevaluating the Supercrip,” which analyzes this concept more deeply. Schalk moves away from the general scholarship identifying the supercrip as a stereotypical representation of a disabled person, whose individual go-getter attitude and work ethic allow them to transcend all barriers and become heroic and inspiring. Instead, Schalk considers the supercrip to be both a figure and a type of narrative constructed around a disabled person, with identifiable characteristics and

64

S. Leigh Ann Cowan

varying forms depending on medium and genre.43 By expanding the supercrip label to narratives rather than a category of character, we move away from labeling any disabled person with accomplishments or skills a supercrip. We look instead at how characters and their actions are constructed, represented, and perpetuated.44 Schalk typifies three types of supercrip narrative:45 1.  The regular supercrip narrative: these stories focus on a disabled person who receives attention for mundane accomplishments, such as playing on a sports team, attending prom, getting married, or raising children. Although the representation shows a disabled character doing something “just like everyone else,” the representation itself is “premised upon the ableist assumption that people with disabilities do not do these things and thus are not just like everyone else.” 2.  The glorified supercrip narrative: these stories focus on a disabled person who accomplishes things that even non-disabled people rarely attempt, such as climbing Mount Everest, biking across the country, or becoming a world-renowned musician. An important feature of the glorified supercrip narrative is the suppression of privilege, in which storytellers do not account for racial or class privileges that allowed the disabled person to undertake such feats in the first place. 3.  The superpowered supercrip narrative: these stories focus on a disabled person who has abilities or “powers” that operate in direct relationship with or contrast to their disability. Often, the superpower will erase the disability; one example is Marvel’s Maya Lopez/Echo, a totally deaf character whose powers of photographic reflexivity inexplicably allow her to lipread and speak perfectly. In the context of El Deafo, we can immediately dismiss the glorified supercrip narrative, as Bell does not perform any incredible athletic feats. We can also discount the regular supercrip narrative, as Bell never presents herself as heroic for such things as having friends, attending school, or watching television. She exclusively heroicizes herself when she is using the Phonic Ear, which is essentially her El Deafo costume. The Phonic Ear allows her to clearly hear her teachers, thus negating her deafness within this specific classroom context—which is why most of El Deafo’s appearances take place at school. When El Deafo appears outside of school, she does not behave as a morally upright citizen: in one instance, she kicks her mother in the knee. Therefore, her superpowers stem directly from the Phonic Ear microphone (not from the hearing aids), which she uses only for good. Bell, in the guise of El Deafo, participates in the superpowered supercrip narrative.

[Re]Interpreting the Deaf Child’s Solitude

65

In chapter 19, Bell meets up with her crush, Mike. He walks downtown with the mic while Bell stays outside his house so they can “experiment” with the range for the mic and receiver, which Bell is wearing. This becomes a public display for the neighborhood kids, who learn of Bell’s superpower-enabling technology. At school, her classmates are quick to exploit her powers. The teacher, wearing the mic, leaves the classroom, and the students have Bell listen for the teacher’s return and warn them so they can avoid trouble. These children probably do not think they are exploiting Bell herself, but rather the technology. Bell certainly views her use of the Phonic Ear as a voluntary (and heroic) service: “My classmates are having the time of their lives. I think about joining them, but I’ve got an important job to do. So I watch—and I listen.”46 Here, Bell is able to relay information that none of her hearing classmates could attain, by way of her assistive hearing technology. The acclaim she achieves through this superpower of incredibly specific hearing is a function of the supercrip narrative. Furthermore, Bell’s own narrative, that she was performing a service by eavesdropping on the teachers as her classmates chatter and roughhouse, is probably comforting to both her and to her hearing audience. The reader is supposed to understand that she is happy, that keeping watch is what she wants to do. However, she only decides to take on this role because it gets attention and praise from her peers, which is preferable to being ignored and left out. As Oliva points out, “deaf and hard of hearing children are not privy to the fairly constant conversation going on around them. They are only privy to comments directed exclusively at them.”47 In Bell’s case, she is only privy to the teacher’s voice via the Phonic Ear microphone. Experiences shared by other deaf people in Oliva’s survey underscore that: “They expressed chagrin that in addition to calling unwanted attention to their ‘differentness,’ the [FM] systems had what they considered to be limited effectiveness; they enabled to hear what their teachers were saying but not what their fellow students were saying.”48 Bell misses out on virtually all her classmates’ conversations, in and out of class. The whispers and titters that teachers selectively reprimand are completely inaccessible to Bell, so she focuses on what she can hear—the teacher—and pretends it is enough. It is worth recognizing that with the Phonic Ear, Bell holds a significant amount of power over her peers: the dark-side potential that she could withhold her protection—i.e., not warn them that the teacher is returning—does not factor into the story. This once again reinforces that Bell/El Deafo is a hero, not a villain, connecting back to the moralizing of American superheroes and their technology, and that this memoir is a feel-good supercrip narrative. Associating assistive hearing technology with [super]heroism destigmatizes the devices for those who wear them and those who see others wearing

66

S. Leigh Ann Cowan

them. However, the implication that hearing devices enable users to assimilate almost seamlessly into hearing society creates damaging misconceptions. People who expect these devices to cure deafness are inevitably disappointed, and the intellectual and emotional labor of educating those who ask questions or make assumptions often falls to the device users themselves—one of the reasons Bell undertook the writing of this memoir in the first place. TRENDS IN LITERATURE FEATURING DEAF CHARACTERS In particular, books (whether fiction or nonfiction) rarely feature a deaf child/ teen narrator, and most are written in the first person by hearing authors who portray these characters poorly—to name just a few: Aquarium by Yaara Shehori (2021), The Silence by Tim Lebbon (2016), and Talk Under Water by Kathryn Lomer (2015). All that is to say, Bell’s authentic portrayal of an oral and mainstreamed deaf child does, in fact, affirm the identities of those who share those experiences (which is a great many of us—around 80 percent of deaf children in the United States are mainstreamed49) and those deaf adults who prefer socializing in the hearing world (also a sizeable group). Still, even authentic portrayals can be propagandized. A few examples include: A Season of Change by Lois L. Hodge (1987), the story of an oral deaf girl with hearing aids who becomes a hero by using the telephone; Marc Sumerak’s comic book, Iron Man: Sound Effects (2014), which features Pedro Perez/Blue Ear, a deaf superhero who adapts his hearing aid to give him sonar capabilities; and Edmund Morris’s 2019 biography of Thomas Edison, which dramatically underscores Edison’s deafness to highlight his accomplishments, while expressly downplaying his privileges (e.g., the bouts of frenzied creativity following each of his marriages is not due to being in love, as Morris suggests, but due to Edison’s wives taking over running the household, giving him the time and freedom to obsessively pursue his own interests). These last three representations fall under the category of regular supercrip, superpowered supercrip, and glorified supercrip, respectively. Further, El Deafo’s popularity may be stifling other perspectives. Looking up childhood memoirs written by deaf people, El Deafo appears in link after link and image after image. If one scrolls far enough, they might find Diary of a Hard of Hearing Kid by Isaiah John Baier, which is exactly what the title promises. It was self-published (by his parents) in 2018, when Baier was eleven years old. He is oxymoronically identified in the product description as “a very normal, yet extraordinary, hearing impaired kid,” indicating that the story is a regular supercrip narrative. I have been unable to find any other middle grade–level memoirs about deaf people, but more interestingly, upon

[Re]Interpreting the Deaf Child’s Solitude

67

scrolling down the Amazon product page of Baier’s diary to the similar-items section, one finds picture books like Sammy and His Super Ears by Kay Hoffman Brocato (2019), The Adventures of Billie BAHA and Her Super HEARo Friends by Jessica Jordan-Hogan (2020), and Sounds I Hear with My Magic Ears by Ms. Kaitlin McKoy (2022), to name but a few. These titles all feature a child or toddler wearing hearing aids or cochlear implants, many of them in superhero costumes. On the one hand, these picture books are an upshot in representation for young children who live these experiences. On the other, these titles suggest that assistive hearing technology is the key not only to achieving the ideal hearing state, but also to surpassing hearing children in ability, to an audience of hearing parents of deaf babies in particular. Moreover, due to the prevalence of these picture books, one gets the sense that the supercrip is an infantile figure. This is supported by a young deaf girl’s serialized Wattpad memoir, written between the ages of eleven and thirteen. Amelia Evans Chase describes her embarrassment upon realizing that not everyone referred to cochlear implants as “magic ears,” as the picture books overwhelmingly represent them as: Growing up, my parents called my cochlear implants, ‘magic ears’[.] I, myself, have also used this term my whole life, and so has everyone around me. It’s funny, because I always thought everyone did, but I was wrong. That was brutally embarrassing for me when I found out, to be honest. I don’t use the term as often now, only when I’m with one of my parents really.50

The cover of El Deafo presents a similar message as the picture books: El Deafo, her hearing aids clearly visible, soars through the sky in a classic Superman pose. El Deafo’s use of the Phonic Ear fulfills the same function of convincing deaf children to use rather than resist their assistive hearing devices. There are virtually no middle-grade or YA stories that explicitly superheroicize or magicalize assistive hearing technology, and I have been unable to find any titles meant for an adult audience that sensationalize deaf characters on the covers in this way—not even actual superhero comics that feature deaf characters, like Marvel’s Hawkeye or Daredevil franchises— indicating that a primary function of these children’s books and El Deafo is to convince deaf children to wear—even covet—their assistive hearing technology. These illustrated works point to the prevalence of the superpowered supercrip narrative as key oralist propaganda, both for the deaf children and for their parents and teachers, who are purchasing and reading these titles.

68

S. Leigh Ann Cowan

CONCLUSION Bell’s memoir ultimately follows a larger trend of mythologizing and [super]heroicizing deafness. Bell might disagree with my interpretations of her memoir, as might psychologists in the deaf community, such as Leigh, Morere, and Pezzarossi, who write that: [I]ndividuals who have formed an opinion of perceived similarity to others, a communication style used mutually with others, and a sense of support will gain a healthy sense of self-efficacy. . . . Belonging to a network of like-minded individuals with similar backgrounds helps to enhance resilience. Although initially it would seem that being identified as deaf is a risk factor for difficulties in life, there is documentation of how resilience can be enhanced and reinforced in deaf children through positive environmental factors. . . . The internalization of resilience helps them withstand and problem-solve situations related to limited or lacking communication access, exclusion from interactions with hearing peers, and experiences of discrimination.51

In other words, whereas I see El Deafo as a glorification of audist practices and the supercrip narrative, orally deaf individuals might view the memoir as an expression of Bell’s feelings divorced from such ideology and as an affirmation of their own experiences and choices. For them, El Deafo could be a symbol of resilience. However, it is a function of literature that individual characters and stories become metaphors and metonyms for society and institutions. El Deafo, the story and the character, functions as an audist symbol, reinforcing American values of conformity and the facsimile of wholeness that assistive technology creates. Still, it is worth reemphasizing that Bell’s memoir presents a deaf person’s experience authentically. Bell’s work is antithesis to the fact that disabled characters in media are generally presented as “sociocultural stereotypes designed to appeal to a majority of viewers, and reflect widely held values.”52 Because a disabled body is not considered to be “normal,” the presence of a disabled body sets into motion a process through which the audience attempts to create meaning from that body, and either replaces previously held assumptions about disabled bodies or reconciles with such assumptions. El Deafo aims to educate about the oral deaf child’s experiences, thus actively resisting sociocultural stereotypes on which non-disabled authors often rely. Overall, Bell’s presentation of the deaf child’s solitude as individual [super]heroism in El Deafo obscures society’s continued (and ongoing) failure to understand the experiences and needs of deaf children. She frames the deaf child’s solitude as an origin story rather than address it as a social justice issue. Rather than centering the experiences of the marginalized deaf

[Re]Interpreting the Deaf Child’s Solitude

69

children who are not comfortable in a hearing world, the publishing of Bell’s own oral success story reinforces and pushes for the acceptance of dominant phonocentric ideologies. Bell’s experiences and comfortable existence in the hearing world are valid, but the story ultimately functions as an extension of audist institutional practices. NOTES 1. Jennifer A. Kurth, Mary E. Morningstar, and Elizabeth B. Kozleski, “The Persistence of highly restrictive special education placements for students with low-incidence disabilities,” Research and Practice for Persons with Severe Disabilities, 39, no. 3 (2014): 227. For a deaf child–specific discussion of mainstream education, refer to Janet Cerney Dickinson’s Deaf Education in America: Voices of Children from Inclusion Settings (2007). 2. William Martin Chamberlain, “The ‘Animus,’” American Annals of the Deaf 33, no. 2 (1888): 135. 3. Gina A. Oliva, Alone in the Mainstream: A Deaf Woman Remembers Public School (Washington, D.C: Gallaudet University Press, 2004), 3. 4. Khalid N. Alasim, “Participation and Interaction of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students in Inclusion Classroom,” International Journal of Special Education 33, no. 2 (2018): 494. 5. Adva Eichengreen et al., “Resilience from childhood to young adulthood: retrospective perspectives of deaf and hard of hearing people who studied in regular schools,” Psychology & Health, 37, no. 3 (2022), 332, doi: 10.1080/08870446.2021.1905161. 6. Eichengreen et al., “Resilience from childhood,” 338. 7. Alasim, “Participation and Interaction of Deaf,” 503. 8. Claire L. Ramsey, Deaf Children in Public Schools: Placement, Context, and Consequences (Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 1997), 71. 9. Oliva, Alone in the Mainstream, 31. 10. Yu-Han Xie, Miloň Potměšil, and Brenda Peters, “Children Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing in Inclusive Educational Settings: A Literature Review on Interactions with Peers,” Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 19, no. 4 (2014): 429, doi: /10.1093/deafed/enu017. 11. Eichengreen et al., “Resilience from childhood,” 341. 12. Xie et al., “Children Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing,” 433. 13. Oliva, Alone in the Mainstream, 16. 14. Noel O’Connell, “Writing the Deaf Self in Autoethnography,” in Innovations in Deaf Studies: The Role of Deaf Scholars, edited by Annelies Kusters, Maartje De Meulder, and Dai O’Brien (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 297. 15. O’Connell, “Writing the Deaf Self,” 303. 16. O’Connell, “Writing the Deaf Self,” 307. 17. O’Connell, “Writing the Deaf Self,” 309. 18. Cece Bell, El Deafo (New York City: Amulet Books, 2014), 235.

70

S. Leigh Ann Cowan

19. Rebecca L. Oxford, The Language of Peace: Communicating to Create Harmony (Charlotte: Information Age Publishing, 2013), 147. 20. Oxford, The Language of Peace, 150. 21. Bell, El Deafo, 24. 22. Bell, El Deafo, 29–32. 23. Bell, El Deafo, 37. 24. Jaipreet Virdi, Hearing Happiness: Deafness Cures in History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020), 206. 25. Irene W. Leigh, “Reflections on Identity,” in Oxford Handbook of Deaf Studies, Language, and Education, Vol. 2, edited by Marc Marschark and Patricia Elizabeth Spencer (New York: Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2010), 203. 26. Genie Gertz, “Dysconscious Audism: A Theoretical Proposition,” in Open Your Eyes: Deaf Studies Talking, edited by Dirksen Bauman (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 219. 27. Oliva, Alone in the Mainstream, 72. 28. Bell, El Deafo, 33. 29. Susan Wendell, The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability (Oxfordshire: Routledge, 1996), 88. 30. Donna Reeve, “Cyborgs, Cripples and iCrip: Reflections on the Contribution of Haraway to Disability Studies,” in Disability and Social Theory: New Developments and Directions, edited by D. Goodley et al. (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2012), 97. 31. Virdi, Hearing Happiness, 222–23. 32. For example: Bell, El Deafo, 212. 33. Ramsey, Deaf Children in Public Schools, 73. 34. Bell, El Deafo, 103. 35. Bell, El Deafo, 167. 36. Oliva, Alone in the Mainstream, 77. 37. Donna J. Haraway, Manifestly Haraway (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016), 33. 38. Michel Foucault, The Foucault Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow (New York City: Pantheon Books, 1984): 180. 39. Foucault, The Foucault Reader, 180. 40. Alex S. Romagnoli and Gian S. Pagnucci, Enter the Superheroes: American Values, Culture, and the Canon of Superhero Literature (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013), 8. 41. Romagnoli and Pagnucci, Enter the Superheroes, 171. 42. Romagnoli and Pagnucci, Enter the Superheroes, 172. 43. Sami Schalk, “Reevaluating the Supercrip,” Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, 10, no. 1 (2016): 72–73; 76, doi: 10.3828/jlcds.2016.5. 44. Schalk, “Reevaluating the Supercrip,” 78. 45. Schalk, “Reevaluating the Supercrip,” 79–81. 46. Bell, El Deafo, 215. 47. Oliva, Alone in the Mainstream, 47. 48. Oliva, Alone in the Mainstream, 83.

[Re]Interpreting the Deaf Child’s Solitude

71

49. U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) database (2020), Table 204.60. 50. Amelia Evans Chase, “28.History,” in the deaf girl’s stories, Wattpad, 2016, accessed June 13, 2023. 51. Irene W. Leigh, Donna A. Morere, and Caroline Kobek Pezzarossi, “Deaf Gain: Beyond Deaf Culture,” in Deaf Gain: Raising the Stakes for Human Diversity, edited by H. Dirksen, L. Bauman, and Joseph J. Murray (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), 367. 52. Marilyn Dahl, “The Role of the Media in Promoting Images of Disability—Disability as Metaphor: The Evil Crip,” Canadian journal of communication 18, no. 1 (1993), 75, doi: 10.22230/cjc.1993v18n1a718.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Alasim, Khalid N. “Participation and Interaction of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students in Inclusion Classroom.” International Journal of Special Education 33, no. 2 (2018): 493–506. Bell, Cece. El Deafo. New York City: Amulet Books, 2014. Chamberlain, William Martin. “The ‘Animus.’” American Annals of the Deaf 33, no. 2 (1888): 133–37. Chase, Amelia Evans. “28.History.” In the deaf girl’s stories, serialized on Wattpad under the name wistfuldays. 2016. Accessed June 13, 2023. Cowan, Casey, personal discussion with author, April 15, 2017. Dahl, Marilyn. “The Role of the Media in Promoting Images of Disability— Disability as Metaphor: The Evil Crip.” Canadian journal of communication 18, no. 1 (1993): 75–80. doi: 10.22230/cjc.1993v18n1a718. Dickinson, Janet Cerney. Deaf Education in America: Voices of Children from Inclusion Settings. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 2007. Eichengreen, Adva, Anat Zaidman-Zait, Tova Most, and Gelena Golik. “Resilience from childhood to young adulthood: retrospective perspectives of deaf and hard of hearing people who studied in regular schools.” Psychology & Health, 37, no. 3 (2022): 331–49, doi: 10.1080/08870446.2021.1905161. Foucault, Michel. The Foucault Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow. New York City: Pantheon Books, 1984. Gertz, Genie. “Dysconscious Audism: A Theoretical Proposition.” In Open Your Eyes: Deaf Studies Talking, edited by Dirksen Bauman, 219– 34. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. Haraway, Donna J. Manifestly Haraway. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016. Kurth, Jennifer A., Mary E. Morningstar, and Elizabeth B. Kozleski. “The Persistence of highly restrictive special education placements for students with low-incidence disabilities.” Research and Practice for Persons with Severe Disabilities, 39, no. 3 (2014): 227–39.

72

S. Leigh Ann Cowan

Leigh, Irene W. “Reflections on Identity.” In Oxford Handbook of Deaf Studies, Language, and Education, Vol. 2, edited by Marc Marschark and Patricia Elizabeth Spencer, 195–209. New York: Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2010. Leigh, Irene W., Donna A. Morere, and Caroline Kobek Pezzarossi. “Deaf Gain: Beyond Deaf Culture.” In Deaf Gain: Raising the Stakes for Human Diversity, edited by H-Dirksen L. Bauman and Joseph J. Murray, 356–71. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014. O’Connell, Noel. “Writing the Deaf Self in Autoethnography.” In Innovations in Deaf Studies: The Role of Deaf Scholars, edited by Annelies Kusters, Maartje De Meulder, and Dai O’Brien, 297–315. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Oliva, Gina A. Alone in the Mainstream: A Deaf Woman Remembers Public School. Washington, D.C: Gallaudet University Press, 2004. Oxford, Rebecca L. The Language of Peace: Communicating to Create Harmony. Charlotte: Information Age Publishing, 2013. Ramsey, Claire L. Deaf Children in Public Schools: Placement, Context, and Consequences. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 1997. Reeve, Donna. “Cyborgs, Cripples and iCrip: Reflections on the Contribution of Haraway to Disability Studies.” In Disability and Social Theory: New Developments and Directions, edited by D. Goodley et al., 91–111. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2012. Romagnoli, Alex S. and Gian S. Pagnucci. Enter the Superheroes: American Values, Culture, and the Canon of Superhero Literature. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013. Schalk, Sami. “Reevaluating the Supercrip.” Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, 10, no. 1 (2016): 71–86. doi: 10.3828/jlcds.2016.5. U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) database, Table 204.60, April 20, 2020. Accessed June 13, 2023. Virdi, Jaipreet. Hearing Happiness: Deafness Cures in History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020. Wendell, Susan. The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability. Oxfordshire: Routledge, 1996. Xie, Yu-Han, Miloň Potměšil, and Brenda Peters. “Children Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing in Inclusive Educational Settings: A Literature Review on Interactions with Peers.” Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 19, no. 4 (2014): 423– 37. doi: /10.1093/deafed/enu017.

PART II

The Rule of Law and Transgressive Constructions of American Childhood

73

Chapter 4

Because What You Don’t Know Can Kill You Law, Adolescence, and YA Literature Jamie M. Fine

The Twentieth Anniversary Edition of Todd Strasser’s Give a Boy a Gun includes both the original author’s note from 2000 as well as a more extended one from 2020, outlining the shortcomings, stalling, and resultant deaths caused by failed gun control legislation, which Strasser equates to the very literal death of American childhood in schools today. What is compelling, looking back at that note from 2000, is the foreshadowing of what we see in sharper relief in 2022: One of the things I used to like about writing books for young people was that it wasn’t necessary to deal with . . . [the] immoral or criminal activities that seem mandatory in adult novels . . . I find it sad and frightening that this is no longer the case. One of the things I dislike most about guns in our society is that, like violence and sex in the media, they rob children of what we used to think of as a childhood. The story you are about to read is a work of fiction. Nothing–and everything–about it is real.

Originally published just over fifteen months following the Columbine shooting, ten days before 9/11, and five years before neuroscience and our court systems alike would recognize adolescence as a developmental stage uniquely different from childhood and adulthood,1 Strasser’s concerns remain every bit as relevant today as they were at the turn of the twenty-first century, mirroring cultural anxieties about what exactly childhood, and especially adolescence, is—and highlighting what it is no longer. Indeed, it is perhaps unsurprising that, more than twenty years later, we are still grappling with 75

76

Jamie M. Fine

just how to respond to adolescent violence as much as we are the violence of adolescence. Still, perhaps the concern is less that adolescence has changed than that adults are no longer allowed to imagine it as a space untouched by violence, sex, criminality, and danger.2 Indeed, philosopher Robert Harrison argues: childhood is what every adult has lost, regardless of whether one has an accurate or distorted recollection of its condition. Precisely because it persists in the mode of loss, we have a marked tendency to mythologize its golden age or transfigure its reality through selective memory, fantasy, nostalgia, and retrospective projection. Certainly, the loss of childhood is our . . . first taste of death itself.3

From this perspective, there are two primary tensions. First, there is a distinctive tension between what we believe adolescence—and childhood more generally—to be and what it actually is. The reality is that for many youths, childhood—and thus adolescence, certainly—is not and never was the halcyon safe space that adults, and American culture generally, nostalgically wants to believe it to be. The tension that is the adolescent “gap space” between childhood proper and adulthood has resulted in much hand-wringing from educators, parents, politicians, and judges alike. After all, not all adolescents are legally adults, and not all adolescents are legally children, either. As a developmental stage broadly defining young people roughly between the ages of thirteen and twenty-five, how we as members of the culture perceive this broad age span differs, especially considering what we now know about neurological and emotional development and what our laws deem age-based markers of adulthood. As a result of this first tension, the second key tension arises from uncertainty as to whether adolescents should be shielded from content deemed “adult,” or whether they should be informed by it. The challenge is that, in shielding adolescents from information considered “too adult”—usually content about sex, racism, mental health needs, identity questions, and violence generally, but also about systemic injustice, biases, and abuses—we ignore the realities of the American culture into which they are aging. Whether we like these realities or not does not impact the fact that adolescents—just like the adults they will soon be—must be both aware of and prepared to navigate them. As The Outsiders author S.E. Hinton asserted in the 1960s, “violence, too, is part of teenagers’ lives”4—and clearly has been for some time now. In fact, perhaps it’s always been there, and our reticence to address these elephants in the room has led to the crossroads we find ourselves at today. The question, then, should be far less one about whether to shield such knowledge and attendant dialogue from them or not, and far more one looking at the bigger picture of what they must know not only to survive, but to thrive.

Because What You Don’t Know Can Kill You

77

Underlying the concept of violence—and these hot-topic issues generally—is an unavoidable piece of American culture: law. While adolescents may not need a full law school education—or to know the niceties of, say, real estate law or trusts and estates—the ever-expansive spread of the justice system, the extent (and limits) of constitutionally provided and protected individual rights, and the import of being able to safely navigate the American criminal state is absolutely relevant to the adolescent lived experience today. Similarly, so, too, is an understanding of the gray areas surrounding these laws, the situations that lead to legal gap spaces that invite biases, injustices, and legal violence. Consider, for example, the import of understanding what Miranda rights actually mean to youth decisions in police interactions, or the choices (and rights) a young person must know about in navigating a first sexual experience, or the socially (if not expressly legally) condoned behavioral expectations of persons in a vehicle stop. Despite this need for legal education, law remains outside the vast majority of American schools, and certainly outside the scope of most conversations at home. The impact is significant: by failing to broach “uncomfortable” conversations about “difficult topics” like law and the behaviors that laws define, regulate, and punish, we lose altogether the opportunity to inform youth not only about laws, but also how to comport with them in order to engage in ethical, social, interpersonal, and sexual citizenship—ideally before they are in just such legal situations. In short, failing to inform is failing adolescent youth, instead perpetuating cycles of violence, cultural toxicity, and biases within the body politic, effectively continuing the unnecessary victimization of individuals across identity intersectionalities. Luckily, we have learned that something has to give. Around the time Strasser’s book was released, another uniquely adolescent-focused media jumped into the youth culture scene: contemporary young adult literature (YA Lit). As a uniquely adolescent-centered genre written by adults with an adolescent readership in mind, these narratives center adolescents as they experience, respond to, and engage with precisely the difficult and “uncomfortable” subjects most relevant to them. By contextualizing legal matters—from legal language to interactions with legal actors, engagement in legal spaces, and even application of laws to adolescent experiences—these books offer readers a way into content that they need to know about situations they and/or their friends are statistically likely to experience. Whether the book addresses the prison structure directly or court proceedings, whether it covers what exactly consent means and does or introduces readers to legal precedent impacting their individual rights in given spaces, or whether covering legally mandated reporting procedures or mapping out the parameters of the Equal Protection Clause, YA Lit functions not merely as a tool for literary consciousness, but also one for legal consciousness. By offering this broad legal engagement,

78

Jamie M. Fine

YA Lit does what no other resource does presently: it develops adolescent legal literacy, encouraging readers to examine, question, and discuss law and the implications of a staunchly legal culture. As a result, it has paved the way for a distinctly adolescent legal culture, both informing and informed by YA Lit. In this way, the books invite adolescent reader discourse, debate, and discussion on topics that for too long have been considered the realm of adults, too mature or idea-provoking in younger demographics. The result is to offer soon-to-be adults the opportunity not only to learn about the vast American legal apparatus, but to form opinions about it, to “see” the import of law on their own—and others’—lives, unpacked in accessible language, and explained in connection with the social, emotional, and interpersonal implications involved. AMERICAN LEGAL CULTURE AND THE ADOLESCENT: THE IMPORT OF THE UNAVOIDABLY LEGAL IN AMERICAN CULTURE What, exactly, constitutes “culture” is slippery to define, but there remains little doubt of the long-standing connection between culture and law. While often discussed as something distinctly separate from culture, the significant interrelation of the two combined effectively create what is recognized across disciplinary constructs as a distinctly American legal culture. As a legal culture, the legalistic lens is so omnipresent and impactful as to define our very understanding of persons, community, and the structures that comprise it. From the cultural perspective, sociologist Susan Silbey describes “law [as a] part of the cultural processes that actively contribute in the composition of social relations,”5 thus inherent to how the body politic engages between and amongst members. Philosopher Milner Ball posits law not only as part of the composition of social relations, but as key in creating a shared cultural understanding, functioning as “a medium [. . .] connecting rather than disconnecting, enhancing a flow of dialogue, containing the dynamics of life in common”6 across the disparate persons and practices that comprise the American body politic. From the legal perspective, theorist Naomi Mezey argues that law is one of culture’s “signifying practices [. . .] and, despite its best efforts, [. . .] cannot be divorced from [it]. Nor, for that matter, can culture be divorced from law.”7 Beyond its interrelationship with culture, David Engel argues that law functions as an unavoidable lens, informing how persons come to understand self, community, state, and system. As such, it is a part of culture “dependent on everyday life to give meaning to its central concepts, . . . to root its abstract rules and principles in human understanding, and to produce implementation,

Because What You Don’t Know Can Kill You

79

compliance, and judgment.”8 In light of this complex and dynamic relationship, legal culture is comprised of and comprises the “[n]orms originating in diverse ways from diverse sources, of greater and lesser formality and official legitimacy . . . [wherein] [e]veryday life constitutes law and is constituted by it.”9 From this perspective, law is not simply part of our culture via cultural consciousness, it’s part of the cultural conscience in the form of underlying choices made, actions taken, and words spoken daily, whether we realize it or not. Thus, if law is so ingrained a part of American culture, it’s impossible to argue that it is an invisible presence; more to the point, it is so common as to hide in plain sight, quietly informing virtually every aspect of the body politic, from the language we use and the interactions we engage in, to the recognition of legal spaces and/or procedures that “operate to define and pattern social life.”10 Through “repeated invocations of the law, legal concepts and terminology, as well as [. . .] imaginative and unusual associations between legality and other social structures,”11 we have collectively developed a legal culture so important to understanding the American body politic and its social functioning that it is virtually impossible to imagine not knowing it. Once everyday actions are placed under this microscope—as they might well be by a young person learning the cultural ropes or facing repercussions for violating them—one cannot help but “see” law in everything. For example, consider driving to the store for bread. It informs where we park and for how long, who is allowed to drive to begin with, the seat buckle that must be used, and the inspections and insurance and vehicle taxes that must be paid to keep the car on the road. It is present in how the vehicle is driven, at what speed, in which lane, and in what the vehicle does at traffic lights. It is present in how long we pause at a stop sign, whether we pause at a stop sign, and what we do while we’re paused. At the store, it informs our understanding that the goods desired must be paid for, that a line must be waited in in order to pay, and of the custom associated with joining the end of that line rather than cutting it. Beyond the impact hiding beneath the surface of so much of sociocultural structures taken for granted, the role of law is also far more direct in its efforts to not only structure and organize, but to police. In this sense, the violation of law is also so common as to be virtually unavoidable, with violations of criminal law and the extensive, significant repercussions of such violations—intentional or otherwise—perhaps most visible. Of course, for a body politic so structured by law, the sheer number of persons impacted by it is significant. For context, while the United States represents only 5 percent of the world’s population, it holds 25 percent of the world’s jailed population,12 with more than two million adults, adolescents, and children behind bars.13 The magnitude of this impact on individual members of the population is hard to ignore: one in three adults has been arrested by the age of

80

Jamie M. Fine

twenty-three (thus, before their brain has fully developed),14 with one in fiftyfive currently under parole or probation,15 resulting in up to 5.1 percent of the entire American population having been incarcerated at some point.16 Even for those not directly found violating the law or imprisoned, with more than half the nation’s imprisoned adults parents of minors,17 the impact of such an expansive system on lives—and particularly those from diverse, low-income backgrounds—is unavoidable. Indeed, the fact that “in some states, correctional costs have outstripped education expenditures”18 reflects the prioritization of a police state, wherein punishment for failure to comport with laws supersedes the value of education itself. The result is a legal apparatus that has outgrown itself—and more importantly, that demands adherence to its strictures, regardless of whether one is aware of the law violated, with society placing its trust in the legal literacy of police officers, the very persons hired to maintain the prison state. Thus, the parties who are presumably paid to know best become—even if only briefly—judge and jury in the assessment of legal violation, arrest process, and evidence collection procedure, too. The result is a system that teaches legal literacy reactively rather than proactively, placing those demographics least likely to have legal literacy and most vulnerable to the biases of those interpreting the legality of their behaviors in a precarious position. LOCATING THE ADOLESCENT IN AMERICAN LEGAL CULTURE Legal theorist Robert Cover famously wrote that legal interpretation occurs in a “field of pain and violence,”19 effectively resulting in—as political philosopher Roberto Esposito posits—“the use of violence against violence in order to control violence.”20 While arriving at similar conclusions, for Cover, the most dangerous legal interpretations occurred in the context of court rooms, levied by judges and weighted by the import of decisions on the accused, their family and community, and society at large. Esposito, on the other hand, did not center the violence of control in the courtroom alone, instead arguing for its engagement across the body politic. Today, important legal interpretation also occurs by persons (and those deemed legal nonpersons) taking calculated risks (like jaywalking) and nonjudicial legal actors like police officers, charged with interpreting their behaviors and how to respond (whether to ticket, warn, arrest, or ignore). Yet, that an act or omission may be subject to interpretation presumes some understanding that there was a violation. While jaywalking may be on the very low end of deviant behaviors, one might also consider the inherent risk of vehicular stops. A broken taillight, for example, which even a conscientious driver may well not know about, can lead to a

Because What You Don’t Know Can Kill You

81

police stop, which, in turn, might lead to a car search, or a decision to levy a ticket. For an adolescent unfamiliar with police engagement, or whose behaviors are interpreted as threatening to the officer, the benign stop can quickly escalate. While the officer’s decision to ticket them may not reflect a strictly necessary action, it may set in motion the cogs of a system not designed for adolescence, wherein a minor legal violation—starting with a broken taillight, though perhaps escalating into an altercation, arrest, and even jail time—opens the world of adult systems and punishment. In light of the significant import of being able to safely navigate American legal culture in all its expansive complexity, it’s perhaps unsurprising how adolescents would effectively be lost in such a construct. Indeed, adolescence itself has been subject to interpretation by legal actors for some time; in fact, age-based laws dating back to the British 1600s leave this demographic locked in a legal gray area, caught between the protections of childhood and the rights and responsibilities of adulthood. For too long, law has been considered purely part of the adult knowledge sphere, where—like sexual citizenship—meaningful conversation is lost in debates about the adolescentas-older-child versus the adolescent-as-young-adult, and thus the benefits of shielding versus informing. As a result, there remains significant discrepancy in legal interpretations of the adolescent, who is subject both bodily and legally to interpretation by adults and especially legal actors—including police, lawyers, and judges. The result is—for the duration of this ephemeral stage through which every adult must age—a complex laundry list of legal expectation: about what age should signify in terms of individual maturity and intent; about what one should know at a given age; about how laws should function in controlling adolescents; about how one should act in the face of peer pressure, bullying, adult indifference; and so on. In short, adolescence is already a trying developmental space socially, but legally, we have turned it into a confusingly dangerous “gap space” within the body politic. LOST IN THE GAP SPACES: THE ADOLESCENT IN THE BODY POLITIC Beyond its complexity, the very question of adolescent identity—who is considered one, what the term means, and how it impacts the legal apparatus—all continue to be points of debate. Within the legal adult-child binary, the adolescent exists inside a legal and cultural gray area, caught in the vestibules of a system they cannot change and subject to laws of which they are not informed—and into which they are aging by the minute. Imani Perry conceptualizes the American body politic as a corpus riddled with “gap spaces,” or “social spaces” that are both part of and separate from. These gaps are at once

82

Jamie M. Fine

“everywhere yet out of view,”21 offering unprotected sites for consideration, exploration, and—most importantly—for thinking about. Yet, with them also comes the inherent risk attributed to sites lacking the full protection of the very structures—like the law—that have created them. To locate the adolescent within the American body politic, it is useful to consider the gap space as both a referral to the physical spaces assigned the adolescent as well as a construct for examining their placement within law. This physical gap space can take many forms. In ones where adolescents may choose to congregate, these spaces offer a place to grow, to learn, and to build community. In each, the spaces are often intentionally chosen, favoring those outside direct scrutiny of adult authority figures and the punishments— legal or otherwise—that may result from (and be warranted by) their actions. As a result, these chosen gap spaces are designed to support socialization, discussion, and peer engagement; yet one can also envision the potential legal risks inherent in such spaces, which are fed by adolescent experimentation and the peer pressure that such sites support. From underage drinking, smoking, and drug use to sexual violence, from bullying and assault to vandalism and loitering, it is not that these sites are outside the law—it is simply that they are less visible to it. While these physical gap spaces may be chosen sites of respite, they may also simply not be. After all, we don’t always choose the spaces we’re in or who’s there with us. In light of Perry’s inclusion of prisons and detention centers as examples of such spaces,22 it seems a small step to include schools as part of this paradigm, a place of learning where some of the most egregious violations occur. Strasser’s fear and frustration acknowledge, for example, the recent revelation that guns are the number-one cause of death for American children, in large part because of school shootings—clocking in at an all-time high of more than 250 in 2022 alone.23 However, gun violence isn’t the only violence incurred there. One might also consider, for example, the documented regularity of daily sexual harassment inflicted on girls generally, and Black girls especially, by peers and teachers alike,24 or the import of schools’ failings to educate students about the differences between—and rights accompanying—bullying versus harassment, or to do much about either.25 In these spaces, not only are adolescents subject to violent and illegal behaviors, but the lack of authoritarian response—perceived or otherwise—conditions youth not only to accept, but to even expect such violence as normal. Beyond these physical gap spaces, there are also non-physical ones. In a body politic built on an adult-child binary system, automatically the adolescent is caught in the gray area, outside of childhood per se but also often lacking the full accompaniment of rights and protections granted adults. The result is a demographic often held to adult standards, expectations, and legal fluency, but lacking the education, lived experience, or maturity. This

Because What You Don’t Know Can Kill You

83

discrepancy is partially reinforced by American laws that have long used specific ages to define the rights of adulthood. As a result, one can drive at sixteen, be conscripted into military service, vote, buy an assault rifle, and purchase property at eighteen, but can’t drink or buy tobacco until twentyone. Parents can decide that it’s in an adolescent’s best interest to marry an adult at twelve, but in most states, you can’t enter a contract—and thus get a divorce—until at least the age of eighteen. Yet, the human brain doesn’t finish developing until around the age of twenty-five, a distinctive change from previous beliefs that the brain finished adult development as much as a decade earlier.26 It’s worth also noting that, while the legal system is strict in limiting adolescent access to adult rights, the same cannot be said for the potentiality of adult punishment within the same system. Thus, while an adolescent may not yet be able to independently access mental health-care professionals, gender-affirming care, birth control or an abortion, a driver’s license, or a credit card due to their youth, at fifteen, adolescents can still be found to have demonstrated “permanent incorrigibility” and adult intent in committing a crime, and can thus be assigned significant adult punishments.27 As a result, these discrepancies place adolescents in a legal gap space, lacking both the legal protections of children and the education, rights, and freedoms of adulthood. THE RISE OF ADOLESCENT LEGAL CULTURE While legal culture is an inherent part of mainstream culture today, it has, for much of American history, been considered a separate sphere from the realm of childhood and, by extension, adolescence. Yet, with the increasing import of law, legal punishments, and a need to better understand the very real legal constructs in which adolescents must engage, law has significant relevance for adolescents. As a result, in response to violence—of both the illegal and legal kind, as Esposito alluded to—and an increasingly weary stance on adolescents across the body politic, youth culture has necessarily turned its attention to the reasons for and implications of such violence. Youth culture is a subculture defined by its incorporation of the norms, values, and practices collectively engaged by (and aimed toward) young adults across the body politic.28 Highly influential to young adults at a developmental stage when peer pressure and social approval is paramount, it both informs and is informed by the interests of an ever-evolving body of adolescents,29 offering a highly influential means of spreading the beliefs, values, ideas, and attitudes comprising American youth culture,30 with which it promises to align youth highly susceptible to peer pressure.31 Youth culture has evolved since its beginnings in the 1940s—marked by national growth in high school attendance—finally putting youth in regular close

84

Jamie M. Fine

proximity, making it possible for a youth culture to emerge.32 Originally spread by word of mouth, then through magazines, music, zines, TV, movies, music, video games, and books, today it is also bolstered by social media, adolescent-friendly online chat rooms, and the colossal popularity of YA Lit. In short, youth culture does not evolve in a vacuum, but it is instead informed by and responsive to the issues of mainstream culture. One such issue marking a significant cultural shift arose in the 1980s, when a distinctive uptick in adolescent crime, teamed with politicians’ fears of adolescent “super predators,”33 shifted public perception of adolescents as dangerous, unfeeling, immoral actors, pointing fingers in particular at Black male urban youth. Of course, the increase in violent crime—which spiked 64 percent from 1980 to 1994,34 when it began a steady decline through 202035—wasn’t the result of “a new breed of kids,” but instead the reflection of a violent body politic, caused by “the greater availability of guns, making fights and gang rivalries among kids more lethal than before.”36 In 1999, after a period of criminal decline amongst adolescents, the United States was (again) shocked by the deadly Columbine shooting, perpetrated not by the classic “superpredator” stereotype, but instead by white teens in a suburban high school, a trend that would only continue into the future, reflecting the concerns Strasser alluded to in his introduction to Give a Boy a Gun but one year later. Since that time, adolescence has continued to be in the legal crosshairs. With the 1980s crime wave resulting in a significant increase in adolescent arrests, those arrests were met by legal interpretations of adolescents that increasingly placed them in the sphere of adults. Tried outside the parens patriae protections of the juvenile court system, adolescents were not only facing adult courts and adult jails and prisons, but also the application of adult sentencing norms, including the death penalty and life without parole.37 It was not until 2004 that neuroscience offered a scientific explanation for what parents and teachers already knew: that while much of the adolescent brain developed in the teens, important parts—impacted by peer pressure and related to risk taking—continued to develop well into their mid-twenties, debunking the belief that adolescents were fully formed adults by eighteen, and resulting in shifts to judicial tactics beginning in 2005.38 Since then, there has been a lengthy decline in juvenile crime, arrests, and imprisonment, as well as efforts by the courts to roll back the extent to which significant adult punishments could be levied on adolescent actions. Despite this phenomenon, a recent spate of judicial opinions reflecting little consideration or concern for the disparate impact on adolescents have potentially significant consequences. For example, Jones v. Mississippi (2021)39 effectively overturned precedent that adolescents could not be given certain adult sentences including life or life without parole without

Because What You Don’t Know Can Kill You

85

a finding of “permanent incorrigibility.” Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org. (2022)40 repealed the right to abortion—already severely limited for adolescents in some states—with numerous states enacting “trigger laws” effectively criminalizing the procedure, even when it’s the result of rape or incest, even when the mother is a minor, and even when the mother’s health is at risk. Remarkably, NY State Rifle & Pistol Assn. v. Bruen (2022)41 expanded gun carry rights, despite record numbers of school and mass shootings. The point, of course, is that adolescence has been interpreted as a legal status in many ways akin to adulthood, putting adolescents in the unenviable position of being subject to laws directly impacting them without having a say in them, education about them, or the space to contest them. Within our highly legalistic cultural context, the risk of accidentally stepping on a legal landmine is simply too significant, and the results—from life in prison to being forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy—are too severe. Adolescent legal culture works to place law on the adolescent map, building awareness of relevant laws and individual rights under those laws, warning of the risks associated with potential legal violations, advising how to handle interactions with legal actors, educating about legal terminology and situations, and pointing out where laws and cultural norms remain in contradiction. THE LEGAL IN YA LIT TODAY: REIMAGINING THE BILDUNGSROMAN FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY Contemporary YA Lit varies significantly from the books for teenagers prior to the recognition of Walter Dean Myers’s Monster with the first Printz Award; in fact, YA Lit has since become a space as controversial as the young people for which it is written. Lauded for its relatability—finally heeding Hinton’s call, forty-some years later—the genre as a whole has been praised as offering a doorway into difficult conversations and topics, into situations both real and painful, its empathy-building elements valued as tools to help readers see the import of “understanding not only through our head but also through our heart,”42 encouraging reader engagement with perspectives and experiences beyond the parameters of what they know.43 To accomplish this difficult task, the books offer “windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors” into the personal responses of a character contextualized within broader social, legal, and political contexts, thus also providing necessary bridges and escape hatches into conversations, situations, content, and even communities readers want to explore. The import of this extracurricular education is essential; as Harrison notes, “everything depends on the culturally variegated processes by which

86

Jamie M. Fine

[adolescents] learn what it means to become adults and assume responsibility for the world they were born into, which amounts to saying that everything depends on their education.”44 Picking up where school and home education often leave off, the books serve an important function, bridging an educative hole by incorporating law and legal themes, language, actors, situations, and spaces; addressing the ongoing legal scrutiny adolescents face; diving into legalistic conversations and situations that can arise in adolescent life; and incorporating and questioning the legal behaviors, choices, and norms that both comprise and impact the adolescent lived experience. Indeed, law is such an essential part of American culture, the books present a compelling argument for reimagining the classic Bildungsroman. Rather than focusing solely on the independent psychological, moral, or spiritual growth of its central characters, contemporary YA Lit posits that coming of age in the twenty-first century actually arises in the protagonist’s legalistic growth; specifically, in navigating a highly legalistic culture, in educating themselves and—by extension–the readers about the law as well as legal gray areas surrounding it, many contemporary YA Lit protagonists evoke questions regarding the fair application of law and injustices associated with these points, and they may even help connect readers with relevant social justice initiatives along the way. Ultimately, by focusing on laws and legal situations that directly impact today’s adolescents—most often criminal in nature, though by no means exclusively—the texts explore the legal points that adolescents must be aware of, both to survive the adult body politic and its vast legal apparatus, but also to function as the change-makers adolescents are both feared and understood to be. WHO’S AFRAID OF A BIG, BAD BOOK? Over the last decade or so, two primary challenges have arisen in relation to YA Lit—both over the books’ content. While these critiques have not impacted the popularity of the literature, they do highlight the ongoing cultural debate about the location of the adolescent in the body politic. While “the quest to protect the imagined innocence of the young and inexperienced” continues to inform adult concerns about what knowledge adolescents should have access to, it’s important to remember that “young people live in and read about—as we adults also did—a decidedly complex world where sex, violence, intolerance, and profanity are a reality.”45 The first challenge has arisen in the form of critical reviews of the books’ content, particularly in relation to its relevance to the average reader and the general “darkness” of the books. While Hinton and critics of yesteryear called for literature more realistically aligned with the adolescent experience of the

Because What You Don’t Know Can Kill You

87

times, the desire by adults to shield rather than to inform continues to rage through YA Lit debates.46 In 2011, Gurdon famously questioned the books’ literary “darkness,” bemoaning the authors’ inclusion of “profanity” and “pathologies” that, she argued, surfaced questions of “purity v. despoliation, virtue v. smut.”47 The concern arose from her sense that the books exposed young readers to experiences the author deemed too disturbingly outside the realm of normal. In learning that YA Lit addresses gangs, domestic violence, and sexual abuse, another critic picked up this chorus in 2018, wondering, “[w]hile no one would argue that American life in the 21st century is flawless [. . .] isn’t it possible for educators and their close allies in the social justice set to look out across the vastness of contemporary life and see something other than darkness and depravity?”48 With nary an acknowledgment of varied lived experiences, the author only further questioned why educators insist on exposing students to “an unsavory worldview, portraying life in terms of its anomalies and unorthodoxies, as if there’s something wrong with you if there’s nothing wrong with you.”49 Of course, what may constitute “anomalies and unorthodoxies” or overly “dark” material from one (adult) perspective does not make it universally so. It’s hard to imagine, for example, that “the vast majority of students” do not experience, witness, or themselves engage in bullying, sexual abuse, or racist behaviors, which the critics reference as outside the realm of average adolescence. In fact, upon review, the numbers are quite concerning: almost 60 percent of American adolescents report being cyberbullied,50 and over 20 percent report being bullied generally.51 Almost 30 percent of teens have been sexually abused at some point in their childhood,52 and 36 percent of American adolescents report being subjected to racism53—a particularly poignant finding in light of research showing that 83 percent of teens acknowledge racism as a widespread, systemic problem they would like to discuss.54 Clearly, the issue seems far less about the commonality of these experiences and far more about the willful belief that these types of events remain outside the realm of adolescent life. The second challenge to YA Lit has arisen in the form of politically induced book bans. Beginning in 2021, in a move since followed by thirty-two states,55 a Texas politician kicked off a trend of banning books from school classrooms and libraries that he deemed of “inappropriate” speech, making students “uncomfortable.”56 With a list of over eight hundred titles determined to be “pornographic” or hawking critical race theory content, the politician effectively decided for students (and parents) what was “inappropriate” by demanding their removal.57 While youth are generally considered “more deeply influenced by literature than adults,” and adolescents specifically believed to be “particularly impressionable to [it],”58 the issue seems far less about the impact on readers as much as a turn toward politicizing

88

Jamie M. Fine

YA Lit. It’s worth noting that the books on this list—comprised largely of YA Lit—address such discomfort-inducing topics as race, sex, reproduction, and sexual identity (and thus those most likely to have been written by and about persons of color, sexually diverse individuals, and feminist-focused and female-identifying persons), thus underscoring for students just who has the right to speak about what lived experiences in the American body politic and just whose discomfort is considered actionable.59 In brief recap, according to these critics, profanity, race, sexual identity, sex generally, pregnancy, sexuality, racism, bullying, drug use, physical abuse, mental health concerns, gangs, domestic violence, and “pathologies” are all topics outside the realm of what is “appropriate” for adolescent readers. Yet, it requires little effort to see how—in books designed to connect readers not just to “issues” generally, but to larger cultural structures including law—it is precisely these topics where the adolescent and the law are inclined to overlap. THE SPAN OF LAW THROUGH YA LIT Law arises in a variety of ways within YA Lit books, ranging from legal themes to the incorporation of legal language, case precedent, and the incorporation of legal actors, spaces, and situations. As noted earlier in this chapter, American culture is legal in nature; as such, legality is virtually omnipresent. The difference between contemporary YA Lit and that of yesteryear hinges in large part on its awareness of and attunement to the inherently legal in what may have previously been addressed exclusively as the personal or domestic. How law arises in the context of each book varies significantly. While this article cannot cover every book addressing law or even every means through which law arises, the following examples examine the sheer scope of how contemporary YA texts do not focus on the “dark,” “uncomfortable,” or “inappropriate” simply because they can, but instead to connect adolescent readers with law. On the lighter end, one might simply consider the titles of recent releases. Tiffany Jackson’s Allegedly,60 Abigail Karel’s EyeWitness,61 Kelly Gilbert’s Conviction,62 Bettina Restrepo’s Illegal,63 and Camryn Garrett’s Off the Record64 set the titular tone, incorporating legal words or phrases. For example, while Conviction focuses far less on a legal conviction than on the conviction of religious faith, both are interwoven. Jackson’s Allegedly does explore the narrator’s criminality in committing a murder, but it challenges the reader to identify what evidence is true and what is simply alleged, or evidence stated as fact but without proof. Restrepo’s Illegal calls into question both the status and act of persons entering America without legal documentation or citizenship. Garrett’s Off the Record references a phrase signifying

Because What You Don’t Know Can Kill You

89

unofficial—or unpublishable—commentary from a witness or interviewee, in both the context of a reporter as well as in a legal proceeding. Focusing on Josie’s work developing an exposé on sexual manipulation in Hollywood, it is Josie’s record that determines whether there will be a legal record, or legal justice for any of the victim-survivors in Off the Record. Beyond titular references, some of the best-selling books of the last few years are so because of their legally infused narratives, law-adjacent topics, and “social justice” themes. Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give (“THUG”)65 is one of many exploring interracial police-community tensions and the role of bias in applying law, particularly at the intersection of race, youth, and class—a point made clearly following the police shooting of protagonist Star’s best friend at a traffic stop. Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely’s All American Boys,66 Nic Stone’s Dear Martin,67 and Mark Oshiro’s Anger Is a Gift68 also explore the complications at the intersection of race, bias, and police violence, asking readers to examine how they might engage with police in a similar situation, to question the justice in the situation, and to explore the various resolutions the protagonists reach. Jennifer Mathieu’s Moxie69 depicts what rampant (and illegal) sexual harassment, assault, and toxic masculinity look like in schools today, as well as the illegality of adult complicity. Hendrik and Caplan’s Unpregnant70 follows the protagonist’s efforts to acquire an abortion (currently a crime in much of the United States),71 for which she must cross state lines (under scrutiny—though not illegal—in light of the 2022 Dobbs ruling),72 following her boyfriend’s birth control tampering, which is not illegal. Brittany Morris’s Slay73 explores the legality of the protagonist’s popular online game—created exclusively for players of color—under the Equal Protection Clause, while also questioning whether she holds legal or emotional liability following the murder of one of the game’s players. In each of these books, law is not the primary theme. Instead, the protagonist’s personal growth and efforts to understand and face down legal (and personal) challenges independently suggest a legal coming of age—a twenty-first-century twist on the traditional. In this way, despite not being central to the story, law remains nonetheless an essential part of it, a piece of the protagonist’s lived experience, and key to their individual growth. While the use of a legal word or theme is common across the genre, some YA Lit also works to capture law in more depth—specifically, through the incorporation of legalistic language and policies. For example, Meg Medina’s Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass provides important exposure to the interplay between law, policy, and procedure in a high school setting. Here, Piddy Sanchez faces violent bullying at her New York City public school, and following a brutal physical assault off school property, her friend uses the school’s anonymous bullying reporting system to trigger their “Speak Up/ Stand Out” anti-bullying policy, intended to create a “Bully Free Zone.”74 The

90

Jamie M. Fine

policy places the school under the umbrella of “Zero Tolerance,” a phrase more familiar to the public following the book’s 2013 publication, as all fifty-one states subsequently incorporated their own anti-bullying laws as of May 2015. Piddy’s (fictional) school’s process closely aligns with that articulated in the goals of New York’s Anti-Bullying Law—the “Dignity for All Students Act”—notably passed two years before the book’s publication, in 2011. Readers experience Piddy’s intervention along with her: explaining to the counselor and school administrator what happened, her mediated confrontation with Yaqui, and the sharing of evidence. While Yaqui denies any wrongdoing, Piddy plays the video of her own assault, which Yaqui’s friend had recorded and uploaded online.75 The law itself is not mentioned directly in the text, yet the school’s policy—mirroring the law’s language—makes clear that bullying, long tolerated by schools as part of school culture, violates the law-based policy, crossing not only a school rule, but a legal line today. While Yaqui’s actions would also have certainly constituted assault—as Piddy’s aunt points out—for Yaqui to be expelled, Piddy would have to “press charges,” filing a police report and “creat[ing] a record that [could] be used in court.”76 Faced with the language of the school’s policy and weighing Piddy’s options, the reader lives vicariously through Piddy’s (and, to some extent, Yaqui’s) ordeal, experiencing from the safe distance of the page what such a policy entails and the options available to those impacted by it, as well as driving home the point that such violence is intolerable. Similarly, narrative adherence to incorporating and contextualizing legal language and processes arises transparently in The Mockingbirds (2010), here in the context of an underground student group that “hears” matters of “injustice” from their peers. Formed as a challenge to the student body attitude that “the adults don’t believe we can be bad” and mindset that “we’re above the law, [and] that’s why we came here”77 as a fair means of meting out justice in the face of administrative inaction, the Mockingbirds effectively are the law. They are a select group of students that decides which grievances to take on, and their decisions are final and binding. In order to maintain their revered position in the school, the group follows an officious set of steps between the “filing” of a claim and the process of a trial, all the while incorporating detailed procedures ranging from the performances of “prosecuting” and “defense” attorney, witness questioning, case building, opening and closing statements, and engaging evidentiary rules and court decorum manners for the “attorneys” to follow. For Alex, whose rape is brought to the title-sake group for review, particularly in light of her discomfort reporting the event to the police, the Mockingbirds represent a shot at justice. The result is a narrative tracking what is—and is not—relevant in deciding a case of sexual violence: from the language used in the group’s definition of the violation (mirroring in function statutory definitions of crime, articulating the offense

Because What You Don’t Know Can Kill You

91

and informing the “attorneys” what evidence is relevant for collection) to the testimony of the parties. The takeaway is not only an introduction to courtroom-style procedures and language, but also exposure to gendered rape myths, the application of law to case facts, information about reporting sexual violence, and the import of support for victim-survivors. Exposure to legal actors and spaces—depicting how to engage (and not), how to find them (if you want to), and what they’re supposed to do—is a particularly powerful trend in YA Lit. While Whitney and Medina’s works outline pseudo-legal experiences in student courts and school administration-run mediations in the students’ pursuit of justice, Myers’s Monster brings the reader into the criminal court system, incorporating attorneys, judge, jury, and even the court stenographer and bailiff—most clearly “seen” in the graphic narrative edition. Here, through Steve’s eyes, the book provides a window into Steve’s engagement with these actors, witnessing both their humanity and, of course, (inescapably) their biases. For example, the bailiff’s description of his case to the stenographer as “a motion case,” as in “they go through the motions and then they lock them up,”78 suggests both the futility of Steve’s fight as well as the depressing commonality of such cases, and of course, of such defendants. The prosecutor’s reference to him and his actions as those of a “monster”79 emphasize the dehumanization that is part of the process, reinforcing a label Steve can’t shake. Even his own attorney’s advice to him—“[w]hen you’re in court, you sit there. You don’t turn and wave to any of your friends. It’s alright to acknowledge your mother”80—reeks of routine, a reminder that he is no individual in this context, only a number, a thing, and a criminal. Despite this, the instructions offered Steve are relevant—and for a juvenile reading the book, lacking experience with court systems (real or otherwise)—offer an important introduction to the unwritten rules of engaging with legal actors in legal spaces. Though less common, some of the literature incorporates adolescent-specific case law, unpacking its import for young readers today. For example, Walton’s Revenge of the Sluts (2021) follows school news editor Eden and her paper staff as they navigate school-created yellow tape to investigate and report on the school’s “Nudegate” scandal, in which nude photos of seven students were leaked to the school’s listserv. As the student reporters become increasingly critical of the school administration’s minimal efforts to uncover whoever is responsible—and in light of the outsize impact for those whose photos were shared—the principal halts publication of their articles about the scandal. Citing Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier,81 the students—and the readers by extension—learn that schools do, in fact, have the right to limit student speech in sanctioned publications, here, to protect the school’s reputation in the face of inaction.82 In addition to connecting adolescents with relevant case precedent impacting First Amendment speech rights, the text also highlights

92

Jamie M. Fine

the precarity of age-based laws. At eighteen, the students whose photos were leaked are technically considered adults under state law, despite still being high school students. The result is a catch-22: Hazelwood ties the hands of the student reporters to push for administrative action to help the girls, yet state laws do not provide a basis for police to further investigate the situation (in light of the girls’ age). Because the Nudegate photos were all of girls recently turned eighteen, despite being high school seniors, their discreetly shared— though indiscreetly leaked—nude photos are no longer legally protected.83 As the news staff explains in deciding next steps, “Under eighteen turns this into a child pornography case. . . . Over eighteen the police can’t do much. Or they might not decide to do much. . . . I read an article a few months ago about revenge porn, and Massachusetts doesn’t formally prohibit it.”84 Though the perpetrator is ultimately charged with harassment and cyberbullying, the book offers a context for seeing the implications of state and federal law and serves as a nudge to readers to look up laws within their own states. YA Lit does not, however, stop at simply pointing out the shortcomings of the adult-led legal power structure today, nor does it conclude that law—or the systems that inform and are informed by it—are unchangeable. Despite critiques of YA Lit’s “dark” portrayal of the dangers of contemporary America (of which law must be a part), what is not recognized is the astounding optimism with which the books narrate the potentiality for change, specifically by adolescents. YA Lit harnesses the power of adolescent rebellion by providing a close-up, in-depth look at what isn’t working and why—and then depicting the ways young people can effectively challenge, question, and bring attention to injustice to push for necessary change. Most common is the message—whether blatantly offered or otherwise—that there is power in voice and strength in unity. This message is particularly clear in books about sexual violence. Highlighting the power of voice (and perseverance), the news staff in Revenge of the Sluts works together to find and stop the Nudegate perpetrator and successfully circumvent the principal’s Hazelwood publication restrictions by publishing their findings independently on a separate web page, which quickly goes viral.85 In a similar text, Garrett’s Off the Record places teen reporter Josie at the heart of a Harvey Epstein–style sexual assault ring, interviewing Hollywood stars. As the narrative proceeds, and Josie struggles to get witnesses willing to go on the record, the message is clear: alone, there is no article, and the risks are far too great for any one person; in solidarity, the risk of not being believed or else discredited are significantly lessened. When the story lands on the front page of the New York Times, it gains traction, with more women coming forward with similar experiences. Beyond the world of journalism, finding allies and community is essential to the change invoked in tackling toxic masculinity and sexism in Mathieu’s Moxie,

Because What You Don’t Know Can Kill You

93

in ending the power held by rapists and sexual assaulters in Reed’s The Nowhere Girls and Bushnell’s Rules for Being a Girl, and in publicly outing peer rapists in Lawrence’s Trail of Crumbs. It is in numbers that the girls find community, voice, and the necessary safety to share their experiences and challenge the power structures maintaining the system. It is with the aid of friends and supportive family members that Ali reports her rape and Blythe finally acknowledges the terrible sexual hazing rituals the students follow in Something Happened to Ali Greenleaf; it is only with the support of friends, family members, and peers that Alex is empowered to stand up to her rapist in The Mockingbirds. The role of community and strength in numbers also arises in books about police bias and violence, particularly as they intersect with race and class. In Reynolds and Kiely’s All American Boys, the community march and “die in”86 outside police headquarters sends a clear (and well-publicized) message of peaceful protest as a challenge to police brutality, but one that cannot be construed as aggression or provide a reason for police to escalate the situation. Instead, lying on the ground, they read the names of Black men and women killed by police—not fictional names, but those pulled from the pages of newspapers.87 Teamed with the book’s reference to #sayhername, a very real movement to recognize Black girls and women killed by police violence,88 the message is clear: this violence is not fiction, and like Strasser’s note, it bridges the gap between the emotional contextualization of the protagonist’s experiences at the hands of police injustice and the unavoidable truth underlying the fiction. Similarly, community protests led by Star’s lawyer89 (and then by Star herself)90 in Thomas’s The Hate U Give protect individuals outraged at police violence and the courts that protect them. By speaking up publicly on Khalil’s behalf, defending his name in the face of media seeking to pin him as, essentially, a “superpredator” stereotype, Star finds power in her own voice and in the support of her neighbors and friends in challenging what they know is a failed system. That the book ends with a delineation of names—as with All American Boys, names torn from newspaper headlines, bridging fiction and reality, is a reminder that Khalil’s story—like Rashad’s— is not simply fiction.91 In Hammond Reed’s The Black Kids, Ashley faces two police interactions, both of which are impacted directly by the community in which she finds herself. In the first, she is in her wealthy neighborhood, the only black student in her friend group, none of whom see the arrival of a police officer as a direct threat—even as he announces, to their surprise, that “truancy is a crime.”92 Instead, the group flirts with and lies to the officer, treating the invasion into their trespassing as an inconvenient challenge until they are summarily taken back to their school (they were skipping class) and left to

94

Jamie M. Fine

be collected by their parents.93 Although multiple crimes were committed, none of the kids is threatened with jail, there are no pat downs, and certainly no weapons are allowed.94 The second occurs on prom night in the context of 1990s rioting in LaShawn’s far-less-affluent neighborhood. There, Ashley and LaShawn are held at gunpoint and forced to the ground in their formalwear in his yard (despite having shown no signs of running or aggression), without having committed any crime. They are instead accused of “breaking into” LaShawn’s own home.95 It isn’t until LaShawn’s elderly neighbors— his community—confirm that he lives there, questioning and challenging the officer’s actions, that the two are finally given permission to stand up and leave.96 The message in each encounter is clear: together, there is strength in numbers, power in protest, and hope for change. While critics of YA Lit are correct in that not every young person will experience all the legally precarious situations that arise within the genre, many will. Furthermore, for those who don’t, the understanding of how laws, their application, and the biases baked into the legal system do directly impact them—whether they know about them or not—is a necessary tool for readers growing into a constantly evolving body politic. While this survey cannot include all of the laws YA Lit broaches, or even all the ways that laws surface in the books, it provides a snapshot—a “window,” as it were—into the genre’s engagement of adolescent legal culture, providing a space for adolescent readers to learn about law and the vast legal structure that is today as much a part of adolescents’ lives as it is that of their adult counterparts. CONCLUSION Laws are constantly evolving and changing. Despite knowing changes that could directly benefit adolescents, bafflingly, we are choosing to either avoid legislation on contentious issues or else passing legislation resulting in greater harm to young people, leaving them at best underprepared for the body politic as it currently is, and at worst, putting their lives in danger on a daily basis. Whether the concern is age restrictions limiting gun purchases, access to mental health care, family planning and reproductive care—including birth control and abortion—or whether the concern is the tension between age restrictions and brain development, law has a direct and potentially lifelong impact on American adolescents today. Yet, this impact is minimized, trivialized by the messaging that young people will simply figure it out. While we continue as a nation to invite arguments that conclude with the need to shelter adolescents from “adult” content—including law and legally adjacent topics—the reality is that twenty-first-century technology has

Because What You Don’t Know Can Kill You

95

already ushered in some of this knowledge. Perhaps not all the details, certainly not the laws surrounding the subject matter, and maybe (for now) the picture is still fuzzy, but the time has come to stop risking the well-being of the next generation and instead focus on ways to provide effective support— both to inform and to protect. Enmeshed in a legal culture that both informs and frames American life, now is the time to ensure that these soon-to-be adults have basic legal literacy. For their success and well-being, young adults do not need protection from information; they need protection from the violence accompanying a culture that simultaneously refuses to educate its youth about the legal structure into which they are aging, and yet expects their comportment and adherence to the law, nonetheless. We must elevate them from the gap spaces that threaten to consume them, or else provide them with the information they need to protect themselves. And ideally, this should start before it’s an emergency. To this end, YA Lit has stepped into a void, providing a platform through which adult authors can communicate directly with adolescent reading masses in order to do exactly the work that is needed: connecting the dots via adolescent-centric narratives about law, its application and complications, gray areas, biases, and the shortcomings inherent to this system. In this way, the works offer a window into the types of interactions and subsequent questions arising from such legal interactions today. Once upon a yesteryear, these topics might have been considered the province of adults alone: way too dark, complex, or difficult to envision adolescents learning about. Today, the lesson from contemporary YA Lit is very clear: what you don’t know about law can, quite frankly, kill you. NOTES 1. Cara Drinan, The War on Kids (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2018), 8, citing the Supreme Court’s precedential decisions in the early twenty-first century, specifically referring to findings that adolescent “brains have not fully developed, and thus they are less culpable and more amenable to rehabilitation,” resulting in judicial rethinking of how to address the adolescent. See Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005) (no death penalty for youth under eighteen years old at time of crime); Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48 (2010) (no life without parole for non-homicidal crimes); Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012) (expanding Graham to include no life without parole for youth under eighteen years old at time of crime); and Montgomery v. Louisiana, 577 U.S. ___ (2016) (expanding the Miller court’s decision retroactively). But see also Jones v. Mississippi, 593 U.S. ___ (2021) (overruling Graham and Miller’s precedent and finding that the presiding judge need not refrain from sentences involving life or life without parole for youth under eighteen years old).

96

Jamie M. Fine

2. Michael Cart, Young Adult Literature: From Romance to Reality (Chicago: Neal-Schuman, 2016), 28–29. 3. Robert Harrison, Juvenescence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 31. 4. S. E. Hinton, “Teen-agers Are for Real.” New York Times Book Review, Aug. 27, 1965. 5. Susan Silbey, “Making a Place for Cultural Analyses of Law.” Law and Social Inquiry 17, no. 1 (1992): 41, https:​//​www​.jstor​.org​/stable​/828638. 6. Milner Ball, “Law Natural: Its Family of Metaphors and Theology.” Journal of Law and Religion 3, no. 1 (1985): 155, doi: 10.2307/1051351. 7. Naomi Mezey, “Law as Culture.” The Yale Journal of Law & Humanities 13 (2001): 46, https:​//​scholarship​.law​.georgetown​.edu​/facpub​/317. 8. David Engel, “How Does Law Matter in the Constitution of Legal Consciousness?” in How Does Law Matter? ed. B.Garth and Austin Sarat (Evanston, IL: Northwest Univ. Press, 1998), 125. 9. Engel, “How Does Law Matter,” 126. 10. Susan Silbey, “After Legal Consciousness,” Annual Review of Law and Social Sciences 1 (2005): 347, https:​//​web​.mit​.edu​/​~ssilbey​/www​/pdf​/after​_legal​.pdf. 11. Silbey, 337. 12. Adam Liptak, “U.S. Prison Population Dwarfs that of Other Nations,” New York Times, last modified Apr. 23, 2008. https:​//​www​.nytimes​.com​/2008​/04​/23​/world​ /americas​/23iht​-23prison​.12253738​.html. 13. Wendy Sawyer and Peter Wagner, “Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2022,” Prison Policy Initiative, last modified Mar. 14, 2022, https:​//​www​.prisonpolicy​.org​/ reports​/pie2022​.html. 14. “Americans with Criminal Records,” TheSentencingProject,org, last modified Aug. 2022, accessed Dec. 1, 2022, https:​//​www​.sentencingproject​.org​/app​/uploads​ /2022​/08​/Americans​-with​-Criminal​-Records​-Poverty​-and​-Opportunity​-Profile​.pdf. 15. Jake Horowitz, “1 in 55 U.S. Adults Is on Probation or Parole,” Pew Trusts, last modified Oct. 31, 2018, https:​//​www​.pewtrusts​.org​/en​/research​-and​-analysis​/articles​ /2018​/10​/31​/1​-in​-55​-us​-adults​-is​-on​-probation​-or​-parole. 16. Also see Ann Carson, “Prisoners 2020–Statistical Tables,” U.S. Department of Justice, last modified Dec. 21, 2021, accessed Nov. 10, 2022, https:​//​bjs​.ojp​.gov​ /content​/pub​/pdf​/p20st​.pdf, noting that the COVID pandemic resulted in the lowest numbers of imprisoned persons since the early 1990s. 17. “Americans with Criminal Records.” 18. Drinan, War on Kids, 5. 19. Robert Cover, “Violence and the Law,” Narrative, Voice, and the Law: The Essays of Robert Cover, ed. Martha Minow, Michael Ryan, Austin Sarat (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1995), 203. 20. Roberto Esposito, Immunitas (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2011), 29. 21. Imani Perry, “The Flowers Are Vexed,” in New Directions in Law and Literature, ed. Elizabeth Anker and Bernadette Meyler (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2017), 256. 22. Perry, 256.

Because What You Don’t Know Can Kill You

97

23. James Densley, David Reidman, and Jillian Peterson, “School Shootings Are Already at a Record in 2022–With Months Still to Go,” Conversation, last modified Oct. 25, 2022, https:​//​theconversation​.com​/school​-shootings​-are​-already​-at​-a​-record​ -in​-2022​-with​-months​-still​-to​-go​-192494. 24. Jennifer Wilmot, Valentina Migliarini, and Subini Ancy Annamma, “Policy as Punishment and Distraction: The Double Helix of Racialized Sexual Harassment of Black Girls,” Educational Policy 35, no. 2 (2020): 9–10, 16–17, doi: 10.1177/0895904820984467. 25. Wilmot, “Policy as Punishment,” 9–10, 12, 16–17. 26. Drinan, War on Kids, at 90. 27. Jones v. Mississippi, 593 U.S. at 21–22. 28. Cart, Young Adult, 5–8. 29. Cart, 68–71. 30. Elizabeth Trejos-Castillo et al., “Immigrant Youth Influences on U.S. Youth Culture,” in Advances in Sociology Research, ed. Jared Jaworski (New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2021), 2. 31. Phillip Rice, The Adolescent: Development, Relationships, and Culture (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1995), 405. 32. Cart, Young Adult, 6–7. 33. Barbara Fedders, “The End of School Policing,” California Law Review 109 (2021): 1454, https:​//​scholarship​.law​.unc​.edu​/faculty​_publications​/557/. The idea of a “super predator” was largely applied to urban youth of color, who were described as “radically impulsive, brutally remorseless youngsters . . . who murder, assault, rape, rob, burglarize, deal deadly drugs, join gun-toting gangs, and create serious communal disorders. They do not fear the stigma of arrest, the pains of imprisonment, or the pangs of conscience.” This ideology spurred from Hillary Clinton’s famous conclusion that such adolescents have “no conscience, no empathy,” in pushing to the side the question of responsibility in favor of swift legal action to—like animals—“bring them to heel”—comments she came to regret in the face of a failed presidential bid. See Anne Gearan and Abby Phillip, “Clinton Regrets 1996 Remark on ‘Super predators’ After Encounter with Activist,” Washington Post, Feb. 25, 2016, https:​//​www​ .washingtonpost​.com​/news​/post​-politics​/wp​/2016​/02​/25​/clinton​-heckled​-by​-black​ -lives​-matter​-activist/; Nell Bernstein, Burning Down the House: The End of Juvenile Prison (New York: The New Press, 2014), 71–80. 34. Jeffrey Butts and Jeremy Travis, “The Rise and Fall of American Youth Violence: 1980–2000,” Urban Institute Justice Policy Center, last modified 2002, https:​ //​www​.urban​.org​/sites​/default​/files​/publication​/60381​/410437​-The​-Rise​-and​-Fall​-of​ -American​-Youth​-Violence​.PDF. 35. OJJDP, “Arrests of Youth Declined Through 2020,” Statistical Briefing Book, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, last modified July 2022, https:​ //​www​.ojjdp​.gov​/ojstatbb​/snapshots​/DataSnapshot​_UCR2020​.pdf. 36. Carroll Bogert and Lynnell Hancock, “Super-predators,” The Marshall Project, last modified Nov. 20, 2020, accessed Nov. 14, 2022, https:​//​www​.themarshallproject​ .org​/2020​/11​/20​/superpredator​-the​-media​-myth​-that​-demonized​-a​-generation​-of​ -black​-youth.

98

Jamie M. Fine

37. Bogert and Hancock, “Super Predators.” 38. Paul Raeburn, “Too Immature for the Death Penalty?” New York Times Magazine, Oct. 17, 2004, https:​//​www​.nytimes​.com​/2004​/10​/17​/magazine​/too​-immature​ -for​-the​-death​-penalty​.html. See also the line of Supreme Court cases infra note i. 39. Jones v. Mississippi, 593 U.S. ___ (2021). 40. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org., 597 U.S. __ (2022). 41. NY State Rifle & Pistol Assn. v. Bruen, 597 U.S __ (2022). 42. Cart, “Young Adult,” 159. 43. Cart, 159. 44. Harrison, Juvenescence, 129. 45. Alyssa Niccolini, “Precocious Knowledge: Using Banned Books to Engage a Youth Lens,” English Journal 104, no. 3 (Jan. 2015): 27. 46. Niccolini, “Precocious,” 24. 47. Meghan Cox Gurdon, “Darkness too Visible: Contemporary Fiction for Teens Is Rife with Explicit Abuse, Violence and Depravity,” Wall Street Journal, last modified June 4, 2011, https:​//​www​.wsj​.com​/articles​/SB100014240527023036574045763 57622592697038. 48. Steve Salerno, “The Unbearable Darkness of Young Adult Literature,” Wall Street Journal, last modified Aug. 28, 2018, https:​//​www​.wsj​.com​/articles​/the​ -unbearable​-darkness​-of​-young​-adult​-literature​-1535495594. 49. Salerno, “Unbearable Darkness.” 50. Monica Anderson, “A Majority of Teens Have Experienced Some Form of Cyberbullying,” Pew Research Center, last modified Sept. 27, 2018, https:​//​www​ .pewresearch​.org​/internet​/2018​/09​/27​/a​-majority​-of​-teens​-have​-experienced​-some​ -form​-of​-cyberbullying/. 51. Drew Desilver, “The Concerns and Challenges of Being a U.S. Teen: What the Data Show,” Pew Research Center, last modified Feb. 26, 2019, accessed Nov. 22, 2022, https:​//​www​.pewresearch​.org​/fact​-tank​/2019​/02​/26​/the​-concerns​-and​ -challenges​-of​-being​-a​-u​-s​-teen​-what​-the​-data​-show/. 52. “Child Sexual Abuse Statistics,” National Center for Victims of Crime, accessed Nov. 20, 2022, https:​//​victimsofcrime​.org​/child​-sexual​-abuse​-statistics/. 53. Jonetta Mpofu et al., “Perceived Racism and Demographic, Mental Health, and Behavioral Characteristics Among High School Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic—Adolescent Behaviors and Experiences Survey, January–June 2021,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 71, no. 3 (Apr. 1, 2022): 24, www​.cdc​.gov​/mmwr​ /volumes​/71​/su​/pdfs​/su7103a4​-H​.pdf. 54. National 4H Council, “New Survey Finds that 83% of Teens Acknowledge That Systemic Racism Is an Issue and They Want to Be Included in the National Conversation About Social Justice,” 4-H.org, last modified Aug. 13, 2020, https:​//​4​-h​.org​/about​ /blog​/new​-survey​-finds​-that​-83​-percent​-of​-teens​-acknowledge​-that​-systemic​-racism​ -is​-an​-issue​-and​-they​-want​-to​-be​-included​-in​-the​-national​-conversation​-around​ -social​-justice/. 55. Brian Lopez, “Texas Has Banned More Books Than Any Other State, New Report Shows,” Texas Tribune, last modified Sept. 19, 2022, https:​//​www​.texastribune​ .org​/2022​/09​/19​/texas​-book​-bans/.

Because What You Don’t Know Can Kill You

99

56. Marilisa Jimenez Garcia, “Book Bans Are Targeting the History of Oppression,” Atlantic, last modified Feb. 2, 2022, https:​//​www​.theatlantic​.com​/family​/ archive​/2022​/02​/maus​-book​-ban​-tennessee​-art​-spiegelman​/621453/ 57. Lopez, “Texas Has Banned More Books Than Any Other State.” 58. Niccolini, “Precocious,” 24. 59. Matt Krause, “Letter to Lily Laux,” Texas Education Agency, Deputy Commissioner School Programs, last modified Oct. 25, 2021, https:​//​static​.texastribune​ .org ​ / media ​ / files ​ / 965725d7f01b8a25ca44b6fde2f5519b ​ / krauseletter​. pdf ​ ? ​ _ ga ​ = 2​ .167958177​.1655224844​.1635425114​-1180900626​.1635425114; Jonathan Friedman and Nadine Johnson, “Banned in the U.S.A: The Growing Movement to Censor Books in Schools,” PEN America 100, accessed Dec. 1, 2022, https:​//​pen​.org​/report​/ banned​-usa​-growing​-movement​-to​-censor​-books​-in​-schools/. 60. Tiffany Jackson, Allegedly (New York: Harper Collins, 2017). 61. Abigail Karel, Eye Witness (Las Vegas, NV, 2022). 62. Kelly Loy Gilbert, Conviction (New York: Hyperion, 2015). 63. Bettina Restrepo, Illegal (New York, NY: Katherine Tegen Books, 2011). 64. Camryn Garrett, Off the Record (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2021). 65. Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give (London: Walker Books, 2017). 66. Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely, All American Boys (New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2015). 67. Nic Stone, Dear Martin (New York: Ember, 2017). 68. Mark Oshiro, Anger Is a Gift (New York: Tor Teen, 2018). 69. Jennifer Mathieu, Moxie (Edinburgh: Hodder Children’s Books, 2017). 70. Jenni Hendriks and Ted Caplan, Unpregnant (New York: Harperteen, 2019). 71. See Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 597 U.S. __ (2022). 72. For a detailed analysis of the post-Dobbs risks for adolescent mothers, see Sarah Varney, “Why Childbirth Is Dangerous for so Many Young Teens,” NPR.com, Oct. 7, 2022, https:​//​www​.npr​.org​/sections​/health​-shots​/2022​/10​/07​/1127095622​/why​ -abortion​-laws​-increase​-teen​-childbirth​-dangers. 73. Brittany Morris, Slay (New York: Simon Pulse, 2019). 74. Meg Medina, Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass (Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press, 2013), 234. 75. Medina, 235–40. 76. Medina, 252. 77. Daisy Whitney, The Mockingbirds (New York: Little Brown & Co, 2010), 14–15. 78. Walter Dean Myers, Guy Sims, and Dyaud Anyabwile, Monster: A Graphic Novel (New York: Amistad, 2015), 9. 79. Myers, 11. 80. Myers, 6. 81. Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. 260 (1988). 82. Natalie Walton, Revenge of the Sluts (Toronto: Wattpad Books, 2021), 69–70. 83. Walton, 29. 84. Walton, 29. Notably, the narrative later clarifies differences in state law, as one characte—–confronting the perpetrator of the scandal—explains: “You know,

100

Jamie M. Fine

sending out pictures of people here might not be illegal, but it sure is in other states.” Walton, 293. 85. Walton, 298–99. 86. The book defines this as “basically when you lie down on the ground as a form of protest. Sort of like how the sit-ins were back in the day. But when you lie down, they can’t push you over, they can’t do anything to you, really, because you are already on the ground.” Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely, All American Boys (New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2015), 282. 87. Reynolds & Kiely, 308. 88. Reynolds & Kiely, 289; see also https:​//​www​.aapf​.org​/sayhername. 89. Thomas, THUG, 403. 90. Thomas, 406–07. 91. Thomas, 437. 92. Christina Hammonds Reed, The Black Kids (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020), 26. 93. Reed, 25–26. 94. Reed, 25–26, 49. 95. Reed, 255–59. 96. Reed, 259.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Anderson, Monica. “A Majority of Teens Have Faced Some Form of Cyberbullying.” Pew Research Center. Last modified Sept. 27, 2018, accessed October 30, 2022. https:​//​www​.pewresearch​.org​/internet​/2018​/09​/27​/a​-majority​-of​-teens​-have​ -experienced​-some​-form​-of​-cyberbullying/. Ball, Milner. “Law Natural: Its Family of Metaphors and Theology.” Journal of Law and Religion 3, no. 1 (1985): 140–65. doi: 10.2307/1051351. Barbara, Giussy, Valentina Albertini, Veronica Maria Tagi, Lidia Maggioni, Maria Carlotta Gorio, Cristina Cattaneo, Fabio Parazzini, Elena Ricci, Laura Buggio, and Alessandra Kustermann. “Characteristics of Sexual Violence Against Adolescent Girls: A 10 Years’ Retrospective Study of 731 Sexually Abused Adolescents.” International Journal of Women’s Health 14 (Mar. 2022): 311–21. doi: 10.2147/ IJWH.S343935. Bernstein, Nell. Burning Down the House: The End of Juvenile Prison. New York, NY: The New Press, 2014. Bishop, Rudine. “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors.” Perspectives: Choosing and Using Books in the Classroom 6, no. 3 (Summer 1990). https:​ //​scenicregional​.org​/wp​-content​/uploads​/2017​/08​/Mirrors​-Windows​-and​-Sliding​ -Glass​-Doors​.pdf. Bogert, Carroll, and Lynnell Hancock. “Super-predator.” The Marshall Project, last modified Nov. 20, 2020. https:​//​www​.themarshallproject​.org​/2020​/11​/20​/ superpredator​-the​-media​-myth​-that​-demonized​-a​-generation​-of​-black​-youth.

Because What You Don’t Know Can Kill You

101

Bushnell, Candace, and Katie Cotugno. Rules for Being a Girl. New York: Balzar + Bray, 2020. Butts, Jeffrey, and Jeremy Travis. “The Rise and Fall of American Youth Violence: 1980–2000.” Urban Institute Justice Policy Center. Last modified 2002. https:​//​www​.urban​.org​/sites​/default​/files​/publication​/60381​/410437​-The​ -Rise​-and​-Fall​-of​-American​-Youth​-Violence​.PDF. Carson, E. Ann. “Prisoners 2020—Statistical Tables.” U.S. Dept. of Justice. Last modified Dec. 21, 2021. https:​//​bjs​.ojp​.gov​/content​/pub​/pdf​/p20st​.pdf. Cart, Michael. Young Adult Literature: From Romance to Reality. Chicago, IL: Neal-Schuman, 2016. Cloatre, Emilie, and Martyn Pickersgill. “Sociology of Law and Science.” Research Handbook on the Sociology of Law. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing Inc., 2020. ElgarOnline E-book. Cover, Robert. “Violence and the Law.” In Narrative, Violence, and the Law: The Essays of Robert Cover, edited by Martha Minow, Michael Ryan, and Austin Sarat, 203–38. Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 1995. Densley, James, David Reidman, and Jillian Peterson. “School Shootings Are Already at a Record in 2022—With Months Still to Go.” The Conversation. Last modified Oct. 25, 2022, accessed Nov. 20, 2022. https:​//​theconversation​.com​/school​ -shootings​-are​-already​-at​-a​-record​-in​-2022​-with​-months​-still​-to​-go​-192494. Desilver, Drew. “The Concerns and Challenges of Being a U.S. Teen: What the Data Show.” Pew Research Center. Last modified Feb. 26, 2019, accessed Nov. 22, 2022. https:​//​www​.pewresearch​.org​/fact​-tank​/2019​/02​/26​/the​-concerns​-and​ -challenges​-of​-being​-a​-u​-s​-teen​-what​-the​-data​-show/. Drinan, Cara. The War on Kids. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2018. Engel, David. “How Does Law Matter in the Constitution of Legal Consciousness?” How Does Law Matter? edited by B. Garth and Austin Sarat, 109–44. Evanston, IL: Northwest University Press, 1998. Esposito, Roberto. Immunitas. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2011. Fedders, Barbara. “The End of School Policing.” California Law Review 109 (2021): 1443, https:​//​scholarship​.law​.unc​.edu​/faculty​_publications​/557/. Freitas, Donna. Consent on Campus: A Manifesto. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Friedman, Jonathan, and Nadine Johnson. “Banned in the U.S.A: The Growing Movement to Censor Books in Schools.” PEN America 100, accessed Dec. 1, 2022, https:​//​pen​.org​/report​/banned​-usa​-growing​-movement​-to​-censor​-books​-in​ -schools/. Garcia, Marilisa Jimenez. “Book Bans Are Targeting the History of Oppression.” Atlantic. Feb. 2, 2022. https:​//​www​.theatlantic​.com​/family​/archive​/2022​/02​/maus​ -book​-ban​-tennessee​-art​-spiegelman​/621453/. Garrett, Camryn. Off the Record. New York: Alfred Knopf, 2021. Gearan, Anne, and Abby Phillip. “Clinton Regrets 1996 Remark on ‘Super predators’ After Encounter with Activist.” Washington Post. Last modified Feb. 25, 2016. https:​//​www​.washingtonpost​.com​/news​/post​-politics​/wp​/2016​/02​/25​/clinton​ -heckled​-by​-black​-lives​-matter​-activist/.

102

Jamie M. Fine

Gilbert, Kelly Loy. Conviction. New York: Hyperion, 2015. Goldfarb, Eva, Lisa Lieberman, Samantha Kwiatkowski, and Paul Santos. “Silence and Censure: A Qualitative Analysis of Young Adults’ Reflections on Communications with Parents Prior to First Sex.” Journal of Family Issues 39, no. 1 (2018): 28– 54. doi: 10.1177/0192513X15593576. Gurdon, Meghan Cox. “Darkness Too Visible: Contemporary Fiction for Teens Is Rife with Explicit Abuse, Violence and Depravity.” Wall Street Journal online. Last modified June 4, 2011. https:​//​www​.wsj​.com​/articles​/SB100014240527023036574 04576357622592697038. Harrison, Robert. Juvenescence. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. Hendriks, Jenni, and Ted Caplan. Unpregnant. New York: Harperteen, 2019. Hinduja, Sameer, and Justin Patchin. “Connecting Adolescent Suicide to the Severity of Bullying and Cyberbullying.” Journal of School Violence 18, no. 3 (Aug. 2018): 1–14. doi: 10.1080/15388220.2018.1492417. Hinton, S.E. “Teen-agers Are for Real.” New York Times Book Review, Aug. 27, 1965. Horowitz, Jake. “1 in 55 U.S. Adults Is on Probation or Parole.” Pew Trusts. Last modified Oct. 31, 2018, accessed Nov. 20, 2022. https:​//​www​.pewtrusts​.org​/ en​/research​-and​-analysis​/articles​/2018​/10​/31​/1​-in​-55​-us​-adults​-is​-on​-probation​-or​ -parole. Jackson, Tiffany. Allegedly. New York: Harper Collins, 2017. Karel, Abigail. Eye Witness. Las Vegas, NV: 2022. Krause, Matt. “Letter to Lily Laux,” Texas Education Agency, Deputy Commissioner School Programs, Oct. 25, 2021. https:​//​static​.texastribune​.org​/media​/files​ /965725d7f01b8a25ca44b6fde2f5519b ​ / krauseletter​ . pdf​ ? ​ _ ga​ = 2​ . 167958177​ .1655224844​.1635425114​-1180900626​.1635425114. Krischer, Hayley. Something Happened to Ali Greenleaf. New York: Razorbill, 2020. Lawrence, Lisa. Trail of Crumbs. Canada: Orca Book Publishers, 2019. Liptak, Adam. “U.S. Prison Population Dwarfs That of Other Nations.” New York Times online. Last modified Apr. 23, 2008. https:​//​www​.nytimes​.com​/2008​/04​/23​/ world​/americas​/23iht​-23prison​.12253738​.html. Lopez, Brian. “Texas Has Banned More Books Than Any Other State, New Report Shows.” Texas Tribune. Last modified Sept. 19, 2022. https:​//​www​.texastribune​ .org​/2022​/09​/19​/texas​-book​-bans/. Mathieu, Jennifer. Moxie. Edinburgh: Hodder Children’s Books, 2017. Medina, Meg. Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press, 2013. Mezey, Naomi. “Law as Culture.” The Yale Journal of Law & Humanities 13 (2001): 35–67. https:​//​scholarship​.law​.georgetown​.edu​/facpub​/317. Morris, Brittney. Slay. New York: Simon Pulse, 2019. Mpofu, Jonetta, Adina Cooper, Carmen Ashley, Sindhura Geda, R. Lee Harding, Michelle Johns, Adiaha Spinks-Franklin, Rashid Njai, David Moysey, and Michael Underwood. “Perceived Racism and Demographic, Mental Health, and Behavioral Characteristics Among High School Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic— Adolescent Behaviors and Experiences Survey, January–June 2021.” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 71, no. 3, U.S. Department of Health and Human

Because What You Don’t Know Can Kill You

103

Services Centers for Disease Control (Apr. 1, 2022): 22–27. www​.cdc​.gov​/mmwr​/ volumes​/71​/su​/pdfs​/su7103a4​-H​.pdf. Myers, Walter Dean, Guy Sims, and Dyaud Anyabwile. Monster: A Graphic Novel. New York: Amistad, 2015. National Center for Victims of Crime. “Child Sexual Abuse Statistics.” Accessed Nov. 20, 2022. https:​//​victimsofcrime​.org​/child​-sexual​-abuse​-statistics/. National 4H Council. “New Survey Finds that 83% of Teens Acknowledge that Systemic Racism Is an Issue and They Want to Be Included in the National Conversation About Social Justice.” Last modified Aug. 13, 2020. https:​//​4​-h​.org​/ about​/blog​/new​-survey​-finds​-that​-83​-percent​-of​-teens​-acknowledge​-that​-systemic​ -racism​-is​-an​-issue​-and​-they​-want​-to​-be​-included​-in​-the​-national​-conversation​ -around​-social​-justice/. Niccolini, Alyssa. “Precocious Knowledge: Using Banned Books to Engage a Youth Lens.” English Journal 104, no. 3 (Jan. 2015): 22–28. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. “Arrests of Youth Declined Through 2020.” Statistical Briefing Book. Last modified July 2022. https:​//​www​ .ojjdp​.gov​/ojstatbb​/snapshots​/DataSnapshot​_UCR2020​.pdf. Oshiro, Mark. Anger Is a Gift. New York: Tor Teen, 2018. Perry, Imani. “The Flowers Are Vexed.” New Directions in Law and Literature, edited by Elizabeth Anker and Bernadette Meyler, 252–63. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2017. Raeburn, Paul. “Too Immature for the Death Penalty?” New York Times Magazine, Oct. 17, 2004. https:​//​www​.nytimes​.com​/2004​/10​/17​/magazine​/too​-immature​-for​ -the​-death​-penalty​.html. Reed, Amy. The Nowhere Girls. New York: Simon Pulse, 2017. Reed, Christina Hammonds. The Black Kids. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020. Reilly, Katie. “Hillary Clinton Apologizes for Super Predator Remark.” Time. Last modified Feb. 25, 2016. https:​//​time​.com​/4238230​/hillary​-clinton​-black​-lives​ -matter​-superpredator/. Restrepo, Bettina. Illegal. New York, NY: Katherine Tegen Books, 2011. Reynolds, Jason, and Brendan Kiely. All American Boys. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2015. Rice, F. Phillip. The Adolescent: Development, Relationships, and Culture. 8th Ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1996. Ruvalcaba, Y., and A. Eaton. “Nonconsensual Pornography Among U.S. Adults: A Sexual Scripts Framework on Victimization, Perpetration, and Health Correlates for Women and Men.” Psychology of Violence 10, no. 1 (2020): 68–78. doi. org/10.1037/vio0000233. Salerno, Steve. “The Unbearable Darkness of Young Adult Literature.” Wall Street Journal. Aug. 28, 2018. https:​//​www​.wsj​.com​/articles​/the​-unbearable​-darkness​-of​ -young​-adult​-literature​-1535495594. Sawyer, Wendy, and Peter Wagner. “Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2022.” Prison Policy Initiative. Mar. 14, 2022. https:​//​www​.prisonpolicy​.org​/reports​/ pie2022​.html.

104

Jamie M. Fine

The Sentencing Project. “Americans with Criminal Records.” Last modified Aug. 2022. https:​//​www​.sentencingproject​.org​/app​/uploads​/2022​/08​/Americans​-with​ -Criminal​-Records​-Poverty​-and​-Opportunity​-Profile​.pdf. Sharratt, Elena. “Intimate Image Abuse in Adults and Under 18’s: A Comparative Analysis of Cases Dealt with by the Revenge Porn Helpline and Professionals Online Safety Helpline.” SWGfl.org. Last modified 2019, 11–12, 31–32. https:​//​ swgfl​.org​.uk​/assets​/documents​/intimate​-image​-abuse​-in​-adults​-and​-under​-18s​.pdf. Silbey, Susan. “Making a Place for Cultural Analyses of Law.” Law and Social Inquiry 17, no. 1 (1992): 39–48. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1111​/j​.1747​-4469​.1992​.tb00928​ .x. ———. “After Legal Consciousness.” Annual Review of Law and Social Sciences 1 (2005): 323–68. doi: 10.1146/annurev.lawsocsci.1.041604.115938. Spitz, David. “Reads Like Teen Spirit.” Time. July 19, 1999. https:​//​content​.time​.com​ /time​/subscriber​/article​/0​,33009​,991531​-1​,00​.html. Stone, Nic. Dear Martin. New York: Ember, 2017. Strasser, Todd. Give a Boy a Gun, 20th Anniversary Edition. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020. Thomas, Angie. The Hate U Give. London: Walker Books, 2017. Trejos-Castillo, Elizabeth, Rula Zaru, Parrie Mashburn, Gabriela Paruola, Ife Raufu, and Rosa Ceniseros. “Immigrant Youth Influences on U.S. Youth Culture.” Advances in Sociology Research, edited by Jared Jaworksi, 1–31. NY: Nova Science Publishers, 2021. Varney, Sarah. “Why Childbirth Is Dangerous for So Many Young Teens.” National Public Radio. Last modified Oct. 7, 2022. https:​//​www​.npr​.org​/sections​/health​-shots​ /2022​/10​/07​/1127095622​/why​-abortion​-laws​-increase​-teen​-childbirth​-dangers. Walton, Natalie. Revenge of the Sluts. Toronto: Wattpad Books, 2021. Whitney, Daisy. The Mockingbirds. New York: Little Brown & Co., 2010. Wilmot, Jennifer, Valentina Migliarini, and Subini Ancy Annamma. “Policy as Punishment and Distraction: The Double Helix of Racialized Sexual Harassment of Black Girls.” Educational Policy 35, no. 2 (2020): 1– 21. doi: 10.1177/0895904820984467. Wojciechowska, Maia. “An End to Nostalgia.” Library Journal 93 (Dec. 1968): 13.

Chapter 5

“These Are the Rooms We’re Not Supposed to Go In . . . But Let’s Go Anyway!” Celebrating the Mobile Child, Embracing Nontraditional Kinship Structures, and Deconstructing Neglect in The Florida Project Joseph V. Giunta

There is a particular moment in the 2017 award-nominated film The Florida Project that encompasses this tale with subtle, yet poignant expressiveness. After celebrating the birthday of her new best friend, Jancey, the previous evening by watching the nightly fireworks display at Disney World from a distant field, Moonee, the six-year-old protagonist of the film, brings Jancey to one of her favorite places to hang out—an uprooted tree in the middle of a nearby pasture. As the pair happily consume the bread and jelly they have received from a local charity organization that delivers essential food items to the residents of the motel in which Moonee and her young mother reside, Moonee explains to Jancey her fondness for the tree they are perched on, noting, “You know why this is my favorite tree? ’Cause it’s tipped over . . . and it’s still growing.” In an interview about the film, writer and director Sean Baker reaffirms the significance of this line of dialogue, stating, “That’s like the tagline of the movie: ‘It’s uprooted, but it’s still growing.’”1 The Florida Project provides unique insight into the daily machinations at the Magic Castle Inn and Suites, a colorful motel just outside of Disney World that is home to a select number of Kissimmee, Florida’s hidden 105

106

Joseph V. Giunta

homeless and otherwise disenfranchised population. Neglected ideologically and materially by local and state governments, this city’s disadvantaged strip of motels, restaurants, and local businesses illuminates the stark inequality present when compared to the multibillion-dollar magical fantasyland only a few miles west. Combined with regular tourist visitors who treat the motel appallingly and its residents like second-class citizens,2 the local Magic Castle community has been actively looked down upon, ignored, and mistreated not only by Floridians, but also by national and international outsiders who take advantage of this motel’s poor public reputation for their own entertainment. Baker’s filmic representation of this underprivileged locale, however, does not fall into the unfortunate patterns of cinema that either fetishize or fantasize these poverty-stricken areas through the lens of childhood.3 The film focalizes the perspective of its young female protagonist, Moonee, as she traverses various landscapes within her local motel community with a rotating group of friends. From hosting spitting contests and exploring abandoned drug dens to hustling wholesale perfume with her mother, Halley, and conning tourists into free ice cream, Moonee is able to utilize these quests to make sense of and find a desirable position within her social world.4 Discussing Colin Ward’s (1978) research around conceptualizations of the urban child, renowned cinema and youth culture scholar Pamela Robertson Wojcik contends, “the city child presents a paradox: while reformers, urban planners, and social workers portray the urban child as poor, unhappy, and deprived, photographs of kids—and I would argue books and films about children—show city kids expressing joy, resourcefulness, and the ability to colonize urban space for their own purposes.”5 The Florida Project does not succumb to the constructions of disadvantaged children from urban planners, reformers, or social workers or the filmic formula of transforming the lives underprivileged youth into fantasy adventures and/or insisting that their inherent “goodness” has the ability to change the world. Rather, the film prioritizes the viewpoint of a child who is able to make her own life a fairy tale, regardless of the resources available to her. Despite her awareness of the uprootedness of her financial and living situations, the transience of her closest friends, and her anomalous, and at times entirely absent, network of care, Moonee is able to grow into a master of her local geography and an active agent within her Magic Castle community. Utilizing the built-in colorful aesthetic compositions of Moonee’s neighborhood, this slice-of-life drama is not a fantasy, but an inside look into a young girl’s ability to transform her strapped reality into a personal playground. Journalist Richard Luscombe (2017), in his exposé of The Florida Project’s actual motel community who call the Magic Castle home, highlights the striking contrast between this locality and a wonderland present only a few miles away. Describing Kissimmee’s hidden homeless who live from paycheck to

“These Are the Rooms We’re Not Supposed to Go In  .  .  . But Let’s Go Anyway!” 107

paycheck, or without steady incomes altogether, he details the disparate displays of financial stability: “those living . . . in cramped and semi-permanent accommodation in cheap motels behind the neon-lit, tourist attraction-laden façade of Highway 192, the pathway to Disney. Most will never be able to afford the price of theme park tickets, far less a helicopter ride above it.”6 By purposefully electing to spotlight this specific geographic space, The Florida Project endeavors to find beauty in Moonee’s everyday existence without sterilizing it for audiences or glossing over the socioeconomic circumstances of her reality. Careful not to glorify or purify their disadvantaged positions, the film blends a particular mix of luxurious visuals with an affective tale of separation between a young girl and her mother. Characteristically not an exploitative, sanitizing depiction of lower-class lives, the movie celebrates and mirrors Moonee’s personal fairy tale–ization of her life by painting itself in the bright pastels that color her world. This intentionality allows spectators to witness both Moonee’s propensity to transform her impoverished circumstances into an exciting, personalized mapping of the local geography and the material inequalities that face this Kissimmee population, avoiding an escapist narrative that typically neglects the systematic issues affecting marginalized communities. By providing a young person’s perspective on the “juxtaposition of living in the direct shadow of Disney World, the self-proclaimed happiest place on earth,”7 The Florida Project is able to translate the systemic inequity present within a local Florida community into a vibrant and gut-wrenching tale of summer exploration, financial hardship, and a celebration of life outside commercialized fantasy. American art historian Anne Higonnet, concluding her monograph on historical characterizations of childhood innocence, remarks, “Art asks us on its own terms to take our children seriously.”8 In the case of The Florida Project, not only are audiences supposed to take into consideration Moonee’s framing of the Magic Castle and her socioeconomically disadvantaged position, but they are also shown the vast inequalities unequivocally elucidated by this community’s proximity to Disney World. By acknowledging the mobility Moonee is granted by both Halley’s various preoccupations and the social, economic, political, and cultural circumstances out of Moonee’s immediate control, a greater understanding of both Moonee and the larger motel collective can be reached. Calling for intersections and simultaneity in Childhood Studies scholars’ research, Afua Twum-Danso Imoh, in her study of the diverse pluralities of childhood in sub-Saharan Africa, makes a crucial rallying cry: “If we are to integrate the different strands within childhood studies effectively, we must start our discussions from the points of convergence rather than those of difference and dissonance.”9 This chapter merges the ideological and material dynamics of the Magic Castle and local Kissimmee community with Sean Baker’s framing of

108

Joseph V. Giunta

Moonee’s typically negatively framed circumstances as her own personal Disney World. In doing so, this work endeavors to make clear the conditions that inextricably link these previously divergent modes of cinematic, socioeconomic, and geographic analysis. Even a “partial understanding,” as Matthews and Limb note in their agenda for children’s geographies, is preferential to not attempting to comprehend the importance of youth’s perspectives, subjectivities, and relationality.10 These authors insist that “with the use of appropriate methodologies geographers should be able to get closer to the taken-for-granted worlds of children.”11 The Florida Project’s characterization of Moonee and her kinship network represents an iteration of American childhood that is not dying, but instead evolving, being uprooted, and still growing in a new direction that must be embraced. Moonee’s situation is not individual. Just as global and national processes affect her daily interactions, Moonee’s livelihood can be extrapolated, without generalization, to a number of disadvantaged children across local, national, and global bounds. The mobility with which Moonee produces her own personal fairy tale, in the shadow of what most people classify as the biggest fairy tale of all, is a result of two essential forms of neglect: that presumed of her mother, Halley, and her unconventional caregiving practices, as well as her immediate kinship networks (neighbors, friends, motel manager); and her exclusion, as an ill-fitting subject, from the idealized nation that Disney has come to represent for nearly a century. DOUBLY NEGLECTED CHILDHOODS: HOW GLOBAL PROCESSES AFFECT LOCAL REALITIES Moonee’s double neglectedness provides an opportunity for close examination. In an oft-cited article, anthropologist and human geographer Nicola Ansell (2008) calls for crafting academic linkages between global structural processes and local interactions by tracing material relations across scale. She strongly maintains there is “a need for more research that seeks to uncover the globally widespread impacts of many aspects of globalization rather than retreating from global to local.”12 Disney’s prioritization of ever-increasing profits results in a massive boon for Orlando’s tourism industry at the expense of lower- and working-class residents, including their own employees who live in Kissimmee. By weaving these threads, associations are forged between Disney’s macrostructural forces as a global empire and Moonee’s microinteractions at the Magic Castle motel. Specifically, exploring the intersections in which these linkages between global and local exist, what circumstances they create, and how they can be gathered from The Florida Project’s representation of these material conditions can assist in reaching better comprehensions

“These Are the Rooms We’re Not Supposed to Go In  .  .  . But Let’s Go Anyway!” 109

of the interconnectivity of individual experiences with global processes. Children’s experiences are wellsprings for fashioning these nexuses. As geographers Holloway and Valentine observe, “Children’s worlds of meaning are at one and the same time global and local, made through ‘local’ cultures which are in part shaped by their interconnections with the wider world.”13 In the production and investigation of the ideological and material dynamics at play between Moonee’s individual community, Disney World in Orlando, and the larger global conglomerate of the Walt Disney Company, geography becomes an essential factor in adult conceptualizations of childhood and children’s daily existences. Young people, through the familiar spaces of their quotidian lifestyles, experience the simultaneous effects of global and local cultures while developing their own peer cultures and informing social constructions of space, place, and childhood.14 The vibrant neon composition The Florida Project utilizes for its visual aesthetic provides an uncharacteristic allure to its portrayal of a marginalized group of people living outside of Disney World by filtering that portrayal through the eyes of a young girl. In doing so, the charm and personality Baker infuses into the Magic Castle’s motley crew of characters accomplishes Twum-Danso Imoh’s call for “the need to move beyond an overwhelming focus on childhoods defined by what they lack towards a consideration of a multitude of childhoods which exist . . . ”15 Rather than fetishize this misfit motel community’s abject poverty and define Moonee by what she lacks (socially, economically, or otherwise), the film focalizes her unique perspective and frames her distinct life experiences as her own personalized Magic Kingdom. By depicting this Technicolor world as filled with real, flawed people instead of fantastic heroes and villains, The Florida Project is able to illuminate the everyday lives of this forgotten locality and how their resilience, ingenuity, and fellowship serve as counterbalances to the local, national, and global forces working against them. Anthropologist and expert on risk and resilience, Catherine Panter-Brick, in her reconsideration of the designation of abandoned children, firmly believes, “Depicting children as helpless victims does little justice to their coping strategies.”16 Eliminating the tendency to victimize youth enables scholars to examine the larger structural processes and inequalities present that influence their physical, social, and economic mobility, and how young people are constantly negotiating and renegotiating their positionalities within these affective structures. Moonee’s ability to expertly traverse her local terrain transforms her labyrinthine journeys into quotidian movements: her daily trek through parking lots, shrubbery, storefronts, and back alleys to reach a clandestine doorway to pick up pancake lunches is simply an inconsequential chore. When introducing Jancey to the local area early in the film, Moonee leads Jancey—along with one of her best friends, Scooty—over small creeks,

110

Joseph V. Giunta

Figure 5.1.  As the camera frames their small statures against the massive spaces they traverse, Moonee (Brooklynn Prince, pictured bottom center), along with Scooty (Christopher Rivera, pictured bottom center, right of Moonee), leads Jancey (Valeria Cotto, pictured bottom center, left of Moonee) on a tour of her local geography, demonstrating Moonee’s spatial expertise between comical quips with her friends. The Florida Project (Baker 2017). Screen capture.

through supermarket and gift shop parking lots, and across local roads as the camera’s wide shots frame the children’s statures as miniature in comparison to the world through which they effortlessly travel. Her mastery of navigating these spatialities results from a distinctive amalgam of spatial mobility and streetwise instincts. It is critical to note, however, that this mastery is not exuberantly championed in the film, but instead depicted as an ordinary aspect of Moonee’s lived experience. Raised under poverty-stricken circumstances in which transience is the only guarantee, Moonee has developed a particular set of sociocultural skills that allow her to flourish within this afflicted environment. This research is animated by child and youth studies scholar Hannah Dyer’s belief that aesthetic expressions of childhood can provide crucial insights into myriad entanglements between history and theory, “and, in turn, wound children’s subjective realities.”17 Whether dependent on conventional understandings of childhood innocence, assuaging adult anxieties surrounding mobile and independent children, or simply reiterating traditional conventions of the children’s film genre, films about young people and their “ability to creatively appropriate from all levels of the social hierarchy [are] rarely portrayed onscreen, severely limiting positive reinforcement of their perspectives or cultures.”18 The Florida Project represents a significant shift from these previous conventions, however, and strives not only to present spectators with a young person’s unadulterated experiences, but also to offer the opportunity to analyze the complex affective structures that shape this child’s everyday interactions. Moonee sits at the crux of two particular forms

“These Are the Rooms We’re Not Supposed to Go In  .  .  . But Let’s Go Anyway!” 111

of neglect: she is a largely mobile young person whose caretaking responsibilities are divided amongst an anomalous kinship network within her local neighborhood and deviate from dominant Western cultural ideals of family and parenting; secondly, she is representative of a forgotten, downtrodden populace deemed inconsequential to the continued success of Disney World, the creators and reproducers of a particular idealized brand of childhood. The resulting clash of childhood discourses makes it imperative to draw linkages between ideological constructs and material investments, or the lack thereof, in this local Floridian community and how Moonee creatively and strategically navigates the personal and structural constraints that directly affect her to instead construct an epic tale of her own existence. By crafting connections between The Florida Project’s portrayal of Moonee’s personal experiences and the interplay of imagined and material geographies, interrogations of both the accountability for the myriad forms of neglect present and popular understandings of traditional family care structures begin to emerge. Working within this analytical nexus assists in contributing to more comprehensive perceptions of commonly marginalized childhoods. The conclusion of the film’s narrative engenders a striking question: Who is responsible for Moonee’s neglect? TRANSFORMING NEGLECT INTO MOBILITY, PERSONAL GEOGRAPHIES, AND SPATIAL MASTERY Wojcik’s (2016) conception of the fantasy of neglect imparts a functional frame to discuss Moonee’s mobility in The Florida Project. This fantasy has a dual analytical approach; as Wojcik delineates, “On the one hand the child appears to be unmoored, unsupervised, and unprotected. . . . On the other hand, the notion of neglect points to the positive thrill and possible risk of the child’s freedom, independence, and movement.”19 Moonee’s mobility could certainly be identified as a product of the lack of oversight and discipline, inept parenting, and an unorthodox care network. However, Halley’s lax child-rearing approach should not be distorted as vacuity or naiveté; instead, she has passed on her innate ability to socialize, make light of difficult circumstances, and discover the intrinsic goodness in all people. Each of these qualities assist Moonee throughout her adventures around Kissimmee and contribute to her atypical ability to comfortably converse with numerous folks who frequent her local community. Audiences witness Moonee, throughout the film, interacting with a host of fellow young people and adults alike, whether she is greeting a taxi driver who has dropped off tourists at the Magic Castle, talking back to an employee at the ice cream parlor, or transforming the granddaughter of a woman onto whose car she just had a

112

Joseph V. Giunta

spitting contest into her new best friend. The fantasy of neglect is inherently associated with Wojcik’s (2016) analysis of cinematic examples of urban children. As she observes, “Displaced from the conventional notions of home and family, the urban child is subject to social forces and available to contact and encounter with the world of adults and the public.”20 The unfettered access Moonee has to the local strip of businesses and the various foliage and wildlife surrounding the Magic Castle allows her to construct personal mappings of her environment that strengthen her agentic abilities and help shape her budding self-identity. Rather than be overwhelmed by the diverse personalities and locales she encounters throughout her manifold adventures, Moonee has acquired a specific assemblage of social skills that contribute to her mastery of the local geography. Whether construed as criminal or purposeful, the neglect Moonee is subject to enables her to transform her disadvantaged circumstances into a tailored conceptualization of both her socioeconomic position and spaces where she can engage in imaginative play. Ward’s “urban myth of paradise lost” provides an analytical tool to better understand Moonee’s relationship with the various spaces available to her that she is able to incorporate into her personalized geography.21 Ward (1978) believes an essential aspect of urban children’s recontextualization of public space is their ability to transform these spaces into individual cartographies through their daily interactions and the activities within them. Moonee’s resiliency is due, in no small part, to her proficiency in continuously adapting to the ostensible instability of her position within the Magic Castle’s protean population. However, she is not simply able to adjust and conform. Because of the fantasy of neglect to which Moonee has become accustomed, she thrives within her particular interpretation of her social and economic standings and her reconstructions of the spaces available for play. Whether hosting dance parties with the rest of the local children on tables just outside the Magic Castle’s parking lot, playing hide-and-seek throughout the motel (even utilizing the space under the hotel manager’s desk as a hiding space), or momentarily shutting off the motel’s electricity as a form of deviant play, Moonee is able to creatively shape and craft the world around her into spaces for recreation. Halley’s unrestrained approach toward Moonee’s mobility is also motivated by the abnormal kinship network she has established within the Magic Castle and neighboring motels. In an ethnographic study exploring mobile youth’s agentic formations during their journeys to and from school in Helsinki, Kim Kullman (2010) explains how this delegation allows for greater opportunity for children to exhibit agency. He acknowledges, “It is the distribution of trust across diverse elements that enables both children’s mobility and the (partial) absence of parents, who have ‘delegated’ some of their responsibilities to various technologies and spaces that together allow

“These Are the Rooms We’re Not Supposed to Go In  .  .  . But Let’s Go Anyway!” 113

for ‘caring at a distance.’”22 Moonee’s world in The Florida Project contains many spaces in which delegated guardians make up a nontraditional network of care. From Bobby, the Magic Castle’s manager, and Grandma Stacey, Jancey’s grandmother, to the multitude of Halley’s friends in and outside of the Magic Castle, and on to Moonee’s friends’ caretakers who are mentioned or seen in passing throughout the film’s narrative, Moonee is rarely outside the purview of someone within her care network. Conventional understandings of middle-class parenting would typically interpret Moonee’s situation as one of neglect because she is not under the continuous supervision and regulation of adults. However, The Florida Project depicts Moonee moving seamlessly through an intergenerational landscape in which she appears to identify herself as equal to the adults around her. This depiction is in stark contrast with the geographies of “containment” that have characterized modern Western conceptions of childhood. Understanding Moonee’s kinship network as a critique of the nuclear family as a self-contained unit, the film expresses a need to expand audience’s perceptions of both care and family. Moonee’s extended and liberal kinship network offers her the capability to transform commonly perceived notions of neglect into a unique mastery of her local spatialities. This “fantasy of mastery,” Wojcik contends, is dependent upon neglect so that youth become empowered to “imagine, to dream, to rule the world, to create disorder and new orders.”23 This atypical and expansive matrix of caretakers empowers Moonee to venture out into spaces that are unstructured and perhaps even deemed dangerous by traditional Western conceptions of “proper” places for children’s play and exploration. Due to the tenuousness of their connections with conventional understandings of home, Panter-Brick warns of the risk of prescribing the “modern Western model of the ‘domestic’ child” to all childhoods.24 She asserts that from this “modern Western viewpoint . . . many other childhoods are aberrant, harmful, tantamount to abandonment in so far as they fall short of providing children with a nurturing home environment.”25 While there is undoubtedly further Westernizations of what precisely amounts to a legitimate “nurturing home environment,” Panter-Brick reaffirms the lamentable precedence of scholars from the Global North to infuse “the ‘best interests’ of the child with one’s own cultural preconceptions, leaving little room for negotiation or reconciliation of plural childhoods.”26 By examining not only other sociocultural forms of home environments but also how children negotiate these spaces and their larger geographic definitions of “home,” understandings are reached that take into account childhoods and networks of care outside Western standards. Rather than miscategorizing these young people as abandoned and “frequently the rationale for campaigns described to focus

114

Joseph V. Giunta

attention on some apparent decline in public morals and family values,” it is essential to properly contextualize myriad childhood experiences outside of traditional comprehensions of family and home.27 It is the responsibility of scholars and other public voices to present and amplify the numerous and dynamic understandings of contemporary childhoods like Moonee’s instead of bemoaning the “death” of these idealized constructions of young people that adults so often clutch white-knuckled. The Florida Project’s narrative is host to a number of colorful locations accessible to Moonee because of her mobility: Orange World, the bright orange supermarket she walks by daily; the gift shop with a massive wizard’s head above the entrance; Twistee Treat, the ice cream cone–shaped ice cream parlor Moonee frequents with her friends; the local diner at which Scooty’s mother works; and the ever-present bright-lavender-pastel shades of the Magic Castle. Moonee has developed a personal cartography of all of these locations, as well as the backwoods area that injects lush greenery into her daily adventures. Discussing the similarities between the individual geographies crafted by the protagonists of the Eloise and Harriet the Spy children’s novels, Wojcik observes, “Like Eloise’s route through the hotel, Harriet’s route is a child-oriented map of her neighborhood. . . . Her route exposes her to different ways of living, different classes, and different family structures.”28 Not simply geographic maps of locations and routes within them, children are privy to the everyday behavior of the people who frequent these locations. While introducing Jancey to the circadian rhythms of the Magic Castle, Moonee is able to discuss details of each of the room’s inhabitants, from an alcoholic war veteran and a man with “a disease that makes his feet large” to a resident who is constantly at odds with local law enforcement and a woman “who thinks she’s married to Jesus.” Capable and competent in constructing associations between spaces, people, and the sociocultural situations that are entangled within them, Moonee’s ‘neglect’ offers an additional model “in which parental neglect enables the child to be creative and autonomous and facilitates the child’s growth and mastery.”29 However, children’s exploration of unstructured spaces, whether deserted, forsaken, or simply ignored by adults, provides geographies outside the compasses of authority ripe for young people’s occupation and play.30 These derelict spaces grant children the opportunity, as Kullman writes, to “practise this kind of ‘careful’ risk-taking alongside friends and siblings, who both encourage them to move into new territory and offer a safe arena for negotiating these experiences.”31 Carving out special areas in their local geographies within their spheres of mobility but outside of immediate adult auspices is essential to these youth for contributing to their evolving selfhoods. A turning point in The Florida Project begins when Moonee and Scooty bring Jancey to their ‘secret space’ located off the beaten path of their

“These Are the Rooms We’re Not Supposed to Go In  .  .  . But Let’s Go Anyway!” 115

usual haunts: the blue and yellow pastel–painted former drug and prostitution dens, now long abandoned and described as an eyesore by many of the local Kissimmee community. Intimately familiar with this space, Moonee has saved this innermost sanctum of exploration as a final surprise in her personal tour of her world after building up her friendship with Jancey. As Moonee leads Jancey through this series of dilapidated structures, canvassing the many rooms for ideal décor arrangements as her imagined future home, Scooty can be seen and heard engaging in various acts of destruction (hammering holes into walls, pushing furniture down staircases, tipping toilets out of upper-floor windows). After coming upon a fireplace, Moonee remembers Scooty’s recent acquisition of a lighter, and devises a plan to set the various pillows strewn across the room on fire within the fireplace. Though Scooty’s earlier demolition projects may cloud the group’s intentions, it is clear, after the film cuts to the three children hurriedly running back to their respective motel homes, that they did not deliberately set fire to these derelict structures, instead transforming these unstructured spaces into places for play. Nonetheless, the mobility deriving from their fantasies of neglect unquestionably led to the torching of these abandoned buildings. Variations along the spectrum of neglect in this instance become illuminated by Moonee and Scooty’s parents’ reactions to these buildings being engulfed in flames and their children’s involvement. Assuredly serving as reinforcement for spectators who disagree with Halley’s child-rearing strategies, Moonee’s responsibility for the enkindling of these ramshackle buildings is humorously documented by Halley as she takes a picture on her phone of Moonee’s disheveled hair and guilt-ridden expression as structures burn in the background. Scooty is immediately punished, banned from hanging out with Moonee any longer and grounded for the remainder of the summer. Ashley’s stricter parenting decision coincides narratively with her concern for her own friendship with Halley, who has been recently forced to turn to sex work to pay her weekly rent upon losing her job at a nearby gentlemen’s club. This singular instance of unintentional criminal behavior by Moonee and Scooty, however, does not immediately justify a condemnation of the fantasies of neglect that permitted this situation to arise. Instead, it represents another point along the continuum of possibility for children whose “careful” risk-taking steps outside of the boundaries of what society deems acceptable.32 Rather than assign blame to these mothers for improperly supervising their children, a closer examination of the structural inequalities present that create the conditions necessary for Moonee’s neglect and these abandoned structures being so readily accessible in first place is paramount.

116

Joseph V. Giunta

“PURGING THE SEAMY SIDE”: IDEOLOGICAL AND MATERIAL NEGLECT IN THE SHADOW OF THE MAGIC KINGDOM When paying attention to the various storefronts and buildings that Moonee passes by throughout her many adventures in The Florida Project, it is impossible to miss the countless unmaintained, deteriorating, and otherwise-derelict properties that have fallen by the wayside. In the shadow of Disney World, it is necessary to interrogate how and why Moonee, the Magic Castle motel and its habitants, and many other local businesses along this stretch of Kissimmee are ignored socially, culturally, and most importantly, financially, by the local government in favor of the Magic Kingdom and its inherently temporary populace. By undertaking structural and material analyses to provide further insight into systems that force marginalized groups into the periphery, parental neglect is not the only form of neglect present in Moonee’s local geography. Doreen Massey (1999), in her work examining the nature of mobility during the era of globalization and how it affects communities’ sense of place, notes how understanding the ‘time-space-compression’ quality fundamental to global processes is significant as it pertains to local interactions. She believes this ‘time-space-compression’ “involved in producing and reproducing the daily lives of the comfortably-off in First World societies—not just their own travel but the resources they draw on, from all over the world, to feed their lives—may entail environmental consequences, or hit constraints, which will limit the lives of others before their own.”33 Questioning what makes possible Disney World’s perfect imagined landscape, or, as Massey would encourage, what consequences and sacrifices are forced upon other communities so that Disney and its tourist guests can live lavishly, make possible the highlighting of these stark material geographies. Taking into account Holloway and Valentine’s understanding of “the global and local” as conceptualized not “in terms of universality and particularity” but instead as “intimately bound together,”34 is critical for grasping the massive gap in material wealth between Disney World and the local Kissimmee population. As Disney begins its presumptive takeover of these forgotten communities through high-pressured land acquisition,35 an essential question must be raised in regard to the young people living in these areas: “Who might be eligible for the benefits associated with childhood?”36 Erica Meiners’s interrogation of constructions of racialized innocence, Dyer asserts, points toward “an asymmetry of care that privileges the realities of some children over others.”37 Ideologically disparaged and materially underprivileged, Moonee’s individual existence is greatly affected by local, national, and global structures that prioritize financial gains over the welfare of local

“These Are the Rooms We’re Not Supposed to Go In  .  .  . But Let’s Go Anyway!” 117

communities. By initiating a relational analysis between these divergent groups—in this instance Moonee and the Magic Castle’s hidden homeless and Disney World and its tourist population—a greater understanding of what imagined subjects are deemed more worthy of capital investment is revealed. Moonee, in her everyday interactions, because of her atypical mobility, and as a result of her mastery of her local geography, is constantly challenging the conventions of dominant ideology from within the confines of her community. However, as Matthews and Limb (1999) contend, children’s ability to genuinely combat prevailing ideological thought while positioned within the margins of society “is mostly beyond their grasp.”38 When Moonee’s unique experiences are not in accord with perhaps the foremost producer of imagined ideal childhoods, Disney—creators of “timeless” children’s classics and a brand extensively beloved across the world—it is difficult to call into question their ideological position. Social and cultural geographer Anoop Nayak (2017), in his ethnographic study of young British Bangladeshi Muslim women in a Sunderland community, discusses how specific conceptualizations of nation and nation-building, questions of belonging, and spatial management form complex webs of power that work toward calculated exclusions of certain unwanted constituencies. These politics of exclusion strengthen dominant formulations of social, political, cultural, racial, and economic hierarchies, maintaining idealistic perceptions of nation to the detriment of populaces that do not neatly fit within predetermined categorizations.39 The proximity of the Magic Castle to the Magic Kingdom magnifies the ideological and material misfitting of childhoods like Moonee’s in Disney’s dominant ideological frame. Whether due to the region’s refusal to incorporate these underprivileged communities’ bleak realities into their public image of timelessness and innocence or their prioritization of the capital gains of the tourism industry over equitable social conditions, it remains apparent that Kissimmee is indisputably not included in the region’s self-characterization. The Magic Castle, its surrounding businesses, and the people who call this area home do not fit within the ideals Disney advocates for or its organizational allies, leaving behind Moonee and her contemporaries in favor of “the happiest place on earth” and those willing to spend their money to experience this halcyon fantasy. The Florida Project’s depiction of this specific geographic area and a child with a unique mastery of her local spaces whose worldview differs from the children experiencing a fantasy wonderland only a few miles away offers spectators the opportunity to think about childhoods not often portrayed onscreen (and even when presented, typically not from the perspective of a child themself). While determining the many factors that contribute to the exclusion of populations deemed undesirable by reigning hierarchies, Nayak emphasizes “deeper psycho-social feelings” related to local and national dynamics of power

118

Joseph V. Giunta

that hold sway “regarding who ‘really’ has a right to belong.”40 Examining how public perceptions of which communities do or do not “belong” are adjudicated and what processes produce and reinforce these decisions is of the utmost importance when examining how Moonee, Halley, and the Magic Castle’s many occupants have arrived and continue to feel the constraints of their neglected existences. There are the physical and tangible adversarial treatments of the motel and its community, what Nayak defines as “psychosocial exorcisms” that “erase” and “cast out” marginalized groups from characterizations of nation41: the tourists who do stay at the Magic Castle snub their noses at the residents of the motel, trash their rooms once returning from their days at Disney World, or are amongst countless men who venture from their family’s hotels closer to Disney to participate in Kissimmee’s sexual economy.42 All the while, these communities have nothing else to do but to forge ahead with the daily rhythms of their lives. There is a scene in The Florida Project in which a Brazilian couple arrives at the Magic Castle late in the evening, immediately perplexed with their surroundings upon exiting their taxi. The woman proclaims in Portuguese, “What is this, we are not even on Disney property!” Moonee and Scooty approach the entrance doors to the motel’s lobby, accustomed to assisting tourists with their luggage in exchange for potential tips. As they humorously note the high quality of the couple’s bags while they haul them into the lobby, the woman further exclaims to her husband, “What are these stray children rummaging about?” and “This is a welfare, slum motel . . . We’re spending our honeymoon in a gypsy project?” Begging her husband to find other accommodations for their stay, the woman quickly names a few higher-end hotels in the area that are currently booked because of the Fourth of July holiday. The scene ends with a resounding “I’m not staying here!” from the woman. Whether Moonee, Scooty, Bobby, and the rest of the Magic Castle’s tenants are unfazed, accustomed to, or unsympathetic (or a combination of these feelings) to this newlywed couple’s crisis, their responses suggest that these occurrences are commonplace in their community. However, the presumed ideals interwoven in this couple’s characterization of this geographic area, and perhaps more importantly, their financial backing of said values, frame them as preferable subjects to Disney’s self-conceptualization. Disney, as acclaimed theorist Henry Giroux details, is comprised of “an endless regime of representations and commodities that conjure up a nostalgic view of America as the ‘magic kingdom.’”43 More specifically, the nostalgia that Disney and its ideological consciousness have come to represent is associated with an explicit expression of innocence that, as Giroux continues, “aggressively rewrites the historical and collective identity of the American past.”44 To accomplish this rehistoricization, Disney employs its “timeless classics” and its cornucopian world as “ideological vehicles” through which

“These Are the Rooms We’re Not Supposed to Go In  .  .  . But Let’s Go Anyway!” 119

they can ascribe their own sanitized histories and purge reality of “its seamy side.”45 Disinterested and unwilling to include outsider perspectives that run counter to their ideological dominion, Disney’s products contain pedagogies that purposefully exclude what they deem “the subversive elements of memory.”46 With the ability to amend and restructure various forms of collective memory, Disney and its offerings have come to represent a beacon of traditional values, from gender to race, and in this case, what populations are deemed ideal for ideological and material investments and who must fall through the cracks in this neoliberal capitalist economy.47 The underprivileged communities surrounding Disney World in Florida are not accidently disregarded by Disney or by the sociopolitical constituencies that heartily support its particular vision of humanity. As Giroux sharply professes, The Walt Disney Company is “not ignorant of history, it reinvents it as a pedagogical and political tool to secure its own interests, authority, and power.”48 This exclusionary approach to ideological nation-building generates a central issue: because Moonee, her Magic Castle community, and their entire geographic area are not included within Disney’s idealistic framing of nation nor the region’s self-characterization, their existences are shunned and discarded as subordinate and largely insignificant. When marginalized populations of young people are classified as too deviant for ideological and material inclusion with their own locality, it is far easier to ignore their needs, views, and identities. Surely, these communities cannot be expected to flourish at the same rate as others that are more heavily resourced. These ideological processes can expeditiously lead to negative designations and misunderstandings of the specific sociocultural, spatial, and economic paradigms resulting from perceived disparities. Geographer Elizabeth Gagen’s research on playground reformers’ reliance on psychological theories of child development produces connections between playground design and these developmental theories, arguing that “a spatial logic” is constructed, “through which [reformers] assumed ideal adult subjects would emerge.”49 Anxieties surrounding appropriate parenting techniques, morality, and children as future citizens have existed at the forefront of public concern for centuries. The Walt Disney Company even cites its own mission as “to be one of the world’s leading producers and providers of entertainment and information [emphasis added].”50 Gagen’s scholarship dovetails with architectural and urban historian Marta Gutman’s (2014) academic work around charitable play spaces created from mid-nineteenth- until midtwentieth-century Oakland to create a practical method of relational analysis to look at Disney World and the Magic Castle. Within Gutman’s study, she contends, “Physical spaces offer a unique and useful tool to grasp childhood as an ideal imagined by adults, as an arena shaped by social relationships, and as an experience of children.”51 The geographies in which children play are

120

Joseph V. Giunta

constantly affected by their own experiences of space, their social relationships within these spaces, and how adults conceive of their ideal development because of these spaces. These spatial logics are not bound by any singular ideology or set of experiences, but are relational, malleable, and influenced by numerous factors. Disney’s idealized childhood and Moonee’s lived experiences are not simply at odds with one another. Rather, they are mutually constituted—one sustains the other. The imagined childhood ideal Disney strives to construct and reinforce is actively contributing to an oppositional experience outside of the boundaries of its imaginary space. While the preferential treatment of Disney’s magical childhood requires its own deconstructing, the highlighting of young people who exist in spite of Disney’s tenets is equally as crucial. Films like Sean Baker’s The Florida Project represent a small fraction of work from creatives and scholars who are expanding public understandings of the breadth and depth of childhood(s) in order to create a more nuanced and equitable world for youth across all hierarchical systems. Due to the low wages Disney employees earn working at the resort in Orlando, even they cannot afford to live in the direct vicinity of the park, instead largely living in the Kissimmee area. Luscombe classifies Kissimmee as “Disney World’s unofficial dormitory town,” at the center of Florida’s massive tourist industry, yet suffering from high levels of crime and a 25.6 percent poverty rate according to the U.S. Census Bureau, over 10 percent above national averages.52 If Disney is unwilling to properly invest in its own employees, it would be unreasonable to expect them to devote any of their profits to their surrounding communities. Though it is outside of the scope of this chapter to research the financial and government documentation to make an argument claiming direct causation between investments in Disney and precise divesture in the surrounding areas, there are statistics that certainly make a case for at least a correlation.53 Nearly the entirety of taxes earned from Orlando hotels raised from tourists is reinvested in theme parks, like Disney and Universal, and other tourism promotion–related services.54 The higher-status hotels’ taxes do not pay for infrastructure (roads, housing, etc.) as they contribute to in other states and even cities within Florida, instead directly reconstituted into various upgrades and maintenance for these hotels. When measures are raised that invest in local issues such as homelessness, affordable housing, public transportation, and law enforcement, they are quickly squashed by government officials.55 This is largely as a result of Disney’s direct contribution to local Florida political campaigns. Representing 71 percent of the total financial contributions in 2018, this commanding fiscal influence allows Disney to regularly flex their political muscle and helps maintain their control over where this tax money is allocated and how it may be used.56 As a consequence of Disney’s ideological and material dominance over this region, they hold a tremendous amount of power over

“These Are the Rooms We’re Not Supposed to Go In  .  .  . But Let’s Go Anyway!” 121

the organizational structures that directly influence forgotten communities like Kissimmee. This vicious cycle of inequity contributes to a downsizing of underprivileged communities’ already miniscule margins of error: a missed paycheck might completely upend a family’s financial stability, or the discontinuance of government benefits may increase a group’s dependence on others for basic needs. At the Magic Castle, a buzzing reminder that fills the skies constantly confronts its residents with the chasm between their livelihoods and those of Disney World’s distinguished patrons. A seemingly omnipresent force in The Florida Project’s narrative, the buzzing of a helicopter is incessantly heard and regularly seen in the background of the film. The helicopter flights across the highway from the Magic Castle serve as unrelenting reminders of the financial disparity between the motel’s occupants and the affluent tourists being lifted off to the Magic Kingdom, while the helicopter’s perpetual whirring colors the sonic palette of the story. The residents of the Magic Castle onscreen respond to these expensive air trips in various fashions, from directly addressing these bothersome flights by uttering profanities against them to ironically praising higher beings for their presence. As part of Luscombe’s (2017) exposé, he interviews Tommy Delgado, a long-term resident who has called the Magic Castle home for over five years. Addressing the inescapability of the helicopters’ humming, Luscombe writes Delgado “has become immune to the existence of the helipad and the windows rattling from every lift-off of another aerial tour of Disney World’s theme parks, a few miles to the west.”57 If being located in the literal, ideological, and material shadow of “the happiest place on earth”

Figure 5.2.  As they eat lunch at a table just outside of the Magic Castle, Halley (Bria Vinaite, pictured left), Moonee (pictured center), and Scooty (pictured right) direct flagrant hand gestures and verbal expletives toward tourists utilizing expensive helicopter rides that pollute their sonic landscape with a constant whirring. The Florida Project (Baker 2017). Screen capture.

122

Joseph V. Giunta

was not enough, the diurnal visibility of well-heeled sightseers provides a distasteful symbol of their stressful and underprivileged experiences. These travelers have the unique privilege, along with Disney and its compatriots, to entirely neglect the Magic Castle’s hidden homeless, yet they are quick to assign blame to members of that same community when they do not meet the expectations of Disney’s idealized visions of childhood and nation. As previously discussed, Moonee’s personal tour of the Magic Castle bears witness to a plethora of disadvantaged people who would be classified as misfits in Disney’s framing of an ideal nation. Outside this bespoke sightseeing scene, The Florida Project exhibits countless images that are categorically incompatible with Disney World’s fantasy utopia: entire families living in cramped motel rooms, violent altercations between motel residents, nude sunbathing in the presence of children, alcoholism, sex tourism, drug addiction, and various other manifestations of illegality. Definitively not the poster child community Florida’s flourishing tourist industry wants to advertise to attract vacationers, Moonee, Halley, and families like theirs who inhabit the motels that line Highway 192 are neglected ideologically and materially. Rather than interrogate the structural processes and precedents that actuate these conditions, however, outsiders often denounce the people themselves. CONCLUSION: DETERMINING UNFITNESS, DEFINING ABANDONMENT, AND DECONSTRUCTING MARGINALIZED CHILDHOOD One of the last lines of dialogue from The Florida Project uniquely brings into focus this chapter’s argument. After a recent fight, Ashley calls the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF), the Floridian equivalent of Child Protective Services, to report Halley’s recent use of her motel room as a location for her sex work. In an ironic twist of fate, after losing her job as an exotic dancer because she refused to have sex with clients at the strip club, Halley loses her temporary assistance benefits, is caught reselling wholesale perfume to members of a nearby country club, and is compelled to solicit sexual favors using online websites. Ashley’s decision to disclose Halley’s latest occupation to the DCF is provoked not by the sex work itself, but instead by a violent altercation between the two a few nights earlier. In fear of losing Moonee to the authorities, Halley hastily tidies up their room and gives away her remaining marijuana to fall within stereotypical categorizations of conventional motherhood. However, the video footage of several clients entering and exiting her room while Moonee was present in their home, invariably playing with her dolls in the bathtub as loud music played to make her unaware of Halley’s activities in the other room, heavily influences

“These Are the Rooms We’re Not Supposed to Go In  .  .  . But Let’s Go Anyway!” 123

the DCF’s decision to take Moonee away to a temporary family while Halley sorts out her criminal charges in court. As Halley packs a bag with Moonee’s essentials, Moonee manages to escape the DCF officials who are attempting to calm her down, running down the stairs in tears and breaking free to say goodbye to Jancey at a neighboring motel. When Halley becomes aware of the DCF’s mismanagement of her daughter, she directly confronts the officials waiting outside her room, shouting, “You just let her get away? And I’m the one who’s unfit?” Michael D. Hughes (1987) utilizes his insider perspective as a veteran of Child Protective Services (CPS) in his scholarly work by exploring his belief that the interventions into marginalized communities by these organizations are often misguided and innately violent. Routinely motivated by prejudice and convenience rather than informed objectivity and necessity, Hughes estimates, “The evaluation of neglect frequently involved judgments based on cultural misunderstanding and the tendency by social workers to pathologize family patterns and child rearing norms that deviate from those of the dominant white culture.”58 Ignorant of cultural traditions, grave dangers exist when standardizing understandings of “proper” care and what is deemed as such, especially when wielded by organizations that hold the power to irrevocably separate families. Careful to note CPS workers’ inherently stressful work and their overburdening of cases that only cause further harm and disarray to families through these processes, Hughes contemplates the frequent conflation of child neglect with poverty, stating “while the symptom (neglect) is ‘treated’ (by removal), the underlying root cause (i.e. poverty of the parents) is left undisturbed.”59 In many of these cases, “saving” children ignores the systemic issues of inequality at the root of their assumed endangerment. Moonee’s removal from Halley, her friends, and her atypical yet extensive kinship network within her local community does not equate to a solution for either Moonee or Halley and does virtually nothing to effect change in this marginalized space. Though undoubtedly against the DCF’s standards for young people’s living conditions, it would be careless to quickly denounce Halley as an unfit mother and even more so to discern Moonee’s family and home situations as unsafe or immoral. In other cultural frameworks, mothers cannot be accused of abandoning their children, even when directly selling them into the sex trade.60 However, because Halley’s parenting strategies and overall lifestyle deviate from dominant ideological Western culture, she is misfitted as an irresponsible and criminal mother. This misidentification of Halley ignores the quality time she spends with Moonee where Moonee is genuinely happy. For example, there is a scene in which Halley brings Moonee to a nearby discount retail location to try on amusing outfits, browse the various trinkets, and race around the store in a shopping cart. An important distinction must

124

Joseph V. Giunta

be recognized: Moonee’s joy does not result from her ignorance of her socioeconomic circumstances, but instead because she is exceedingly aware of her situation and is able to make the most out of it. By individualizing Moonee as a child who needs saving from parental neglect rather than examining the structural neglect responsible for the conditions that bring about her removal, the DCF only exacerbates sociocultural misunderstandings of “abandoned children” and inflames groups that align themselves with prevailing collective ideology. “Abandonment,” as distinguished children’s rights researcher Judith Ennew surmises, “has become a kind of moral rhetoric used to justify continued policies of rescue and redemption together with their tendency to stigmatise the poor.”61 The Florida Project’s geographic location is representative of an incredibly complex set of relations: disadvantaged materially and disregarded in favor of a prosperous tourism industry, incompatible with dominant comprehensions of ‘proper’ parenting and networks of care, and antithetical to conventional ideological constructions of nation—all within striking distance of Disney World and its myriad associations with utopian and nostalgic childhood. Instead of engaging with these intricate entanglements and how they have uniquely shaped Moonee’s upbringing, a violent decision is made to pacify public concern, or in this case, perhaps only a single report. Erica Burman’s interrogation of Western fantasies of childhood and emergency further expounds upon the appeasing of adult anxieties over reaching comprehensive understandings of complex issues, remarking, “Abstracted from social and political context, the focus on suffering children avoids addressing the broader circumstances that give rise to the problems.”62 “Suffering” is perhaps one of the farthest categorizations of Moonee’s life after experiencing her resiliency, active agency, and proficient social abilities as she traverses the personal geography she has mastered since living at the Magic Castle. This reality, however, does little to prevent a government organization from finding a “quick fix” to appease a misplaced public moral compass rather than deconstruct policies that have produced harm in Moonee’s underprivileged community. Nancy Scheper-Hughes, in her research on child abuse within American popular culture, observes that by holding responsible the actions of individual parents who are frequently members of comparatively powerless or marginalized social strata to placate misinformed societal fears, “We set up rescue missions to undo the damage to those we have placed in jeopardy in the first place.”63 As spectators observe DCF officials quickly lose control over a situation they independently ignited, Halley’s questioning of which party, herself or the DCF, is more unfit rings with uncomfortable yet undeniable clarity. Discussing the location scouting process for The Florida Project, Baker acknowledges how the motel Moonee calls home would reflect the

“These Are the Rooms We’re Not Supposed to Go In  .  .  . But Let’s Go Anyway!” 125

self-characterization of her life, mentioning, “We were going to shoot at either the Magic Castle or there was this other motel that had a castle motif; we knew Moonee was living in her own castle.”64 Despite the adverse circumstances in which she was raised and continues to thrive in spite of, Moonee refuses to allow her disadvantaged position to affect her personal fairy tale– ization of her life. Perhaps, as cultural studies scholar Joanne Faulkner posits in her analysis of moral panics and sensationalized innocence, “our first task in the effort to accept vulnerability, then, should be to solicit children’s views in family and community decision making, thus shifting the balance of power so that we are reciprocally vulnerable to them.”65 While respecting children’s lived experiences and worldviews is of great significance, scholars and non-professionals alike should encourage greater understandings of children’s perspectives to generate more extensive illustrations of how global and structural processes influence local interactions and framings of youth. Rather than prioritizing typically established, scrutinized, and fetishized “lacks,” it is important to represent the pluralities of childhood freed from ideologies contaminated with predispositions and stereotypical associations. The fantasy of neglect provided by Halley’s liberal approach to supervision and child-rearing strategies empowers Moonee to construct and master personalized geographies, develop a confident and agentic self-image, and transform what outsiders may conceive as impoverished standards of living into an exclusive fantasy land of freedom and opportunity. Meanwhile, the conclusion of The Florida Project’s narrative sheds light on how the exclusionary politics resulting from dominant sociocultural ideals beget ideological and material neglect that, in turn, thrust Moonee and her fellow Magic Castle residents further into the confines of marginalization. Just because Moonee’s extraordinary living situation, care network, and mobility differ from those of prevailing Western ideology does not mean that Moonee is still not able to thrive within her local community. Her circumstances may be uprooted, but she’s still growing. NOTES 1. Max, Cea, “How ‘The Florida Project’ Found Its Magical Setting,” Salon, last modified October 7, 2017, accessed April 3, 2020, https:​//​www​.salon​.com​/2017​/10​ /07​/how​-the​-florida​-project​-found​-its​-magical​-setting/. 2. Richard, Luscombe, “In the Shadow of Disney, Living Life on the Margins,” Guardian, last modified October 15, 2017, accessed April 3, 202, https:​ //​ www​ .theguardian​.com​/us​-news​/2017​/oct​/15​/in​-the​-shadow​-of​-disney​-living​-life​-on​-the​ -margins.

126

Joseph V. Giunta

3. Examples of this trend and variations within this filmic formula include Mary Poppins (1964), Aladdin (1992), A Bug’s Life (1998), Born into Brothels: Calcutta’s Red Light Kids (2004), Cars (2006), Bridge to Terabithia (2007), and Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012). For further reading, see Jessi Streib, Miryea Ayala and Colleen Wixted, “Benign Inequality: Frames of Poverty and Social Class Inequality in Children’s Movies,” Journal of Poverty 21, no. 1 (2017): 1–19. 4. Peter B. Pufall and Richard P. Unsworth, “Introduction: The Imperative and the Process for Rethinking Childhood,” in Rethinking Childhood, ed. Peter B. Pufall and Richard P. Unsworth (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 8–9. 5. Pamela Robertson Wojick, Fantasies of Neglect: Imagining the Urban Child in American Film and Fiction (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2016), 15. 6. Luscombe, “In the Shadow of Disney.” 7. Ibid. 8. Anne Higonnet, Pictures of Innocence: The History and Crisis of Ideal Childhood (London: Thames and Hudson, Ltd, 1998), 225. 9. Afua Twum-Danso Imoh, “From the Singular to the Plural: Exploring Diversities in Contemporary Childhoods in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Childhood 23, no. 3 (2016): 465. 10. Hugh Matthews and Melanie Limb, “Defining an Agenda for the Geography of Children: Review and Prospect,” Progress in Human Geography 23, no. 1 (1999): 64. 11. Ibid. 12. Nicola Ansell, “Childhood and the Politics of Scale: Descaling Children’s Geographies?,” Progress in Human Geography 33, no. 2 (2009): 194. 13. Sarah L. Holloway and Gill Valentine, “Spatiality and the New Social Studies of Childhood,” Sociology 34, no. 4 (2000b): 769. 14. Sarah L. Holloway and Gill Valentine, “Children’s Geographies and the New Social Studies of Childhood,” in Children’s Geographies: Playing, Living, Learning, ed. Sarah L. Holloway and Gill Valentine (London: Routledge, 2000a), 9–18. 15. Imoh, “From the Singular to the Plural,” 456. 16. Catherine Panter-Brick, “Nobody’s Children? A Reconsideration of Child Abandonment,” in Abandoned Children, ed. Catherine Panter-Brick and Malcolm T. Smith (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 12. 17. Hannah Dyer, The Queer Aesthetics of Childhood: Asymmetries of Innocence and the Cultural Politics of Child Development (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2019), 4. 18. Joseph Giunta, “‘Why Are You Keeping This Curiosity Door Locked?’: Childhood Subjectivities and Play as Conflict Resolution in the Postmodern Web Series Stranger Things,” in Child and Youth Agency in Science Fiction: Travel, Technology, Time, ed. Ingrid E. Castro and Jessica Clark (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019), 29. 19. Wojcik, Fantasies of Neglect, 12. 20. Ibid., 11. 21. Colin Ward, The Child in the City (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1978), 5. 22. Kim Kullman, “Transitional Geographies: Making Mobile Children,” Social & Cultural Geography 11, no. 8 (2010): 838.

“These Are the Rooms We’re Not Supposed to Go In  .  .  . But Let’s Go Anyway!” 127

23. Wojcik, Fantasies of Neglect, 29. 24. Panter-Brick, “Nobody’s Children?” 6. 25. Ibid., 9. 26. Ibid., 11. 27. Judith Ennew, “Preface,” in Abandoned Children, ed. Catherine Panter-Brick and Malcolm T. Smith (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2000), xiii. 28. Ibid., 135. 29. Ibid., 137. 30. Allison James, “Talking of Children and Youth: Language, Socialisation and Culture,” in Youth Cultures: A Cross-Cultural Perspective, ed. Vered Amit-Talai and Helena Wulff (London: Routledge, 1995), 43–46. 31. Kullman, “Transitional Geographies,” 840. 32. Ibid., 840–42. 33. Doreen Massey, “A Global Sense of Place,” Marxism Today, June, 1991: 26. 34. Holloway and Valentine, “Spatiality,” 767. 35. Laura Kinsler, “It Took Disney 50 years, But It Finally Buys Osceola Ranch Land,” Orlando Sentinel, last modified January 10, 2019, accessed April 3, 2020, https:​//​www​.orlandosentinel​.com​/business​/os​-bz​-disney​-osceola​-ranch​-purchase​ -20190109​-story​.html. 36. Erica Meiners, For the Children? Protecting Innocence in a Carceral State (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2016), 3. 37. Dyer, Queer Aesthetics of Childhood, 71. 38. Hugh Matthews and Melanie Limb, “Defining an Agenda for the Geography of Children: Review and Prospect,” Progress in Human Geography 23, no. 1 (1999): 83. 39. Anoop Nayak, “Purging the Nation: Race, Conviviality and Embodied Encounters in the Lives of British Bangladeshi Muslim Young Women,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 42, no. 2 (2017): 292–95. 40. Ibid., 290. 41. Ibid., 299. 42. Luscombe, “In the Shadow of Disney.” 43. Henry A. Giroux, “Memory and Pedagogy in the ‘Wonderful World of Disney’: Beyond the Politics of Innocence,” in From Mouse to Mermaid: The Politics of Film, Gender, and Culture, ed. Elizabeth Bell, Lynda Haas, and Laura Sells (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995), 45. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid., 46. 46. Ibid., 47. 47. For more on Disney’s historical treatment of gender, see, for example, Marcia Lieberman, “Some Day My Prince Will Come: Female Acculturation through the Fairy Tale,” in Don’t Bet on the Prince: Contemporary Feminist Fairy Tales in North America and England, ed. Jack Zipes (New York, NY: Routledge, 1987), 185–200; Susan Ohmer, “Disney’s Peter Pan: Gender, Fantasy, and Industrial Production,” in Second Star to the Right: Peter Pan in the Popular Imagination, ed. Allison Kavey and Lester Friedman (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 151–86. For additional insight on Disney’s complex and controversial relationship

128

Joseph V. Giunta

with depictions of race, see, for example, Eve Benhamou, “From the Advent of Multiculturalism to the Erasure of Race: The Representation of Race Relations in Disney Animated Features,” Exchanges 2, no. 1 (2014): 153–67; Megan Condis, “She Was a Beautiful Girl and All of the Animals Loved Her: Race, the Disney Princesses, and their Animal Friends,” Köln 55, no. 1 (2015); Steve Rose, “Repressed Brits, Evil Mexicans, Arab Villains: Why Are Hollywood’s Animated Movies Full of Racist Stereotypes?” Guardian, last modified April 6, 2014, accessed April 3, 2020, https:​//​ www​.theguardian​.com​/film​/2014​/apr​/06​/repressed​-brits​-evil​-mexicans​-arab​-villains​ -hollywood​-animated​-movies​-stereotypes. 48. Giroux, “Memory and Pedagogy,” 46. 49. Elizabeth Gagen, “An Example to Us All: Child Development and Identity Construction in Early 20th-Century Playgrounds,” Environment and Planning 32 (2000): 601. 50. Disney, “About The Walt Disney Company,” The Walt Disney Company, accessed April 5, 2020, https:​//​thewaltdisneycompany​.com​/about/. 51. Marta Gutman, A City for Children: Women, Architecture, and the Charitable Landscapes of Oakland, 1850–1950 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 29. 52. Luscombe, “In the Shadow of Disney.” 53. Robust literature on the dynamics of capitalist accumulation and its related disinvestment in marginalized communities points toward similar situations across the history of the United States. See, for example, Thomas S. Moore and Gregory D. Squires, “Two Tales of a City: Economic Restructuring and Uneven Economic Development in a Former Company Town,” Journal of Urban Affairs 13, no. 2 (1991); David Wilson, “Everyday Life, Spatiality and Inner City Disinvestment in a US City,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 17, no. 4 (1993); Lisa Berglund, “‘We’re Forgotten:’ The Shaping of Place Attachment and Collective Action in Detroit’s 48217 Neighborhood,” Journal of Urban Affairs 42, no. 3 (2020). For more Disney-specific research, see, for example, Sharon Zukin, Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 1993); Andrew Ross, Sunbelt Blues: The Failure of American Housing (New York, NY: Metropolitan Books, 2021). 54. Chabeli Carrazana, “Disney, Universal Political Power Guards Tourism Tax,” Orlando Sentinel, last modified December 18, 2019, accessed April 3, 2020, https:​//​ www​.orlandosentinel​.com​/business​/tourism​/laborland​/os​-bz​-tourism​-industry​-disney​ -taxes​-20191218​-hc622hqsxzgdjikyfbgxx3fw7y​-story​.html. 55. Ibid. 56. Ibid. 57. Luscombe, “In the Shadow of Disney.” 58. Michael D. Hughes, “When Cultural Rights Conflict with the ‘Best Interests of the Child’: A View from Inside the Child Welfare System,” in Child Survival: Anthropological Perspectives on the Treatment and Maltreatment of Children, ed. Nancy Scheper-Hughes (Dordrecht, Netherlands: D. Reidel, 1987), 378. 59. Ibid.

“These Are the Rooms We’re Not Supposed to Go In  .  .  . But Let’s Go Anyway!” 129

60. Heather Montgomery, “Abandonment and Child Prostitution in a Thai Slum Community,” in Abandoned Children, ed. Catherine Panter-Brick and Malcolm T. Smith (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 194–96. 61. Ennew, “Preface,” xv. 62. Erica Burman, “Innocents Abroad: Western Fantasies of Childhood and the Iconography of Emergencies,” Disasters 18, no. 3 (1994): 247. 63. Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Howard F. Stein, “Child Abuse and the Unconscious in American Popular Culture,” in Child Survival: Anthropological Perspectives on the Treatment and Maltreatment of Children, ed. Nancy Scheper-Hughes (Dordrecht, Netherlands: D. Reidel, 1987), 351. 64. Cea, “How ‘The Florida Project’ Found Its Magical Setting.” 65. Joanne Faulkner, The Importance of Being Innocent: Why We Worry About Children (Port Melbourne, Australia: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 147.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Ansell, Nicola. “Childhood and the Politics of Scale: Descaling Children’s Geographies?” Progress in Human Geography 33, no. 2 (2009): 190–209. Baker, Sean, and Chris Bergoch. The Florida Project, directed by Sean Baker. United States: A24, 2017. Benhamou, Eve. “From the Advent of Multiculturalism to the Erasure of Race: The Representation of Race Relations in Disney Animated Features.” Exchanges 2, no. 1 (2014): 153–67. Berglund, Lisa. “‘We’re Forgotten:’ The Shaping of Place Attachment and Collective Action in Detroit’s 48217 Neighborhood.” Journal of Urban Affairs 42, no. 3 (2020): 390–413. Burman, Erica. “Innocents Abroad: Western Fantasies of Childhood and the Iconography of Emergencies.” Disasters 18, no. 3 (1994): 238–53. Carrazana, Chabeli. “Disney, Universal Political Power Guards Tourism Tax.” Orlando Sentinel. Last modified December 18, 2019. Accessed April 3, 2020. https:​//​www​ .orlandosentinel​.com​/business​/tourism​/laborland​/os​-bz​-tourism​-industry​-disney​ -taxes​-20191218​-hc622hqsxzgdjikyfbgxx3fw7y​-story​.html. Cea, Max. “How ‘The Florida Project’ Found Its Magical Setting.” Salon. Last modified October 7, 2017. Accessed April 3, 2020. https:​//​www​.salon​.com​/2017​/10​/07​/ how​-the​-florida​-project​-found​-its​-magical​-setting/. Condis, Megan. “She Was a Beautiful Girl and All of the Animals Loved Her: Race, the Disney Princesses, and their Animal Friends.” Köln 55, no. 1 (2015). Disney. “About The Walt Disney Company.” The Walt Disney Company. Accessed April 5, 2020. https:​//​thewaltdisneycompany​.com​/about/. Dyer, Hannah. The Queer Aesthetics of Childhood: Asymmetries of Innocence and the Cultural Politics of Child Development. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2019. Ennew, Judith. “Preface.” In Abandoned Children, edited by Catherine Panter-Brick and Malcolm T. Smith, xii–xvi. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

130

Joseph V. Giunta

Faulkner, Joanne. The Importance of Being Innocent: Why We Worry About Children. Port Melbourne, Australia: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Gagen, Elizabeth. “An Example to Us All: Child Development and Identity Construction in Early 20th-Century Playgrounds.” Environment and Planning 32 (2000): 599–616. Giroux, Henry A. “Memory and Pedagogy in the ‘Wonderful World of Disney’: Beyond the Politics of Innocence.” In From Mouse to Mermaid: The Politics of Film, Gender, and Culture, edited by Elizabeth Bell, Lynda Haas, and Laura Sells, 43–60. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995. Giunta, Joseph. “‘Why Are You Keeping This Curiosity Door Locked?’: Childhood Subjectivities and Play as Conflict Resolution in the Postmodern Web Series Stranger Things.” In Child and Youth Agency in Science Fiction: Travel, Technology, Time, edited by Ingrid E. Castro and Jessica Clark, 25–53. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019. Gonzales, Roberto G. Lives in Limbo: Undocumented and Coming of Age in America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2015. Gutman, Marta. A City for Children: Women, Architecture, and the Charitable Landscapes of Oakland, 1850–1950. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2014. Higonnet, Anne. Pictures of Innocence: The History and Crisis of Ideal Childhood. London: Thames and Hudson, Ltd, 1998. Holloway, Sarah L., and Gill Valentine. “Children’s Geographies and the New Social Studies of Childhood.” In Children’s Geographies: Playing, Living, Learning, edited by Sarah L. Holloway and Gill Valentine, 1–26. London: Routledge, 2000a. ———. “Spatiality and the New Social Studies of Childhood.” Sociology 34, no. 4 (2000b): 763–83. Hughes, Michael D. “When Cultural Rights Conflict with the ‘Best Interests of the Child’: A View from Inside the Child Welfare System.” In Child Survival: Anthropological Perspectives on the Treatment and Maltreatment of Children, edited by Nancy Scheper-Hughes, 377–89. Dordrecht, Netherlands: D. Reidel, 1987. James, Allison. “Talking of Children and Youth: Language, Socialisation and Culture.” In Youth Cultures: A Cross-Cultural Perspective, edited by Vered Amit-Talai and Helena Wulff, 43–62. London: Routledge, 1995. Kinsler, Laura. “It Took Disney 50 years, But It Finally Buys Osceola Ranch Land.” Orlando Sentinel. Last modified January 10, 2019. Accessed April 3, 2020. https:​//​www​.orlandosentinel​.com​/business​/os​-bz​-disney​-osceola​-ranch​ -purchase​-20190109​-story​.html. Kullman, Kim. “Transitional Geographies: Making Mobile Children.” Social & Cultural Geography 11, no. 8 (2010): 829–46. Luscombe, Richard. “In the Shadow of Disney, Living Life on the Margins.” The Guardian. Last modified October 15, 2017. Accessed April 3, 2020. https:​//​www​ .theguardian​.com​/us​-news​/2017​/oct​/15​/in​-the​-shadow​-of​-disney​-living​-life​-on​-the​ -margins.

“These Are the Rooms We’re Not Supposed to Go In  .  .  . But Let’s Go Anyway!” 131

Lieberman, Marcia. “Some Day My Prince Will Come: Female Acculturation through the Fairy Tale.” In Don’t Bet on the Prince: Contemporary Feminist Fairy Tales in North America and England, edited by Jack Zipes, 185–200. New York, NY: Routledge, 1987. Massey, Doreen. “A Global Sense of Place.” Marxism Today. June, 1991: 24–29. Matthews, Hugh, and Melanie Limb. “Defining an Agenda for the Geography of Children: Review and Prospect.” Progress in Human Geography 23, no. 1 (1999): 61–90. Meiners, Erica. For the Children? Protecting Innocence in a Carceral State. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2016. Montgomery, Heather. “Abandonment and Child Prostitution in a Thai Slum Community.” In Abandoned Children, edited by Catherine Panter-Brick and Malcolm T. Smith, 182–98. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Moore, Thomas S., and Gregory D. Squires. “Two Tales of a City: Economic Restructuring and Uneven Economic Development in a Former Company Town.” Journal of Urban Affairs 13, no. 2 (1991): 159–73. Nayak, Anoop. “Purging the Nation: Race, Conviviality and Embodied Encounters in the Lives of British Bangladeshi Muslim Young Women.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 42, no. 2 (2017): 289–302. Ohmer, Susan. “Disney’s Peter Pan: Gender, Fantasy, and Industrial Production.” In Second Star to the Right: Peter Pan in the Popular Imagination, edited by Allison Kavey and Lester Friedman, 151–86. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009. Panter-Brick, Catherine. “Nobody’s Children? A Reconsideration of Child Abandonment.” In Abandoned Children, edited by Catherine Panter-Brick and Malcolm T. Smith, 1–26. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pufall, Peter B., and Richard P. Unsworth. “Introduction: The Imperative and the Process for Rethinking Childhood.” In Rethinking Childhood, edited by Peter B. Pufall and Richard P. Unsworth, 1–21. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004. Rose, Steve. “Repressed Brits, Evil Mexicans, Arab Villains: Why are Hollywood’s Animated Movies Full of Racist Stereotypes?” Guardian. Last modified April 6, 2014. Accessed April 3, 2020. https:​//​www​.theguardian​.com​/film​/2014​/apr​ /06​ / repressed​ - brits​ - evil​ - mexicans​ - arab​ - villains ​ - hollywood ​ - animated ​ - movies​ -stereotypes. Ross, Andrew. Sunbelt Blues: The Failure of American Housing. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books, 2021. Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, and Howard F. Stein. “Child Abuse and the Unconscious in American Popular Culture.” In Child Survival: Anthropological Perspectives on the Treatment and Maltreatment of Children, edited by Nancy Scheper-Hughes, 339–58. Dordrecht, Netherlands: D. Reidel, 1987. Stockton, Kathryn Bond. The Queer Child: Or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth-Century. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009. Turner, Victor. “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites of Passage.” In The Forest of Symbols, 93–111. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967.

132

Joseph V. Giunta

Twum-Danso Imoh, Afua. “From the Singular to the Plural: Exploring Diversities in Contemporary Childhoods in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Childhood 23, no. 3 (2016): 455–68. Ward, Colin. The Child in the City. New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1978. Wilson, David. “Everyday Life, Spatiality and Inner City Disinvestment in a US City.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 17, no. 4 (1993): 578–94. Wojcik, Pamela Robertson. Fantasies of Neglect: Imagining the Urban Child in American Film and Fiction. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2016. Zukin, Sharon. Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 1993.

PART III

Technology and the Posthuman Child

133

Chapter 6

Roblox and the Value in Suspending Playbor Time Sumaria Butt

In a YouTube video titled Roblox, Explained (for Beginners), the hosts pause at one point to describe a curious case of luxury goods sold within the gaming platform.1 In 2021, Gucci sold a limited edition purse as a purely VR object for use by avatars in the Roblox metaverse. According to the currency exchange rate, the listed price in Robux(R$) amounted to a US$4,000 price tag. Interestingly, a real-world counterpart to the purse was being sold outside of the game, for nearly $1,000 less. The YouTube hosts theorize this is Gucci’s attempt to remain relevant to a young consumer base, while remaining true to their brand appeal as a luxury that is unattainable for most people. They suggest that as future adults, these gamers, nearly 80 percent of whom are currently under the age of sixteen, will look back fondly on the luxury product they could not afford with Robux, but may come to afford as adults with dollars. This object would be just one of many that Roblox users could spot as they window-shop in the Gucci Garden experience. In this way, selling these digital accessories for avatars becomes secondary to cultivating a strong social media presence within a new demographic. It allows them to explore a space that most young people do not casually frequent. This Gucci purse is just one brief example of how current media for children markets a kind of future nostalgia. It highlights how children are not treated as passive consumers in the present, but more importantly as active consumers in the future as well. There is no shortage of the nostalgia market, as seen in the recent uptick of remakes, reboots, and vintage appeal of the near past. But the majority of this media is marketed toward adults longing to revisit objects of their youth with their children. The difference in the proactive approach to marketing future nostalgia, is that it offers children the opportunity to 135

136

Sumaria Butt

self-curate what affects are worth reliving, and what trends are worthy of stumbling upon once again in the future. Of course, advertising in the form of strategic product placements is not new to children’s media. However, as virtual objects sold within the Roblox metaverse, items like avatar accessories can turn an advertisement into a direct-to-consumer commodity (albeit a virtual one, which will need to be distinguished from a “real” commodity). Advertising for real commodities normally falls under the costs of production, and therefore never has the value of its service labor enter circulation. In contrast, the prosumption approach to advertising creates a virtual commodity that must circulate in the marketplace in order to be effective advertising, and it also has its exchange value as a commodity realized at the point of purchase. Dividing the exchange and use values of an advertisement in this way requires the prosumer to both consume the commodity, and subsequently use it in order to produce the conditions that turn the object into a useful ad. This alters the pace of advertising. Whereas traditional ads are purchased by the capitalist as a service with the aim to draw in customers immediately, in order to make the purchase of a commodity, an extended Roblox campaign turns the advertisement itself into a virtual commodity for immediate purchase, and it anticipates the purchase of a real commodity in the relatively distant future. In this way, the virtual object functions as an advertisement aimed at the consumer’s future self, while also existing as an immediate advertisement toward other Roblox users. This can lead to increased traffic in the virtual store, generating more sales of the virtual object, and thereby setting the entire process in motion once again. In this way, the prosumption business model depends on users to create a loop that ensures commodities are in constant circulation, meaning that they change their value form repeatedly, without ever leaving the Roblox metaverse. As I will look at shortly, this is a considerable feat when considering that Roblox takes a sizable percentage, ranging from 30 to 70 percent, for every transaction that occurs. The child is no longer a passive gamer, or simply a consumer on a platform such as Roblox. As prosumers, they collectively contributed to $2.2 billion of revenue in 2022. It seems that the new child, primarily figured now as a prosumer, offers unique insight into living at the peripheries of the wage, particularly in the distinct spatio-temporality of virtual spaces. I hope to show that the resurgence in concern over child labor, or monitoring the category of childhood, is, in fact, part of a broader crisis in delineating productive labor from unproductive labor, or work from leisure. Advertising is only one particular instance of the cyclical nature of prosumption in the Roblox universe. Users can also produce their own virtual objects, and more importantly, create all the games and other ambient “experiences” available on the platform. While private companies, like Gucci, can set up collaborations with Roblox to make their own content, Roblox itself

Roblox and the Value in Suspending Playbor Time

137

does not produce any of this content. Nearly all content is user generated by the Roblox community. Roblox insists that by serving only as a platform provider, it allows its virtual marketplace to stay competitive and leaves users free to innovate as much as possible on the sandbox platform. This freedom is precisely what allows users to perform, arguably, the majority of the labor that keeps this enterprise afloat. However, I would argue that the critical rhetoric that explicitly labels this business model as the exploitation of children’s labor, tends to focus on the false hope that it fosters in children, and less on what kind of labor is being performed.2 It is true that the small percentage of successful Roblox developers, who vaunt their success on their social media, do encourage millions of other young users to attempt the same. It is statistically true that while the majority of users comparatively fail at monetizing their context, their efforts collectively generate significant revenue for Roblox. It becomes clear where the impulse to label this exploitation comes from, given that Roblox only paid out $525 million to its developers for user-generated content, despite generating $2.2 billion in 2022 alone. However, I would argue that in the context of children, labeling their play as labor that deserves adequate wages, ineffectually redirects the rhetoric toward protecting a vulnerable working population. It focuses the discourse on how Roblox preys on the naiveté of children, how it exploits the inability for children to organize their labor, and how it ultimately sentimentalizes the presumably wasted creative energies of children. In short, it bemoans an industry for not treating child laborers as well as their adult counterparts.3 Again, this position assumes that the majority of children’s labor in the game is productive because it generates revenue for Roblox. It fixates on how this work is not regulated in the same way that other productive sectors are because it is performed by an “unproductive” part of the population, children, and functions within the gray area between work and leisure. This intermediate labor, or “playbor,” often exists tangentially to the wage relation, precisely because it exists in industries where the distinction between work and play is consistently blurred. While I agree that playbor is particularly vulnerable to precarious working conditions, I suspect that recognizing it as proper productive “labor,” in order to negotiate the price of this labor, will not amend the precarity. The industries being scrutinized already demonstrate several mechanisms of formal and real subsumption affecting playbor relations.4 I attempt here to redirect the discourse away from that of protecting fair wages, and move toward analyzing the unwaged social relations in Roblox as a worthwhile endeavor in itself.5 As this article will focus mostly on the actions of Roblox users, as opposed to the (adult) employees of Roblox, I will not speak at length about exploitative wages. Instead, I intend to explore how play can be used as a form of free labor, in order to realize surplus value. While exploitation is a fitting term, I am wary of using it in this

138

Sumaria Butt

context.6 Exploitation of labor requires either the extension of overall labor time (absolute), or the reduction of necessary labor time (relative) in order to produce surplus value. However, play or leisure time does not inherently have a limit so as to distinguish “necessary” from “surplus.” According to Bernard Suits, play is the “voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.”7 On the other hand, the limit to necessary labor time is determined by the average costs to reproduce the laborer. If it is to be believed that play as labor can create surplus value, then we must analyze the relationship between labor time and leisure time. The way that play may arguably be socially “necessary” is not commensurate with how we determine what is socially necessary labor time. Thus one primary challenge of this essay is to reconcile a Marxist understanding of socially necessary labor time, with what is “necessary” to maintain gameplay. To analyze the social relations of playbor, I must first turn briefly to theories of play to ask what distinguishes play from labor. PLAY AS AN INVESTMENT Most classical theories of play consider play to be necessary for the development of children into healthy adults. For example, from an evolutionary standpoint, several theories have argued that play serves as a means to either reinforce or dispose of instincts necessary for survival.8 On the other hand, cognitive development theory argues that play corresponds to different stages of developing a mental model of the world. From a psychoanalytical approach, play is a form of catharsis and emotional regulation, or a coping mechanism.9 Although several of these earlier developmental models of play have been discredited in the field of psychology, there are still remnants of this thought that persist in the classroom, as the pedagogical value of play is now widely accepted. In contrast to these biological approaches, which assume play serves a psychological purpose, there are the energy models of play, which approach the body as a mechanical object. The surplus energy theory assumes that the body has to regulate its limited store of energy, but that children have it in excess because energy normally spent toward their survival is taken up by their parents. Therefore, play emerges as a way for children to discharge this surplus energy.10 On the other hand, a recreation theory of play assumes that labor depletes energy, and that it must be replenished through play.11 It would appear that the energy-based models of play offer the richest language to discuss the playbor of video games. It provides a neat dialectical relationship between labor and play, where each is defined by the bounds of the other. I would argue that all these approaches to play can be characterized as falling under one of two approaches to the potentiality of childhood. Those

Roblox and the Value in Suspending Playbor Time

139

concerned with developmental progress of the child treat potentiality as a thing to be nurtured in order to arrive at a self-realized adult. The energy-based models of play treat potentiality as a quantifiable resource that must be used productively and not wasted. I argue that these different approaches to play are reflected in the various genres of games. For example, in the realm of video games, Mizuki Ito identifies three main genres: academic, entertainment, and construction games. She argues that all three emerge from existing educational approaches and ideas on play. However, the distinction between these genres is not fixed; rather, they are constantly contested and renegotiated.12 Roblox has arguably cycled through all of these genres. Prior to becoming Roblox in 2004, the original software, Interactive Physics, was developed in 1989 as a STEM physics simulator used to teach physics in a 2D space. At this point it would qualify as an academic genre game, or as an “edutainment” game to be used in classrooms. However, once Roblox branched out by allowing players to use the same software to make their own simulations and games, the platform became mostly for entertainment, or to encourage open-ended play. In fact, their highest growth happened during the years of the COVID-19 epidemic, when children suddenly had much more leisure time to log on to the platform. In the last two years since going public on the New York Stock Exchange, Roblox has invested a significant amount of money in research initiatives that can bring Roblox back to its edutainment roots, but they also support a constructivist educational approach. In the nineties, the tech of the game was merely a virtual analog to the physics that could be taught in the lab. While Roblox can still be used as a physics simulator, the primary STEM skills being taught now have shifted toward coding and software management. The gaming technology is no longer incidental to the learning process, but it offers a type of play that emphasizes self-authoring and media production as a form of learning. As stated on their creator forums, a “game designer’s role is to create an engaging experience for players, retain those players over time, and devise a sustainable monetization model to fund further development” (emphasis added).13 In other words, it is no longer adequate to learn STEM skills, but also necessary to learn how to direct these skills in a self-sustained business model. This new form of edutainment manages not only to gamify the learning of tech skills, but also to characterize the process as an entrepreneurial investment in oneself. Josef Nyugen traces the edutainment genre from the “Californian ideology” that came out of Silicon Valley, to our contemporary child coders and hackers, in order to argue that a unique community of self-styled “makers” emerged alongside post-Fordism.14 Makers are those who are comfortable with tinkering, hacking, or playing creatively, often subverting expectations, and sometimes the law, for the sake of innovation. More importantly, they subscribe to a playful DIY ethos that means their creative efforts are

140

Sumaria Butt

voluntary and leisurely. In defining play, Johan Huizinga emphasized that play must set the subject free in order to perform actions without material consequences.15 The gamification of education certainly subscribes to this definition of play. It grants children the freedom the experiment potentially indefinitely, until they achieve success. I would argue that this gamified rhetoric has seeped into discourse, with similar effects. The ideological power of such rhetoric manages to portray creative labor as a leisurely activity, and thus trivializes any potential material consequences. As investors in their own futures, both children and creative workers are liable to misstep, but this can be dismissed as experimentation and a potential learning opportunity. We can see that the rhetoric of gamification, whether applied to education or labor, borrows from the same language of entrepreneurial investment. Gamified curriculums, particularly in the STEM fields, are introduced with the implication that children who fail to get a head start in acquiring these creative and entrepreneurial skills will be at a disadvantage once they enter the job market. Nyugen is careful to point out that the “maker” child is more often than not, a cis-white male, as the “maker community” emerged from a techno-libertarianism discourse historically directed toward white, middle-class masculinity. However, it seems that the onus to invest in one’s mind, as a form of human capital, is amplified when directed toward lowincome neighborhoods in particular. For example, when an ad by the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) used the language of financialization to solicit “investors” to donate to their funds, it went so far as to calculate the speculative returns of these investments.16 That is, it predicted the future salaries, health savings, and even “crime savings’” of black youths who would receive these funds. The ad campaign demonstrated a meta-awareness that racialized bodies are often precluded from something like the “maker community” that Nyugen describes. Instead, they require outside “investors” in their education to realize the value of their human capital. Whether figured as an open space for creative experimentation, or less playfully as a speculative investment, education is always figured as a space to shape future labor power. Game as Machine I return now to the question of exactly what form of labor children are performing through their play. It is important to note that playing games, or joining “experiences” on Roblox, is free unless the individual creator decides to charge for entry to their experience. Many developers do add this feature, either directly, or indirectly by selling game passes. Overall, however, Roblox maintains their freemium sandbox approach, and so navigating through the metaverse does not inherently require R$. Games do not circulate in the metaverse as commodities must circulate. Virtual commodities, like avatar

Roblox and the Value in Suspending Playbor Time

141

clothing, do circulate through the Roblox marketplace much like real commodities. They embody a certain amount of dead labor power, or transformed value, and it is through the process of exchange that this is made apparent. For example, purchasing a commodity transforms the value form, from exchange value into use value.17 Games on Roblox do not function like commodities, as they do not go through any such transformation. Instead, they are creations of virtual spaces. Roblox, with its “builderman” ethos, is particularly apt to slip into the language of material production to describe its user creations. To paint children as “creators” is to support the assumption that they are directly producing commodities for Roblox. However, the revenue Roblox receives through these games does not rely on the production capacity of the users. Instead, the revenue comes from charging for access to these game spaces, much like a tax or rent. Therefore, game creators are not producing commodities for Roblox, but rather, they are helping to reproduce the conditions that allow the virtual marketplace to function. I choose to look at player creations not as a form of commodity production, but as a kind of modding. Julian Kücklich argues that software modding is one particular kind of playbor that adds significant value to the gaming industry.18 Modifications performed on proprietary software are often illegal and automatically sever any support for the consumer. However, gaming companies have found it lucrative to grant users partial access to software, and they may encourage modding in order to keep gameplay relevant. Mods often create solutions for bugs that only become apparent after a game is released, or they can add options to meet a specific demand made by players. Kücklich points out that modding significantly extends the shelf life of games, a commodity that notoriously becomes quickly outdated and demands constant updates in order to keep its consumer base engaged. Rather than use the language of material production to categorize user-generated content as commodities in themselves, I consider modding playbor to be akin to repairing machinery, or fixed capital. In much the same way that laborers do not own the means of production, such as machinery in a factory, Roblox users do not own the software. Fixed capital, after its initial purchase, is pulled out of circulation and no longer has its value realized through direct exchange. Instead, the value of dead labor ossified within the machinery must incrementally be transferred into the commodities it helps to produce. As Marx explains, performing maintenance on fixed capital congeals additional value directly in the means of production. The realization of that new value is deferred until the next production cycle, but it eventually offsets any value lost in disrepair. These repairs are part of the costs of production, but it “is not advanced all at one time but whenever a need for it arises, and the various times for advancing it are in the very nature of things accidental. All fixed capital demands such subsequent, dosed out, additional outlay of capital for

142

Sumaria Butt

instruments of labour and labour-power.”19 What is unusual about “repairing” a digital commodity like software, is that the need for it does not arise “accidentally,” so much as arbitrarily. The timeline for repairs is not dictated by actual machinery that is of no use while it sits in disrepair. Rather, Roblox can choose to push for updates and new content at any point when user engagement feels low. Consequently, the “repairs” performed by creating new game spaces is constantly occurring, and subsequently the value of the software does not deplete in the same way that the value of machinery would over its average lifespan. In this extended analogy, creative children are not the operators of the Roblox “machine,” but simply the repairmen. And while they are not employed, some may receive compensation in the form of R$. However, the circumstances in which these R$ can be converted into money outside the game are not accessible to most players. As long as children’s playbor is quantified in terms of R$, it is treated by Roblox purely as play, or a leisurely contribution. For the small fraction of developers who may convert their digital currency to real currency, there are still tiers of accessibility, and no proper wage relation is defined for their labor. Whether they are compensated or not, I would argue that all creators of monetized experiences are indirectly contributing to the production of value, despite not occupying the realm of production themselves. If we understand the value of children’s playbor as being congealed within the fixed capital of games, then we have yet to explore what commodities the Roblox “machine” produces. I argue that the only real commodity that Roblox currently offers is the service of exchanging money for its virtual currency, Robux. To understand what this virtual currency does for gameplay, we need to consider how the freemium model requires the interaction of two distinct kinds of users: those who pay for R$ and those who do not. Although R$ deeply enhances gameplay, it is not required to have the currency for basic play. Therefore, with no initial costs, all users can join, create experiences, and use the proprietary software and learning resources, which are also offered for free. In theory, any user can choose to become a creator, at least at the hobbyist level. They may also choose to monetize their creations and try to earn R$. There are several monetizing strategies, such as putting up ad space within your experience. This costs the user nothing, save for the playbor time of building their experience. There are also engagement-based payouts, which incentivize creators to increase the traffic of Premium users in their experiences. Conversely, to produce virtual commodities to sell in the marketplace does incur some fees prior to earning any Robux. The seller of virtual commodities must bring more than her playbor power. Marx specifies that laboring upon an object to bring about a use value is not enough to make it a commodity. Entering a set of social relations of exchange is what makes

Roblox and the Value in Suspending Playbor Time

143

the object a commodity. Similarly, to create a virtual object for oneself to use is free. However, to sell it in the marketplace incurs fees, as Roblox must maintain the circuits of exchange. While it is technically possible to avoid purchasing R$ and rely entirely on selling your own playbor power instead, this requires investing a longer period of time to learn the necessary skills. On the other hand, making avatar clothes is done relatively quickly by using the templates provided. We see here a common tension in the freemium model of games, that is maintaining a sense of equivalent and therefore fair gameplay for all. Premium access, such as selling on the marketplace, often involves paying for the ability to skip over hours “grinding.” In video games, grinding refers to repeating actions for an extended period of time to earn an advantage such as currency or experience points. Aware of this tension, Roblox encourages developers to use discretion when designing their experiences for the average Roblox user. Free play should be challenging enough to be engaging, but not too difficult as to be discouraging. In the same vein, paid upgrades should be appealing enough to encourage more purchases, but avoid giving disproportionate advantages to paid users, thereby losing free users. To use money to buy R$, as opposed to earning it within the platform, introduces a different set of values based on labor power as opposed to playbor power. Thus, the virtual currency is a formal device attempting to resolve a fundamental incommensurability between leisure and labor time. The fact that currency exists in this space signals that the Roblox metaverse functions virtually as a commodity economy. Just as “real” money serves as the common denominator between use value and exchange value, or between concrete labor and abstract labor, Robux can be thought of as attempting to serve as the common denominator between labor time and leisure time, or productive labor and unproductive labor. Unlike the price of labor power, which is dependent on socially necessary labor time, the price of this playbor power is determined solely by Roblox. Ultimately, it is the conversion rate between R$ and $ that determines the equivalence between leisure time and labor time. The Developer Exchange Program (DevEx) regulates this exchange rate. If users wish to cash out of their virtual currency, they must use DevEx. Developers are rewarded R$ if they manage to create an engaging experience, a metric determined by the amount of traffic they accrue in their experience. On their Creator Hub site, Roblox advises creators on how to review engagement analytics for their own experience. Despite being a platform that offers many experiences, including games, it resembles YouTube more than something like the App Store—which is to say that clicks and onetime purchases are not their primary metrics for engagement. A typical Roblox session might include jumping from one experience to another in a relatively short period of time, and the engagement-based payouts account for this user

144

Sumaria Butt

behavior. To calculate the exchange rate for the payout, the DevEx program converts the “Premium Playtime Score,” earned by the developer’s experience, into a quantity of “Premium Playtime Robux Earned.” The former is based on the amount of daily time Premium subscribers spend in an experience, whereas the latter is based on the aggregate of each user’s behavior over twenty-eight days. The correlation between the two is left vague on the developer forums, except to say that “even though they have similar trends, this [latter] metric has no direct mathematical relationship with the Premium Playtime Score.”20 Just like any other transaction on the platfrom, a hefty percentage goes to Roblox when you are “selling” your R$ back to Roblux. According to the current DevEx exchange rate, cashing out your R$ means losing 72 percent of their value when compared to the price of buying them.21 Quentin Smith argues that the high loss to the user when they attempt to cash out, is an international form of disincentivization to leaving the virtual economy.22 Robux goes much further in the virtual economy than the equivalent would in real currency, so developers are more likely to not cash out of the game. This disincentivization, or quality of being stuck in the virtual economy, stands in contrast to the ease with which one can enter the virtual economy. Roblox cites its “low-friction” user experience as one of its main draws. This refers to the deliberate ease in which users can join the platform, by using nearly any device, with minimal steps, and begin to play right away for free. If user-engagement is profitable to Roblox, it seems natural to assume that leaving the platform is designed to actually maintain “friction.” Developers experience low friction upon entering, in that the platform takes on all maintenance costs and offers a streamlined experience for creating. They are encouraged to capitalize on the high organic traffic of users that low friction creates, and to focus their efforts on turning general users into Premium subscribers. Then they can begin designing right away and do not need to worry about proprietary fees to other distributing platforms, such as app stores. However, developers do eventually pay for these costs, but not until their creations are successfully monetized, or earning Robux. These cuts are low-friction as well, because the Roblox share is deducted automatically at the moment of every transaction. Depending on the type of transaction, and where it occurs, Roblox’s share can range from 30 to 70 percent. If we attempt to trace the circulation of even one virtual object, we can see how these layers of participation and the division of value can quickly become difficult to unravel.23 I argue that the quality of the “low-friction” experience in Roblox is essentially the invisibility of circulating values. Thus, low friction does not describe the ease of joining a platform, but the seamlessness of participating in networked levels of exchange, and the freedom from having to calculate the transformation of value across disparate economies.

Roblox and the Value in Suspending Playbor Time

145

Ultimately, it is the instability of the virtual currency, or its severe devaluation when it exits Roblox, that suggests the freemium form actually fails to abstract labor and play to equivalent units of exchange. Instead, leisure must always remain subordinate, or undervalued, in order to maintain the value of labor power. Failing to acknowledge this subordination is precisely what I argue is lacking in some approaches to immaterial labor, in particular the autonomism of Maurizio Lazzarato. In an effort to recognize cultural production, including actions within the digital economy, as productive labor is to insist upon equivalences across labor and leisure. However, as we have seen in the difficulty of pricing playbor power, not all labor is equal. Labeling cultural production as a form of free labor within a complex “social factory” simply forces us to apply the language of material production onto the immaterial.24 I offer the idea of children as the repairmen of Roblox not to extend this allegory of the factory, but to reveal its limitations. The “machinery” of digital economies do not require the labor of children to operate it, nor do the cultural objects it produces function as value-realizing commodities. Instead, children simply extend the life of the technology employed by Roblox, but with no indication to what end. In fact, one could imagine Roblox as a form of machinery that has yet to find a use for itself. It would appear that the perpetuity of creation on the platform is precisely to collect enough data so as to find new applications for this massive accumulation of fixed capital. It would appear that the majority of cultural production, or creative efforts within the platform, are simply a means to perpetually circulate values. Denning’s analysis of wageless life is helpful here because it does not presume the eventual subsumption of all forms of labor into productive labor. In fact, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall suggests that so-called surplus, or unproductive, populations will only grow with time. He suggests, therefore, that the emblematic figure of wageless life “is not the child in the sweatshop . . . but the child in the streets, [who is] alternately predator and prey.”25 Rather than force the language of material production onto play, I ask how playbor manages surplus populations. While play and leisure fail to be equivalent in terms of producing surplus value, I believe the two still offer a rich ideological equivalence. Therefore, in the following section, I will analyze the virtual economy within Roblox as an allegory for the real economy within which Roblox operates. The blurred distinction between labor and leisure is reflected in the difficulty to distinguish between allegory and reference, or the virtual from the real. As a form of interpretation, allegory can provide insight into the cultural significance of playing Roblox from the perspective of the children who navigate these economies in play.

146

Sumaria Butt

Game as Allegory As Fredric Jameson has displayed in his own writing, his methodology for political allegory can offer a rich heuristic for interpreting non-literary objects as well. Alexander Galloway takes this Jamesonian framework and applies it to an interpretation of video games, but he makes several key distinctions in the transition to these non-narrative media objects. Firstly, he reiterates a common refrain among game studies scholars: video games are actions. More precisely, although there may be a narrative element in a video game that could be interpreted much like a literary work, the interpretation of a game happens not by revealing something about the narrative, but it occurs within the act of playing itself. Just as texts might be interpreted for their literary allegory, or read to reveal the “other-speak” that runs parallel to the narrative, “the interpretation of gamic acts, then, should be thought of as the creation of a secondary discourse narrating a series of ‘other-acts.’”26 Galloway defines the interpretation of a video game as not an act of revealing what could not be represented by language, but the act of playing with the language, or code, of the game itself. This brings us to the second main distinction that Galloway makes: the control allegory in video games, as opposed to a deep allegory of narratives. Jameson approaches narrative as an epistemological category, or a mode of knowing, and thus treats all narratives as a socially symbolic act. He suggests that the text enacts formal antagonisms, which read allegorically, reveal contradictions among three levels of interpretation (the political, social, and historical).27 Thus a narrative resolution offers a symbolic resolution to political antagonisms that cannot otherwise be found. What marks a Jamesonian allegory is the need to uncover the text beyond the first level of interpretation, or the symptomatic reading. This level functions entirely as an ideological critique, but it fails to see outside of its own form, and therefore it can find symbolic resolution for the individual in the narrative act. The second level of interpretation is not as easily resolved, as it makes apparent the tensions of the narrative form, and it can reveal a collective desire. Finally, the historical level of interpretation recognizes the repetition of form and transformation of genre, revealing the reification of ideology through aesthetic forms. A centering force in the complexity of such a layered allegory is the political. Jameson purports that these formal antagonisms run parallel to the repressed desires of the alienated political subject living under capitalism. In characterizing this allegorical method as “deep,” Galloway suggests it functions somewhat like a nesting doll, and thus the interpretive goal of traditional allegory is to get to the core of real meaning, or to unearth the otherwise repressed political unconscious. However, the very need for allegory signals a failure of representation. If allegory acts as a framework of parallel meanings,

Roblox and the Value in Suspending Playbor Time

147

its structure also reveals that it cannot maintain neat equivalences across these parallel tracks. To interpret this structure, even “deeply,” does not resolve the incommensurability between interpretation and action. Or, simply put, knowing is not equivalent to doing. However, this is precisely where Galloway deftly argues that video games diverge from other media. According to Galloway, if video game play is primarily action, then the act of winning the game is to know the entire system of code, “and thus to interpret a game means to interpret its algorithm—to discover its parallel ʻallegorithm.ʼ”28 However, the “allegorithm” is no longer a deep allegory of political consciousness, but a flattened allegory of informatic control. Informatics always exist at the forefront of a video game, so there is no formal need to reveal them. They are the algorithmic means of both playing and conquering the game. Thus knowing, through playing, is a political act in itself. [The]depth model in traditional allegorical interpretation is a sublimation of the separation felt by the viewer between his or her experience consuming the media and the potentially liberating political value of those media. But games abandon this unsatisfying model of deferral, epitomizing instead the flatness of control allegory by unifying the act of playing the game with an immediate political experience.29

According to Galloway, play offers an immediacy that the interpretation of other media cannot afford. Winning a game, or conquering a system of informatics, is no longer a symbolic act of seeking knowledge, but an immediate resolution in itself. However, it is only by ignoring the formal fetishization of control that one can conclude that a deferred political desire ceases to exist in video games altogether. Galloway states that “a gameʼs revealing is also a rewriting (a lateral step, not a forward step). A gameʼs celebration of the end of ideological manipulation is also a new manipulation, only this time using wholly different diagrams of command and control.”30 However, this idea of a play as a “lateral” move clashes with the hierarchical rhetoric of winning a game. If we reconsider that mastery of the game is not a victory “over” the algorithm, but rather a stepping out of the algorithm altogether, we can start to see there is, in fact, a sublimated political desire at work in the video game. Fetishizing informatics allows one to purport that interpretation through play can escape the concentricity of deep allegory altogether. That it somehow, in its transparency about control, can sidestep sublimation and find immediate resolution through the act of winning the game. I argue that it is the immediacy of play, or essentially a contraction of time, that allows playing to become commensurate with the political act. However, a formal tension reveals itself at the moment of winning, one that I argue is primarily

148

Sumaria Butt

temporal. If we consider that play must be temporally and spatially confined in order to provide the obstacles for the player to overcome, then the player must commit to these bounds to succeed in the game.31 So there must exist an element of make-believe, where the player has a special awareness of the unreality that is the game, in contrast to the real life outside it.32 In this sense, I would characterize play as a moment of temporal suspension. The temporal mechanics of play are specific to each game, but they all stand in contrast to real time. This is complicated on a platform such as Roblox, where a user may visit several kinds of experiences within a single session. In trying to define gaming using a systems theory approach, Bo Walther distinguishes “play-mode” from “game-mode.”33 In play-mode, one is focused on the element of make-believe and strives not to fall back into reality, although there is always the risk of doing so. However, in game-mode, the player is focused on climbing upward to the next level and not losing sight of the entire structure of the game. I want to suggest that play-mode, or a form of suspension, is felt in a single experience, and game-mode is felt when navigating between these experiences. It is managing the interface between the two that is the challenge for developers curating the Roblox experience. Each follows different temporal logics. The former needs to suspend real time to fully engage with the mechanics of the game, while the latter blatantly reveals that it functions upon the currency of attention, or collecting sustained periods of user engagement. In this way, play-mode only concerns the individuals’ performance in relation to the game’s clock. Game-mode, however, compares all users’ engagement against each other, in order to distinguish an engaging experience from a less-lucrative one. I argue that the act of winning is a jolt out of play-mode, into game-mode, or from one temporality to another. As a lateral move, winning is only a temporary resolution of stepping out of the algorithm, not a conquering over the algorithm. To better understand how this incommensurability is resolved by the gaming form, I look first to how Galloway’s “flattening” of allegory is caused by formal changes in both genre and medium. He cites the transformation of the conspiracy film genre as an example. Prevalent in the 1970s, the conspiracy film genre has since been succeeded by the popularity of the “epistemological reversal” films of the twentieth century. Building on Jameson’s interpretation, the former can be read ideologically as the political impossibility of grasping global capitalism as a totality; thus interpretation of the film becomes an act of locating a central truth amidst a complex and unknowable system. In contrast, the latter film genre plays with complexity and invites the viewer to play with it as well. It presents a series of feasible truths, with winding reveals and reversals, only in order to upend them all with the film’s conclusion or final reveal. In this way, the interpretative act of the former genre is “sedimented” into the aesthetic form of the genre that supersedes it.34 In the epistemological

Roblox and the Value in Suspending Playbor Time

149

reversal film, the interpretive act is no longer to locate a singular truth, but to parse through several premises, before triumphing over the logic of the entire system of informatic truth. In this way, this shift in genres is necessitated by the reification of the symbolic resolution itself, or what Galloway calls the “informatization of the conspiracy film.”35 The act of uncovering a singular truth is reified by the genre such that it no longer provides symbolic resolution, but instead, it exists in the background as one component among many. Finding truth becomes a game in itself, a self-contained act that does not extend beyond the bounds of film. If the viewer plays along with the film’s system of meting out partial information, he is rewarded at the end of the epistemological reversal film by understanding the entirety of the film’s framework. Similar to how this fetishization of the “knowledge triumph” necessitated an intra-medium shift, Galloway argues that it has necessitated an inter-medium shift as well, that is a shift “in which films about the absence of control have been replaced by games that fetishize control.”36 Galloway describes here how the gamification of films formalizes the fetishization of control, until the primary medium becomes game itself. This causes an allegorical “flattening,” in that all possible truths exist at once. All are equally plausible, and they do not exist in a vertical hierarchy in relation to one another. In fact, it is often a feature of gameplay that the order in which to parse through this information is left for the player to discover. [Video games]also have non-linear narratives that must unfold in algorithmic form during gameplay. In this sense video games deliver to the player the power relationships of informatic media first-hand, choreographed into a multivalent cluster of play activities. In fact, in their very core, video games present the political realities of computerization in relatively unmediated form. They solve the problem of political control, not by sublimating it as does the cinema, but by making it coterminous with the entire game. In this way video games achieve a unique type of political transparency.37

I understand this flattening, or lateralization, as foremost a temporal change, and thus the political transparency to be an experience of individual immediacy. The vertical logics of informatics offers an immediacy in meaning that allows play to appear to be a political act in itself. Conversely, we can consider the horizontal logics of deep allegory, as a deferral of meaning-making. Or an act that must stretch across time, attempting to find a symbolic resolution in a collective consciousness. In this way, the horizontal and vertical logics can also be mapped respectively, in spatio-temporal terms, as one moving through time as opposed to one standing still. Building on this formulation of the horizontal and vertical logics of allegory, I choose to look at the Roblox gaming platform as a crosshatch of both.

150

Sumaria Butt

I argue that it is precisely in the moments that these logics clash, such as the moment of winning, that we see formal antagonisms of the video game that warrant further examination. This approach allows us to problematize a complication of allegory that Galloway points out himself, namely that the more one tries to pin down an ideological reading, the more it seems that the informatics of control rears its head as the blunt reality and overshadows any possible ideological reading of games. Galloway claims this is due to a fundamental incommensurability between abstracted data and ideology, but he dismisses this contradiction by clarifying, “mine is an argument about informatic control, not about ideology. . . . Thus the logic of informatic and horizontality is privileged over the logic of verticality . . . as it most likely is in all video games in varying degrees.”38 While it is true that the derivative form of the algorithm cannot contain the complexity of actual life, this only confirms the entanglement of allegorical interpretation. The “allegorithm” can only exist parallel to real social relations. There is, indeed, no need to interpret playing, or “living,” in the metaverse as an allegory of informatization. It is plainly visible that users within Roblox, primarily children, enter a complex algorithmic ecosystem, where they have their actions mediated by code and controlled by legal user agreements. To push further on these self-contained logics of verticality, we need to consider the self-awareness of the average Roblox user while playing a single game. I want to conclude by looking at one particular game in Roblox in more detail. The tagline for the game “HOURS,” calls on players to “seize control of time itself to break through. Your actions may be meaningless, but will you push forward and reach the end in spite of that?”39 The game space here is self-reflective. It acknowledges that the question of finding greater meaning is deferred, but it challenges the player to find a terminable goal through play regardless of this. Winning is a goal in and of itself, and it need not represent anything more. However, I would argue that the mechanics of time manipulation in the game lets slip a desire not only for simple resolution by winning, but a desire to actually traverse a deeper time. To play the code of the game is also to tread its lack of meaning, or to “push forward” and dig beyond the flatness of informatics. To understand how, let us examine the gameplay. Like many other Roblox experiences, it builds on previous creations to offer users enough familiarity to intuitively pull them into the game. “HOURS” is built like a standard hack-and-slash game, with different obstacles and enemies offered at each game level. The unique addition of this game is to allow the player, or host, to play directly with the mechanics of game time. Thus the host’s main goal is to learn how to use various “tempos” in order to manipulate time, avoid damage, and kill their enemies. Each tempo is a power that a host can use, for varying spans of time, for example, to freeze, jump, speed up, slow down, or turn back time, or even swap with a clone of themselves

Roblox and the Value in Suspending Playbor Time

151

in another timeline. Some tempos may affect time relevant only to the host’s movement, the enemy’s movement, or the ability for either to incur damage. Subsequently, each tempo comes with different recovery times, or the time in which you are left vulnerable. The difficulty of mastering the game is apparent if you consider that a player can choose between fifteen different hosts, each with their own strengths in combat styles, and use any of thirty-two tempos. This comes out to hundreds of possible combinations from which to choose. However, the game descriptions suggest that certain hosts are best suited for certain tempos, levels, and enemies. The player must also consider that not all tempos or hosts are readily available to the new player. Some tempos are “hidden,” some must be bought with Robux, and others are earned by winning certain levels. Gaining access to these different options, and strategizing to find the optimal combination within those limits, does indeed epitomize the logics of informatics. But in addition to this, the game mechanics create a deeply fragmented temporality, not just between the experience of hosts and enemies, but even between actions and their effects. Players are tasked with exploiting this asynchronicity to maximize the effects of their actions. If one is to consider the self-Taylorizing effect of this temporal atomization, an underlying ideology begins to emerge. It offers an interesting allegory for economizing movements in the workplace, because it focuses not only on managing one’s own speed, but it exploits the idea that speed is always relative. That is to say, when squeezing productivity out of the limited workday, to the measure of half-seconds, is no longer feasible, the player can turn to manipulating time itself. For example, the power to make time stop for everyone when you stand still means that taking time to pause and strategize is not time lost. Conversely, repeating a five-second span, without having to be physically returned to where you stood, is akin to automating mechanics so that twice as much can occur at once. Once a player has mastered this skill, the form of the video game pushes for yet more optimization. The player can adjust the difficulty level, working their way up from “weeks” mode, to “days,” “hours,” and even “seconds” mode. So, what appears at first to be a standard hack-and-slash game, is also an exercise in internalizing the notion that all moving parts of production, or play, change in relation to your own performance. The temporal limits are not fixed, and so all decisions must be customized in real-time. To win the game is to both master game time, and symbolically master the limitations of both labor time. Upon winning, the player takes a lateral out of one game system, and into the larger system of Roblox. Despite the low-friction of entry, to exit the game is jarring. The very same acceleration that condenses experiences in Roblox into shorter and shorter experiences, makes the moment of victory so brief as to almost not exist. However, it is a

152

Sumaria Butt

brief moment with potential, for the player to acknowledge how they must at once renegotiate their relationship toward both labor and leisure time. NOTES 1. “Roblox, Explained (for Beginners).” Colin and Samir. June 7, 2021. YouTube video. 2. Cecilia D’Anastasio, “On Roblox, Kids Learn It’s Hard to Earn Money Making Games,” Wired (August 19, 2021). 3. Some even assume that the need to treat children better is a widely accepted position. For example, investigative journalist Quentin Smith, states, “If you accept that we need to treat minors who are doing a job better than we treat adults doing the same job, that’s just abhorrent. . . . Especially when you consider the platform is encouraging kids to come and work for them.” As quoted in D’Anastasio, “On Roblox.” 4. Julian Kücklich, “Precarious Playbour: Modders and the Digital Games Industry,” Fibreculture Journal 25, no. 5 (2005). 5. Several scholars of subsumption conclude that the relationship of wagelessness to wage-labor cannot be assumed to be chronological. Capital proves resilient and can fluctuate between moments of formal and real subsumption. I am thinking here particularly of how Nicholas Vrousalis points out that “capitalist social relations do not presuppose wage-labour.” As quoted in “Capital Without Wage-Labour: Marx’s Modes of Subsumption Revisited,” Economics and Philosophy (March 22, 2017). Similarly, Michael Denning states that “wageless life, not wage labour, is the starting point in understanding the free market.” As quoted in “Wageless Life,” New Left Review 66 (Nov.–Dec. 2010). 6. The demographics of Roblox users would indicate that most children on the platform are not compelled to be there. I think that playboring children are representative of a latent reserve army of laborers. They are not fully integrated into capitalist productions, nor are they necessarily looking for work. However, they are available to be pulled into the workforce if needed. Members of the latent reserve are dependent on others to reproduce themselves, so they are easily exploited through lower wages. 7. Bernard Suits, The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2014). 8. Karl Groos, Play of Animals (New York: Appleton, 1898); Stanley Hall, Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene (1906). 9. Sigmund Freud and Anna Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle & Other Works, translated by James Stratchey (London: Hogarth Press, 1922). 10. Friedrich Schiller (1873) and Herbert Spencer (1875), as quoted in Irina Verenikina, Pauline Harris, and Pauline Lysaght, “Child’s Play: Computer Games, Theories of Play and Children’s Development,” Australian Computer Society, Inc. (Original paper presented at the IFIP Working Group 3.5 Conference: Young Children and Learning Technologies, 2003).

Roblox and the Value in Suspending Playbor Time

153

11. Moritz Lazarus (1883) and George T. W. Patrick (1916), as quoted in Verenikina, Harris, and Lysaght, “Child’s Play.” 12. Mizuko Ito, Engineering Play: a Cultural History of Children’s Software (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2009), 3. 13. “Designing Experiences on Roblox,” Roblox Creator Hub, Roblox Corporation, https:​//​create​.roblox​.com​/docs​/production​/game​-design. 14. Josef Nyugen, The Digital Is Kid Stuff: Making Creative Laborers for a Precarious Economy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2021). 15. Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens (Boston: Beacon Press, 1949), quoted in W. Otterspeer, In Praise of Ambiguity Erasmus, Huizinga and the Seriousness of Play. Translated by Vivien Collingwood (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2018). 16. Julian Gill-Peterson, “The Value of the Future: The Child as Human Capital and the Neoliberal Labor of Race,” WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, Volume 43, no. 1 & 2 (Spring/Summer 2015), 181–96. 17. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Translated by Ben Fowkes and David Fernbach (London: Penguin Books, 1990). 18. Kücklich, “Precarious Playbour.” 19. Karl Marx, Capital, Volume 2, edited by Friedrich Engels, 2nd ed. (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1893), chapter 8. 20. “Engagement-based Payouts,” Roblox Creator Hub, Roblox Corporation, https:​ //​create​.roblox​.com​/docs​/production​/monetization​/engagement​-based​-payouts. 21. For example, buying R$100 costs $1.25, while selling R$100 would yield only $0.35. Consider, as well, that there is a R$30,000 minimum ($105) minimum before you are permitted to cash out your Robux. 22. Quentin Smith, as quoted in D’Anastasio, “On Roblox.” 23. For example, consider that in the sale of a single clothing item, 30 percent goes to the developer that created the clothing, 40 percent to any affiliated experience that is hosting the item for sale (this can be another user, but if it is the Marketplace, the affiliate is Roblox), and finally a 30 percent share is automatically given to Roblox. There is also the option to create limited items. Creators must choose the fixed limit of these items (quantity and length of selling time) before publishing them for sale. They are asked to cover part of their price up front in addition to any publishing fees. The compensation to the creator for selling these items is more complex and depends upon whether the full stock sells. Anyone may buy limited items, but Premium users are also allowed to resell them, which follows a different division of shares (50 percent reseller, 10 percent creator, 10 percent seller/affiliate, 30 percent Roblox). 24. Tiziana Terranova, “Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy,” Social Text, 63, Volume 18, no. 2 (Summer 2000). 25. Denning, “Wageless Life,” 79. 26. Alexander Galloway, Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 104. 27. Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1981). 28. Galloway, Gaming, 91. 29. Galloway, Gaming, 103.

154

Sumaria Butt

30. Galloway, Gaming, 106. 31. Huizinga, Homo Ludens, quoted in Otterspeer, In Praise of Ambiguity Erasmus, Huizinga and the Seriousness of Play. 32. Roger Caillois, Man, Play, and Games, translated by Meyer Barash (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1961). 33. Bo Kampmann Walther, “Playing and Gaming: Reflections and Classifications,” Game Studies, Volume 3, issue 1 (May 2003). 34. For more about “sedimented” forms, see Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Hauppauge: Duke University Press, 2013). 35. Galloway, Gaming, 94. 36. Galloway, Gaming, 93. 37. Galloway, Gaming, 93. 38. Galloway, Gaming, 103. 39. “HOURS Wiki,” Fandom, https:​//​hours​-roblox​.fandom​.com​/wiki​/HOURS.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Caillois, Roger. Man, Play, and Games. Translated by Meyer Barash. New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1961. D’Anastasio, Cecilia. “On Roblox, Kids Learn It’s Hard to Earn Money Making Games.” Wired, August 19, 2021. https:​//​www​.wired​.com​/story​/on​-roblox​-kids​ -learn​-its​-hard​-to​-earn​-money​-making​-games/. Denning, Micheal. “Wageless Life,” New Left Review 66, Nov.–Dec. 2010: 79–97. Freud, Sigmund, and Anna Freud. Beyond the Pleasure Principle & Other Works. Translated by James Stratchey. London: Hogarth Press, 1922. Gill-Peterson, Julian. “The Value of the Future: The Child as Human Capital and the Neoliberal Labor of Race.” WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, Volume 43, no. 1 & 2, Spring/Summer 2015, 181–96. Groos, Karl. The Play of Animals. New York: Appleton,1898. Hall, Stanley. Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene. The Project Gutenberg: uploaded 2012, originally published 1906. “HOURS Wiki.” Fandom. https:​//​hours​-roblox​.fandom​.com​/wiki​/HOURS. Itō, Mizuko. Engineering Play: a Cultural History of Children’s Software. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2009. Jameson, Fredric. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1981. ———. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Hauppauge: Duke University Press, 2013. Kücklich, Julian. “Precarious Playbour: Modders and the Digital Games Industry.” Fibreculture Journal 25, no. 5, 2005. Marx, Karl. Capital: a Critique of Political Economy. Translated by Ben Fowkes and David Fernbach. London: Penguin Books in association with New Left Review, 1990.

Roblox and the Value in Suspending Playbor Time

155

———. Capital Volume 2. Edited by Friedrich Engels. Translated by I. Lasker. 2nd ed. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1893. https:​//​www​.marxists​.org​/archive​/marx​/ works​/1885​-c2​/index​.htm. Nyugen, Josef. The Digital Is Kid Stuff: Making Creative Laborers for a Precarious Economy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2021. Otterspeer, W. In Praise of Ambiguity Erasmus, Huizinga and the Seriousness of Play. Translated by Vivien Collingwood. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago, 2018. Roblox Corporation. “Designing Experiences on Roblox.” Roblox Creator Hub. https:​//​create​.roblox​.com​/docs​/production​/game​-design. ———. “Engagement-based Payouts.” Roblox Creator Hub. https:​//​create​.roblox​ .com​/docs​/production​/monetization​/engagement​-based​-payouts. “Roblox, Explained (for Beginners).” Colin and Samir. June 7, 2021. YouTube video, https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=j7eETkQcHLA. Suits, Bernard. The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2014. Terranova, Tiziana. “Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy.” Social Text, 63, Volume 18, no. 2, Summer 2000, 33–58. Verenikina, Irina, Pauline Harris, and Pauline Lysaght. “Child’s Play: Computer Games, Theories of Play and Children’s Development.” Australian Computer Society, Inc. Original Paper Was Presented at the IFIP Working Group 3.5 Conference: Young Children and Learning Technologies, July 2003 (2003). Accessed May 15, 2021. https:​//​dl​.acm​.org​/doi​/pdf​/10​.5555​/1082060​.1082076​ #:​​~:​text​=According​%20to​%20the​%20earliest​%20classical​,and​%20Fleer​%201999​ %3A24). Vrousalis, Nicholas. “Capital Without Wage-Labour: Marx’s Modes of Subsumption Revisited,” Economics and Philosophy, March 22, 2017. https:​//​ssrn​.com​/abstract​ =3056998. Walther, Bo Kampmann. “Playing and Gaming: Reflections and Classifications.” Game Studies, Volume 3, issue 1, May 2003.

Chapter 7

Happy Endings, Only $1.99 Extricating the Dark Side of Fairy Tales in Hope: The Other Side of Adventure and Its Online Legacy Imogen Nutting and Ryan Twomey

The game begins with a simple cartoon of a prince and princess enjoying a pleasant picnic. Although the graphics are less rendered and sophisticated than a Disney Princess film, the innocent pleasure depicted would not be out of place in such children’s features. By the time players have finished Hope: The Other Side of Adventure [from here Hope], however, they may have spent six days watching, helpless, as the princess is abused by her captor and contemplates suicide.1 While there is a happy ending available, should the player agree to pay $1.99, the other potential endings make the player morally responsible for the princess’s suffering and eventual death. The perversion of bright, childlike stories into dark properties has been a common occurrence in contemporary Western media. While these works provide insight into our collective reflections upon nostalgia and childhood, their appeal and accessibility to children complicate their social value. The bright fairy-tale graphics at the beginning of Hope, and its appropriation of a typical kidnapped princess narrative, play upon popular tropes that are often targeted at young children. This niche game by the Spanish company Mr. Roboto has garnered interest since its launch and removal from app stores,2 offering insight into the appeal of disturbing narratives and pieces of media that have become lost to public consciousness and access. The internet is rife with posts warning that your favorite childhood fairy tales are much darker than you remember. The popularity of these posts can be explained with two different phenomena: nostalgia in response to a 157

158

Imogen Nutting and Ryan Twomey

changing world, and a fascination with the macabre lurking within innocent childhood experiences. In a digital age, these stories, and varying receptions of them, are instantly accessible, allowing for a broader rediscovery of past stories and assessment of their social impact. Employing a range of scholarship on fairy tales, nostalgia, and digital folklore, this chapter examines how Hope traded on public interest around the loss of innocence in childhood stories, while being worryingly appealing to young audiences. Highlighting ways that Hope disrupts traditional narratives in response to discussions around the corruption of childhood innocence in the modern world, the chapter also examines how traditional fairy-tale narratives are altered for a digital world, illuminating the postmodern interest in disrupting fairy tales to emphasize their darker roots. UNDERSTANDING FAIRY TALES IN THE MODERN WORLD Defining fairy tales can be a challenging task. A distinctly fantastic branch of folklore, fairy tales provide stories of when the world was older, and its inhabitants were more fanciful or magical. As American literary critic Roger Sale has stated of fairy tales: They reach back into a dateless time, speak with grave assurance of wishes and fears, harbor no moralizing, no sense of “art,” because their ways and means are so varied and so consoling in their knowledge that there are many stories to tell, many ways to tell the “same” story.3

The term fairy tale can be considered “only a convenience,”4 due to the genre’s limited inclusion of fairies or other magical creatures. While the inhabitants of fairy tales are often affected by magic or magical creatures, these are part of an older, less categorized magic, infrequently singled out as specific races of fantastical creatures. Set “Long ago, at least two thousand years” (“The Juniper Tree”), “Once upon a time, in midwinter” (“Little Snow-White”), or even simply “when wishing still did some good” (“The Frog King or Iron Heinrich”),5 these tales harken back to a nonspecific but certainly distant past, which offers more magic, knowledge, and intrigue than the tellers’ present day. Fairy tales are also notable for their inclusion of shared tropes and characteristics—such as talking animals, enchantments, magical transformations, impactful forests, the importance of threes, a focus on family, stolen children, dangerous curiosity, beautiful heroines, and victorious heroes.6 Due to these recognizable elements, audiences can enter fairy-tale retellings with

Happy Endings, Only $1.99

159

set expectations that, no matter how gruesome elements of the telling may be, the hero or heroine will emerge triumphant, and the villain will get their comeuppance. Whether it’s a “Once upon a time” opening line or a series of recognizable plot elements, there are certain distinct phenomena that make certain stories recognizably “fairy tales.” Consequently, despite their genre being rather difficult to pin down in a single definition, “everyone seems instinctively agreed on what a fairy tale is”7 and can recognize when they are told one. The genre is also iconic for the prevalence of retellings and adaptations across cultures. Whether it’s a medieval Latin ancestor to “Little Red Riding Hood,”8 an eight-hundred-year-old Chinese equivalent to “Cinderella,”9 or the Grimm brothers editing out the erotic or otherwise-subversive parts of their fairy-tale collection,10 adaptation and intertextuality are as quintessential to fairy tales as any princess or enchantment. Sale considers the “great cure for historical provinciality” to be “simply receptiveness, and the love of being receptive,”11 as insight into fairy tales can best be gleaned when considering the stories as part of a collective but fluid body of storytelling. Incorporating wide reading of folk and literary works into a reception of fairy tales allows the readers to understand the significance of tropes that vary and differ slightly from each other, and why they may be included in a specific tale, by an author in a distinct cultural context. Authors of fairy-tale collections may adapt their stories to meet the moral, cultural, and religious needs of their context. The original 1812 edition of the Grimm fairy tales is markedly different than the more common 1857 edition, which combined “feudal folk notions of sexuality, obedience and sexual roles with bourgeois norms and components.”12 Prominent German literature and fairy-tale scholar Jack Zipes associates this change with Wilhelm Grimm’s desire to editorialize the stories they collected to remove elements that clashed with the brothers’ “sentimental Christianity and puritanical ideology,”13 and to make the tales more artistically appealing to their intended middle-class audience. The changes made by the Grimms improved the readability and style of the stories, removing their simple, orally transcribed language to make the stories wittier and more appropriate for children.14 Charles Perrault’s seventeenth-century fairy tales were also distinctively of his time and style, portraying a courtlier and wittier version of traditional tales such as “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Cinderella.” While Perrault and his contemporaries wrote down and finessed their tales, they would read and perform as a group at Madame d’Aulnoy’s salon, blurring the lines between literary fairy tales and their oral counterparts.15 Where the Grimm brothers originally attributed their tales to the oral tellers who delivered them, such as Dorothea Viehmann, who “never changes anything when she retells a story and corrects mistakes as soon as she notices them,”16 Perrault ascribed

160

Imogen Nutting and Ryan Twomey

his tales to “Mother Goose,” a common moniker for old women who share folktales and other stories.17 Despite sharing many of the same tales as the Grimm brothers, Perrault’s earlier French work was notably more descriptive and stylized than its German counterparts. For instance, where Perrault’s version of Cinderella begins, “Once there was a gentleman who married, for his second wife, the proudest and most haughty woman that was ever seen,”18 the Grimm brothers’ tale opens with the lines “A rich man’s wife became sick, and when she felt that her end was drawing near, she called her only daughter to her bedside and said, ‘Dear child, remain pious and good, and then our dear God will always protect you, and I will look down on you from heaven and be near you.’”19 While both stories use exposition to establish the story, the Grimms’ version includes dialogue that shows both the maternal bond and the piety of the dying mother. In contrast to the Grimms’ emphasis on religion and patriarchal norms,20 Perrault offers an engaging opening that focuses on the tale’s villain: Cinderella’s wicked stepmother. The authors’ “different social situations” and desire to “appeal to different audiences”21 have shaped these ostensibly similar Cinderella tales into noticeably different works. The term fairy tale has a few different connotations in modern American society. Where some might associate it with the fantastical stories of their childhood, others could connect it to the Disney content machine, or even to people’s unrealistic expectations around relationships. The “fairy tale” epithet is applied to a variety of topics—story settings, romances and happy endings being among them22—and it is sometimes more prolific in contemporary minds than the actual tales themselves. Increases in visual media have resulted in certain fairy tales being linked to famous images, such as Cinderella’s glass slipper and Snow White’s stepmother’s magic mirror.23 In the digital age, these iconic images have dominated the fairy tales being told, cutting classic tales down to their motifs or generic experiences in the public consciousness, such as princesses in towers and “happily ever after” love stories. Jessica Tiffin, a fairy-tale and film scholar, identifies fairy tales by “texture, rather than language or motif,” explaining how these tales are “intrinsically familiar and identifiable even through literary manipulation.”24 The texture of a fairy tale relies on the tale’s “instantly recognizable feel or style”25 regarding its structure, content, and language, that makes a story easy to categorize as a fairy tale. These textures can be applied to a range of media, with photographs, films, and video games layered with fairytale textures to provide a fantastic and identifiable overlay to new texts. In the twenty-first-century digital age, fairy tales can take many forms, depending on the author’s or audience’s will and the platform used to create and disseminate a work. The internet provides an unprecedented archive of past works, with the Internet Archive documenting thousands of

Happy Endings, Only $1.99

161

out-of-copyright books for public access. This archive allows better access to fairy tales that were published centuries ago and encourages access for those who may have been unable to get physical copies of these works. In the description below Internet Archive postings, the history of a work and its related texts are sometimes included, with hyperlinks for related works (if available). Having easier access to fairy-tale collections can also encourage audiences to receive the same story multiple times, granting access to numerous editions by the same author or different authors from around the world. For example, the Internet Archive houses The Blue Fairy book by Andrew Lang26 with his translation of Perrault’s “Cinderella” story. You can also find the Disney Princess Treasury27 version of the tale, the Betty Boop cartoon “Poor Cinderella,”28 and the original first edition of the Grimm brothers’ Kinder und Hausmaerchen,29 which contained their first version of “Aschenputtel,” a Cinderella story. In the twenty-first-century age of mass-media retellings, it is possible for children to become acquainted with fairy tales only through their animated Disney retellings, or even through satirical films like Dreamwork’s Shrek,3031 which utilized a fairy-tale aesthetic and texture to poke fun at the more shallow and unrealistic tropes that were dominant in Disney’s fairy-tale retellings, such as Sleeping Beauty.32 Both Disney and Dreamwork’s films feature a princess trapped in a tower by a dragon, waiting to be rescued by a handsome prince. However, where Sleeping Beauty ends with heroic rescue and marriage, similar to its later, more santized literary retellings, Shrek subverted its audience’s generic expectations by making the hero an ogre and seeing the princess become an ogre as well. Films like Shrek do not retell a single fairy tale, so much as they retell the fairy-tale genre, indicating modern audiences’ dissatisfaction with the genre’s expected standards of gender, beauty, and happy endings. Many of the current retellings of fairy tales act as parodies or activism,33 drawing attention to the anachronistic or absurd parts of fairy tales to make a humorous or political point. Hope falls into this category, retelling familiar fairy-tale tropes and textures to critique the passivity of heroines and highlight the female trauma that typically goes unaddressed in stories where women’s suffering simply functions to encourage the hero’s journey and disappears upon his success. Due to the interactivity of video games as a storytelling format, the player is forced to accept responsibility for the outcome of their choices and actions in the story world. While Hope was decidedly more morose than Mario’s famous quests to rescue his own damsel in distress, Princess Peach,34 it was not a generic outlier in the video game format, with many other games similarly adopting fairy-tale textures and settings to tell multifaceted and experimental tales.

162

Imogen Nutting and Ryan Twomey

Whatman and Tedeschi highlight how other contemporary games, such as The Wolf Among Us35 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt,36 offer players nonlinear opportunities37 to interact with subversive retellings of famous fairy tales and their characters, including “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Rapunzel.” These subversive versions of “fairy-tale characters typically rebel against their sanitized counterparts,” allowing “players to explore the deeper implications of the source material.”38 While the dark tone and narrative malleability of these video game retellings is reminiscent of their un-sanitized oral roots, the fairy-tale textures can act more as a vehicle to discuss thematic concerns rather than to add to the fairy-tale narrative for its own sake. Digitally created folktales can fall into many categories, including blog posts, forum thread discussions, video games, and online videos. While fairy-tale textures and retellings are prevalent across digital media, few of the pieces of digital folklore that emerge organically online can be considered fairy tales, due to the differing standards of realism expected in online legends. Many pieces of digital folklore fall into the category of “creepypastas,” which refers to short, uncanny stories that ostensibly report real events to unsuspecting readers. This subgenre’s reliance on the authors’ ability to craft authenticity and suspend their audience’s disbelief makes it difficult for fairy tales to emerge in these folkloric spaces. Preeminent Bulgarian-French literary theorist Tzvetan Todorov’s distinction between the fantastic and the uncanny39 provides insight into why inherently fantastic fairy tales feel out of place in the digital folklore environment. When a reader can plausibly explain a supernatural phenomenon with the laws of reality, then a work can be considered uncanny, but if they accept the supernatural occurrence to be caused by magic, then the work can be considered fantasy or a fairy tale.40 THE STORY OF HOPE Told across multiple fading screens, a short exposition sets the scene for Hope, relaying how both the princess’s imprisonment and the prince’s journey to rescue her began: The prince and the princess were having tea, relaxing under the shadow of a tree All of a sudden, the sky went black as it could be Then a big red dragon appeared to burst the entire kingdom into tears It grabbed the princess with its strong claws of ancient beast and took her far, far away, to the east . . .

Happy Endings, Only $1.99

163

This is how our story begins.41 (sic)

The basic descriptions and inconsistent rhymes are reminiscent of less-stylized oral tales before the stories were refined by writers and editors. This opening scene also features retro, pixelated art of a stereotypical blond princess and armored prince enjoying the peace before the scene darkens and a large red dragon claw grabs the princess. While all playthroughs of Hope begin with this generic scene of the princess being kidnapped, the game offers multiple endings, the best seeing her rescued by her prince and the worst showing her suicide while locked in a tower. The simplified graphics and language of the opening scenes emphasize that these events happened in the past, and that the player is joining the story later to try to rectify this injustice. Hope follows the opening scene with a section where the prince “fights, jumps, kills, discovers secrets, goes to the next level and so on,” showing the exciting adventure of a hero in a questing tale. While the overworld map of the prince’s journey mimics the opening scene’s pixelated graphics, the section of him running and jumping through levels is in a more modern, 3D-animation style, providing a greater sense of immediacy and urgency. All the scenes in the princess’s tower are in this 3D style as well—set in a small prison, dimly lit and increasingly destroyed by the princess in her despair. Lasting for only minutes of play across six days, this short game offers insight into time passing in the game world as well, through the prince’s game stats and the princess’s declining mental and physical well-being. While the princess’s scenes are playable, the only actions the player can take is to weep and sigh as she walks around her small tower room. There are no interactive objects and no way to escape, leaving the player as disempowered as the trapped princess. Hope questions why princesses’ stories are always unknown to us, arguing that “the princess lives her own story too. A very important part, though a dark one.” Consequently, most of the player’s time playing is spent as the princess, locked in her prison. Unlike the cut scenes of the prince’s progress, the princess’s scenes are dark and ominous, with players forced to come back once a day to listen to the princess monologue about her declining mental state and watch as her figure becomes increasingly bruised and her dress increasingly tattered. Her dark monologues are interspersed with bright scenes of the hero’s journey, with descriptions of how he levelled up and was challenged “to play rock-paper-scissors. Luckily there were two victories and a draw. Our hero could continue his adventure!” These scenes feel inappropriate when paired with the princess’s suffering and offer the unsettling implication that her fate rests on the hero’s luck. The princess’s monologues are one of the most memorable and discomforting parts of Hope. Across about a week of gameplay, the player has to listen

164

Imogen Nutting and Ryan Twomey

as a young British woman talks about how she feels “scared of what is inside [her] head when it feels the isolation.” While the 3D model of the princess has exaggerated hips with a narrow waist, giving her the buxom appearance of many female video game characters, her young voice contrasts with this mature appearance, reminding the player that the princess is likely only just at adulthood and in a very frightening and threatening situation. Break the doors of the wardrobe. Knock over the bed. Tear a brick from the wall next to the small window. That is how my new wounds appeared. Perhaps this pain would give me some relief. It means I am still strong. It means I am ready for whatever happens in the final minutes before the party strokes and the showers of red petals. It does not even matter if they think I am weak or if they have ceased to feed me. They believe they will only have to carry me down the altar of the cathedral. My breathing body, thinner, is only able to nod.42

Unlike the initial exposition describing her kidnapping, the princess’s monologues are longer and laden with emotional descriptions of her surroundings and mental state. These descriptions are told in run-on sentences that can be difficult to transcribe and differentiate from each other, mimicking the sometimes inconsistent and incoherent phrasing of dark thoughts. Many of these monologues focus on her body, her fears of it becoming too weak to help her and the knowledge that even if her body becomes too feeble to function, the duke who kidnapped her can force her to go along with his wedding plans. The violence being perpetrated upon her is only referenced in these monologues, with neither the duke nor his guards appearing in person throughout the game. It is also uncertain whether she is imagining feeling “so tiny . . . as if they have crushed every limb in [her] body” when she speaks in hypotheticals but visibly becomes increasingly bruised and tattered. In the traumatic leadup to her wedding, the princess’s language becomes more desperate and metaphoric, as she considers a wedding featuring “a bride with her mouth sewn with silk thread so no prince could ever unstitch it because he arrived late.” Sexual violence is also repeatedly referenced, with the princess worrying about how “the duke will take [her] in his arms” and deciding to ensure that “the duke will not be able to use what is in between [her] legs.” While not overly explicit, her concerns bring attention to the gendered violence often left implicit in these disempowering situations. With her mouth sewn shut and the place between her legs in jeopardy, the princess casts her mind to the suffering likely endured by her own mother, as she reflects that they were treating her “as they did to [her] mother many years ago, as they grabbed her by her arms and maybe had her bony ankle smashed as well as they opened her jaw to force her to utter a cautious ‘yes’ in the presence of the priest.” The princess makes no reference to her mother being

Happy Endings, Only $1.99

165

rescued from this wedding, providing a sense of inevitability and futility to her hopes of being saved. Even within the game’s short opening lines, several of Katharine Young’s “metaphysical constants of the fairy-tale world” are evident, including that “Princesses are always beautiful but passive” and “Girls are often struck either silent, still, or (apparently) dead.”43 The stillness of girls, trapped by circumstances and conventions, is at the core of Hope, which claims to be “mainly focused on the princess. Her experiences, her agony, and above all . . . Her hope.” The hope of being rescued by a hero is commonly mistaken as being crucial to many fairy-tale princesses, whose passive captivity is endured only by thoughts that one day they will be rescued. However, few princesses in fairy tales pursue princes or seek saviors. Rapunzel is surprised to find a prince appear in her tower one day and does not even consider asking him to rescue her.44 Likewise, neither the Grimms’ nor Perrault’s Cinderella characters went to the ball in hopes of finding a prince to rescue them from their abusive family. Instead, the hope that sustained these princesses, and likely the audience’s reading of the characters’ suffering, was the hope that the “metaphysical constants of the fairy-tale world” would exist in this story world, so that “Kindness is always rewarded; unkindness is always punished” in the end.45 Having faith in happy endings or reward through suffering rather than through a heroic man is consistent for fairy-tale princesses, despite the genre’s propensity to have said heroic men rescuing women. Young also highlights that “Heroes never die” and “Princesses are always rescued”46 as the fairy-tale world’s metaphysical constants. While Hope isn’t necessarily a fairy tale so much as a postmodern adaptation of fairy-tale tropes and textures, and these constraints aren’t always applicable to all fairy tales, the possible death of the prince and his failure to rescue the princess make this game stand out amongst other fairy tale–coded games. Players of the Super Mario47 games can start again from their previous save point until they successfully rescue Princess Peach and defeat her kidnapper. Hope offers no such power. Heroes saving princesses is a consistent trope in stories with a fairy-tale texture as well as direct fairy-tale retellings. Order is restored to these worlds, and players can rest assured that they succeeded in their quest, leaving the game world into which they invested hours to its peace and security. In contrast, Hope offers a good ending and a bad ending, depending on the player’s willingness to pay the $1.99 cost of purchasing a happy ending. While this paywall was just a red herring to test whether players “care enough for the princess” to pay for a happy ending, those who chose to get the free ending were not informed about the red herring and thus were so close to saving the princess, only to fail at the last minute due to a misunderstanding. This moral

166

Imogen Nutting and Ryan Twomey

judgment of caring “enough” to save the princess is particularly jarring, considering how disturbing the bad ending of Hope is. Commonly referred to as the “Bad Ending,” players who don’t choose to pay to save the princess are given a tragic conclusion, where “The prince died, and this has unavoidable consequences.” Players are directly blamed, with a dark screen stating that “When you are not brave enough to rescue your princess. When you cannot achieve it, the princess must look for a way to save herself . . . ” (sic). This second-person address and repetition reinforces the personal culpability of players, increasing the emotional impact of the game’s final scenes. Hope’s bad ending concludes with one final scene in the princess’s room as the players listen to the monologue of her thoughts leading up to her death: I thought it would be beautiful to make something with my own hands one last thing. So it has been. The shreds from the sheet tied twice. Some threads torn from the tapestry and even a part of the curtains. The wedding dress veil has served well, it has finally helped me to make the last knot of the rope.48

Matching the references to fabric knots and ropes, the whole scene is simply her hanging body, slowly swaying in the screen. The liveliest element in the setting is the fireplace behind her body, where flames dance joyfully, unaware of the tragic scene of which they are a part. As her monologue finishes, the screen fades to black, concluding Hope, fittingly, with the end of the princess’s hope for her future. In some ways, this is the most empowering option for the princess, who was finally able to do something “with [her] own hands.” However, the princess’s suicide also feels like a tragic inevitability, given her rapid decline in well-being throughout the six days of gameplay and the self-destructive tone of her preceding monologues. In using her wedding veil to make a rope rather than get married, she has made a choice, one made under extreme duress and with tragic results. The princess’s suicide demonstrates a final act of agency in a game where she can only affect herself and the tiny room in which she is trapped. A prince can slay a dragon; the princess, only herself. In the “Good Ending” to Hope, a series of title cards announces the prince’s arrival and battle with the evil duke: After going through the whole kingdom of Arcadia the prince finally is inside the castle. It has been a long way, full of dangers and hidden secrets. The duke’s generals have been defeated.  Although the prince is stronger than ever, he must fight Sergey, a skillful swordsman and the best dark mage of the kingdom.

Happy Endings, Only $1.99

167

There’s only one battle left, the duke. The prince almost there.49 (sic)

The player is not given a view of the final battle. Instead, the scene focuses on the princess in her room as she listens to the comical, video-game battle sound effects that signify the fight taking place. After a moment of hesitation, the prince enters her room to triumphant music, and the scene dissolves, reverting to the joyful pixelated art of the beginning. However, the princess retains her unhealthy, tattered appearance from the tower, making their bright background and dancing uncanny. This quick ending acts as a reflection of both the rushed endings of fairy tales that gloss over characters’ trauma— such as Snow White’s pseudo-death or Cinderella’s life of abuse50—in favor of a happy ending or as a depiction of how the prince viewed their reunion, unaware of the mental anguish and trauma of his princess. UNRAVELING THE AFTERLIFE OF HOPE Hope received a mixed reception after its 2013 launch, with some critics applauding its music and graphics, while critiquing the dramatic monologues and dark themes that make it come “across like a snuff film at times.” Other online commentators, such as video essay YouTube channel Izzzyzzz, questioned the overall tone and efficacy of the title: I kind of get what they were going for, telling the other side of the story and challenging gamers who don’t care about what the princess is going through. But, for a game about hope, it sure is bleak.51

Reviewers who determined that Hope offered “a different experience that, even if it’s not particularly fun, can still be stimulating,”52 often highlighted the aesthetics as a strong point of the game, while “it doesn’t provide enough gameplay to be a good game, and it lacks the focused message of good art.”53 Parallels were often drawn between Hope and other princess-saving video games, such as the Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda54 franchises, where “the princess basically serves as a necessary MacGuffin to give a game a purpose,”55 but the troubled princesses aren’t the games’ focuses and “one never thinks about Princess Peach being tortured.”56 According to a Wayback Machine archive from October 2014, Hope received over ten thousand installations and three hundred reviews on Google Play, with players commenting whether they found the game “Chilling, haunting, and amazing” (U/Ivy S.) or “a little repetitive and . . . unsatisfactory”

168

Imogen Nutting and Ryan Twomey

(U/Daniela Bertani). These contemporaneous reviews of Hope provide insight into how players understood the game’s message. While most of the 2014 Google Play reviews57 found there was “room for improvement” (U/ Paris Pepin) around the endings and limited gameplay options, some took issue with how the game “isn’t very empowering” (U/Andisha Sabri) or critiqued the use of suicide, with U/Cheyenne Smith stating that they “would NEVER allow a child to play this game.” Many of the player reviews of Hope are likely lost to time and gaps in internet archiving; however, those that survived on the Wayback Machine provide a glimpse into how regular players viewed the game and meditated upon their experience of playing it. While less polished than the professional reviews, the Google Play comments provide similar critiques of the game’s use of damsel-in-distress tropes without providing an empowering or satisfactory story arc for the princess. For many players, Hope didn’t end after their play-through, lingering in their memories long after they completed the game and it was deleted from iOS and Android app stores. Memory and media can have a significant impact on people’s concept of their past and their own history. For those who were interested in the colorful pixel art princess and played Hope as a child, the game provided a disturbing subversion of the tropes and textures of the sanitized fairy tales contemporary children have come to expect. While the Disneyfication of fairy tales58 can be seen as homogenizing a rich oral and literary history, it can be a valuable tool to ensure that the stories being shown to children are appropriate for contemporary sensitivities. Players’ sympathy for the princess is at the core of Hope’s appeal, encouraging them to log in to the game every day despite being only able to watch in horror as this young woman suffers and waits for her prince to finish his adventure. The encouraged empathy becomes problematic, however, upon registering how some players were children when they played this graphic and potentially traumatizing game. While there is no statistical data to provide insight into the age of Hope’s players and their reception of the game, there are numerous posts and comments online from individuals who played Hope as a child and are still struck by its dark features as an adult. Comments on play-through uploads, such as YouTube channel Meluna Nowotny’s gameplay video of Hope,59 offer insight into young players’ memories of the game. In the video’s comment section, U/Ruby describes how they “remember playing this game when [they] were around 7” and “remember being terrified after getting the bad ending.” Other commenters note how “so many kids downloaded this not realizing it’s darker than they thought” (U/MoxyNintendoGirl) and they “feel bad [for] whoever played this as a kid, must’ve been confusing and traumatizing” (U/R0WAN). In 2021, Izzzyzzz released a video essay describing her own memories of the

Happy Endings, Only $1.99

169

“disturbing princess tower game”60 and her years-long search for information about Hope. In this video, having found the app that lingered in her childhood memories, Izzzyzzz identified the aspects of the game that she accurately remembered and discussed how the gameplay footage “made [her] uncomfortable,” even as an adult. Hope has lingered in the minds of some young players, who received its dark themes without age-appropriate guidance or handling of the topic matters. Children’s media is regularly held to different standards than adult media, with advertising regulations placed on children’s television channels and authors creating acceptable standards of practice around discussing harrowing topics in children’s literature. A key focus when creating child-appropriate works about serious topics such as the Holocaust is to ensure that the subject is treated with the seriousness it deserves, while providing the child-reader with a sense of hope.61 Historical atrocities have often been interwoven with popular fairy-tale retellings in recent years, including Jane Yolen’s “Hansel and Gretel” retelling, Mapping the Bones,62 which interwove the traditional tale with the oppression and violence of Nazi Germany. Rather than making historical atrocities palatable, sensitive reinterpretations of traditional stories help convey massive tragedies on the level of human experiences, drawing attention to the fears, dreams, and stories of people too often reduced to statistics. As such, there are tactful methods for conveying serious topics and tragedies to children in a manner that educates them without frightening or depressing them. While not overtly targeted at children and holding some maturity warnings, Hope’s initially bright graphics and generic fairy-tale tropes resemble aesthetic and storytelling choices that are popular with children’s media. The depiction of a young woman’s corpse swaying, alongside a monologue of her thoughts leading up to her suicide, can be disturbing for adult viewers, let alone curious young players. The final princess scene from the bad ending also removes the subtleties that other dark topics—such as kidnapping and rape—are handled with, as children may be more accustomed to seeing cartoon princesses getting grabbed by dragons or not grasp the deeper meaning of the duke being “able to use what is in between [her] legs.” Hope’s obvious inappropriateness for a child audience and its distressing handling of delicate subject matter reinforces the need for strict parental controls on app stores and children’s access to digital media. This issue was brought to public attention in 2017 due to “Elsagate,” a neologism for the controversy where supposedly child-friendly cartoons on YouTube were found to have disturbing, violent, and sexual content hidden in the videos. According to the 2014 Google Play archive, Hope was listed as “Medium Maturity.” However, age restrictions and content ratings are not always effective barriers to children engaging with

170

Imogen Nutting and Ryan Twomey

inappropriate content, as they may not have their own Google Play accounts and could be playing games on a parent’s device without any age blockers. Due to the disturbing nature of some of Hope’s scenes, its afterlife has been a troubled one, mixed with childhood fear and public curiosity. As Hope was deleted from the iOS and Android app stores around 2015,63 details about the game can be difficult to find online, leading those who played it and poorly remember it to ask relevant online forums for help. The subreddit r/ tipofmyjoystick is a popular Reddit forum for people to discuss video games they remember elements of but cannot remember the name of. There are so many posts about Hope on this forum that it was given its own flair (a name banner for identifying posts about the same game) to help interested parties find information about the game. The oldest available post with this flair was posted by a now-deleted user over two years ago as they searched for an “Episodic Fantasy ‘game’ where you play as a captured princess.”64 This poster claims they were “like 10 at the time” of their playing and “only played the first” day of gameplay as they found the game “a bit too depressing.” While the deleted poster played very little of the game and missed the darker parts of the story, they remembered details about the gameplay and storyline, correctly guessing Hope’s bad ending as they conclude that they “don’t think the knight is supposed to save the princess” in this game. Another r/tipofmyjoystick post about Hope from two years ago was posted by u/_vendettaone_, who was searching for a “Ghouls n Ghosts type game but it’s depressing” and remembered more of the game: the princess [gets] kidnapped and the knight goes to save her but in the first level he dies and doesn’t come back to life. the rest of the game is in the pov of the princess whos stuck in a room talking to herself [because] she was forced to marry her kidnapper she slowly descends into madness and after the wedding she commits suicide by hanging the game is pretty much in one room and u just roam around slowly while listening to her descend into insanity and despair . . . i played this game when i was young so it might not be as scary as i remembered but it did unnerve me so bad that i deleted it and didnt open my ipad for a few days.65 (sic)

This poster also played when they were “young . . . 7–9” and correctly remembered details about the 3D art style and setting. However, u/_vendettaone_ completed the game, shown by their comment about how the princess “slowly descends into madness and after the wedding she commits suicide by hanging.” While this poster got details wrong about Hope, such as the prince dying “in the first level” and the wedding taking place, their retention of the game is impressively accurate considering their age at playing and the atrophic power of time on memory. Most of the r/tipofmyjoystick posts

Happy Endings, Only $1.99

171

about Hope refer to the prince as a “knight,” an understandable error given his limited role in the game, fairy-tale tropes about knights saving princesses, and his armored appearance throughout the game. U/_vendettaone_ refers to being frightened by the imagery of the princess’s suicide, deleting the app, and avoiding their iPad for a few days as a result, demonstrating the significant potential for graphic games to upset children when their darker themes are not handled carefully. Hope’s online legacy as an unsettling childhood memory to be discussed and searched for links it back to pieces of digital folklore, which often focus on lost media that haunt the memory of the teller. These digital folktales can include creepypastas about fake pieces of lost media that are haunted by entities or are thematically disturbing—such as “Candle Cove,”66 Kris Straub’s 2009 short story about a creepy, pirate puppet show that never really existed—or real pieces of lost media that captured online attention and were repeatedly retold and disseminated—such as Commander Santa’s search for the “Clock Man”67 short film that terrified him as a child and haunted his adult mind. The r/tipofmyjoystick posts and Izzzyzzz’s search for Hope are especially reminiscent of Commander Santa’s original post asking for help finding a “short animation [that] was terrifying as a child . . . still burned into [his] mind (28 years later).” While “Clock Man” was eventually found to be the short film O parádivé Sally,68 the reception of the short as a creepy childhood memory irrevocably changed its online legacy, so that reuploads of it to YouTube or the Internet Archive reference the more popular “Clock Man” moniker.69 Just as the “Clock Man” short was available on YouTube under a title the searchers didn’t know to look up, Hope is currently still available to download online through emulator reuploads or the Amazon App Store.70 These texts were only considered lost because people were looking for them without knowing their name or having complete information. Despite not being a full-fledged piece of digital folklore, Hope and its online legacy closely parallel the journey of online folktales, due to its mystery and perseverance in the memories of those who played it. CONCLUSION Fairy tales have a complicated place in the digital age, sometimes used as foundational stories, aesthetic textures, or generic references. Many of these later adaptations seek to use or subvert audiences’ expectations of the genre by changing the characterization, tone, or plot of popular fairy tales. While this chain of reception mirrors the rich history of fairy tales being changed and

172

Imogen Nutting and Ryan Twomey

retold at the discretion of their teller, many modern adaptations seek to create new stories out of old archetypes rather than build on an existing folk work. The reinterpretation of fairy-tale aesthetics, tropes, and textures highlights the solidity of this seemingly intangible genre, allowing insight into what constitutes a fairy tale and why audiences recognize certain texts as belonging to this genre, with all its storytelling expectations. While recognizable, these tropes can be problematic or harmful, with many postmodern fairy-tale retellings seeking to empower female characters or tell an age-old story from a new angle. Promoted as “the other side of adventure,” Hope sought to tell the tale of the princess through a more-empathetic lens that highlighted her suffering while waiting for a prince who may never arrive. Some of Hope’s aesthetic elements—such as the medieval European setting and character design of the princess and prince—and tropes—such as the princess being kidnapped and needing to be rescued—are common fairy-tale textures in modern books, movies, and video games. In focusing on the powerlessness of the princess rather than the adventure of the prince, Hope differentiates itself from its contemporaries to tell a memorable, if disturbing story. Hope is not a fairy tale, yet it offers a perspective on modern audiences’ understandings of fairy-tale conventions, both in the game itself and in its audience receptions. This game was impactful enough for the children who played it that some would carry memories of its disturbing elements into adulthood and seek to rediscover the game through online forums. As Hope demonstrates, while fairy-tale textures can be alluring for children, who may associate these storytelling devices with texts designed for them, this appeal can allow inappropriate content to reach an audience who may not be emotionally able to recognize it. The power of fairy-tale receptions, both as direct retellings and aesthetic inspirations, can place a new narrative in an older, existential framework, allowing new creators to tell broader and more universal stories. Digital environments are rich with immersive storytelling, as emergent technologies connect people from around the world instantly. These digital platforms have allowed creators and audiences to coincide, impacting stories and their receptions at an unprecedented level. Just as traditional fairy tales like “Cinderella” were retold by orators and writers across the world, Hope has been received, remembered, and retold by online communities fascinated with its darker themes and the way it haunted its players years after they finished their “adventure.” Far removed from sanitized Disney fairy tales, Hope represents both the postmodern desire to subvert seemingly innocent childhood stories and the lasting effect this can have on children who witness the results.

Happy Endings, Only $1.99

173

NOTES 1. Ricardo Acosta, Hope: The Other Side of Adventure. Mr. Roboto. 2013. Mobile game. 2. Hope was released to iOS and Android app stores in 2013. While it received mild popularity, the app was deleted around 2015. It is currently only available on the Amazon App Store or through unofficial emulator reuploads. Mr. Roboto game studio has been unresponsive on social media since November 2013, and no official response was ever given for the game’s deletion. 3. Roger Sale, “Fairy Tales.” The Hudson Review, Autumn 1977, Vol. 30, No. 3, 372. 4. Ibid. 5. Wilhelm Grimm and Jacob Grimm, Children’s and Household Tales (Berlin, 1857), from The Grimm Brothers’ Children’s and Household Tales (Grimms’ Fairy Tales), trans. D. L. Ashlimann, 1998–2020, available at: https:​//​sites​.pitt​.edu​/​~dash​/ grimmtales​.html. 6. Katharine Young, “Storyworlds/ Narratology,” in The Routledge Companion to Media and Fairy-Tale Cultures, ed. Pauline Greenhill, Jill Terry Rudy, Naomi Hamer, and Lauren Bosc (New York: Routledge, 2018). 7. Sale, “Fairy Tales.” 8. Jan M. Ziolkowski, “A Fairy Tale from before Fairy Tales: Egbert of Liège’s ‘De puella a lupellis seruata’ and the Medieval Background of ‘Little Red Riding Hood,’” Speculum, Jul. 1992, Vol. 67, No. 3 (Jul. 1992), The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Medieval Academy of America, 549–75. 9. Carl Lindahl, “Definition and History of Fairy Tales,” in The Routledge Companion to Media and Fairy-Tale Cultures, ed. Pauline Greenhill, Jill Terry Rudy, Naomi Hamer, and Lauren Bosc (New York: Routledge, 2018). 10. Jack Zipes, “Introduction,” in The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: The Complete First Edition, trans. Jack Zipes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014). 11. Sale, “Fairy Tales.” 12. Jack Zipes, Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion: The Classical Genre for Children and the Process of Civilization, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2012), 64. 13. Zipes, “Introduction,” xx. 14. Zipes, “Introduction”; Lindahl, “Definition and History.” 15. Lindahl, “Definition and History.” 16. Wilhelm Grimm and Jacob Grimm, Children’s and Household Tales, Volume 1 (Berlin, 1812). [from The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: The Complete First Edition, trans. Jack Zipes. Princeton, 2014], 270. 17. Lindahl, “Definition and History.” 18. Charles Perrault, Histoires ou contes du temps passé, avec des moralités: Contes de ma mère l’Oye. 1697. [From The Blue Fairy Book, 5th edition trans Andrew Lang (London: Longmans, Green, and Company, 1891)]. 19. Grimm and Grimm, Children’s and Household, 1857. 20. Zipes, Fairy Tales.

174

Imogen Nutting and Ryan Twomey

21. Lindahl, “Definition and History,” 15. 22. Marina Warner, Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 23. Lindahl, “Definition and History.” 24. Jessica Tiffin, Marvelous Geometry: Narrative and Metafiction in Modern Fairy Tale (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2009), 7. 25. Tiffin, Marvelous, 6. 26. Andrew Lang, The Blue Fairy Book (London: Longmans, Green, and Company, 1928). Internet Archive. https:​//​archive​.org​/details​/in​.ernet​.dli​.2015​.174064​/page​/n7​/ mode​/2up. 27. Disney Enterprise, Inc., Disney Princess Treasury (New York: Disney Press, 2001). Internet Archive. https:​//​archive​.org​/details​/disneysprincesst02newy​/page​/n7​/ mode​/2up​?q =Cinderella. 28. Dave Fleischer and Seymour Kneitel, “Poor Cinderella” (Fleischer Studios, 1934). 29. Wilhelm Grimm and Jacob Grimm, Kinder und Hausmaerchen (Berlin, 1812), Internet Archive, accessed December 26th, 2022, https:​//​archive​.org​/details​/ GrimmKinderUndHausmaerchen1​-1812​/page​/n29​/mode​/2up. 30. Joe Stillman, Roger S. H. Schulman, Ted Elliott, and Terry Rossio, Shrek. Director Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson (Dreamworks, 2001). DVD. 31. Cristina Bacchilega, “Adaptation and the Fairy-Tale Web,” in The Routledge Companion to Media and Fairy-Tale Cultures, ed. Pauline Greenhill, Jill Terry Rudy, Naomi Hamer, and Lauren Bosc (New York: Routledge, 2018). 32. Erdman Penner, Sleeping Beauty. Directors Wolfgang Reitherman, Clyde Geronimi, Eric Larson, and Les Clark (Walt Disney Studios, 1959). DVD. 33. Brittany Warman, “YouTube and Internet Videos,” in The Routledge Companion to Media and Fairy-Tale Cultures, ed. Pauline Greenhill, Jill Terry Rudy, Naomi Hamer, and Lauren Bosc (New York: Routledge, 2018). 34. Shigeru Miyamoto, Super Mario (Nintendo, 1981–2023). Video Game. 35. Pierre Shorette, Dave Grossman, Adam Hines, Dan Martin, and Nicole Martinez, The Wolf Among Us, Producer Chris Schroyer (Telltale Games, 2013). Computer Game. 36. Marcin Blacha, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Producers Piotr Krzywonosiuk and Jędrzej Mróz (CD Projekt RED, 2015–2016). Video Game. 37. Emma Whatman and Victoria Tedeschi, “Video Games,” in The Routledge Companion to Media and Fairy-Tale Cultures, ed. Pauline Greenhill, Jill Terry Rudy, Naomi Hamer, and Lauren Bosc (New York: Routledge, 2018). 38. Whatman and Tedeschi, “Video Games.” 39. Tzvetan Todorov, “The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre.” In: Sandner D (ed.). Fantastic Literature: A Critical Reader (London: Praeger, 2004), 135–43. 40. Ming-Hsun Lin, “Fantasy,” in The Routledge Companion to Media and Fairy-Tale Cultures, ed. Pauline Greenhill, Jill Terry Rudy, Naomi Hamer, and Lauren Bosc (New York: Routledge, 2018).

Happy Endings, Only $1.99

175

41. Acosta, Hope. [Grammar as shown on the screen. As the game was released in Spanish and English, some of the onscreen text is grammatically incorrect. These sections have been included in their original text.] 42. Acosta, Hope. 43. Young, “Storyworlds/Narratology,” 216. 44. Grimm and Grimm, Children’s and Household Tales, Volume 1, 1812; Grimm and Grimm, Children’s and Household, 1857. 45. Young, “Storyworlds/Narratology,” 217. 46. Ibid. 47. Miyamoto, Super Mario. 48. Acosta, Hope. 49. Ibid. 50. Grimm and Grimm, Children’s and Household, 1857. 51. Izzzyzzz, “The Search for the Lost ‘Disturbing Princess App,’” YouTube, Last modified December 17th, 2021, accessed December 26th, 2022. https:​//​www​.youtube​ .com​/watch​?v​=fgUzKcC​_S8o. 52. Andres López, “Hope: The Other Side of Adventure,” Uptodown, trans. Uptodown Localization Team, last modified June 29th, 2013, accessed December 26th, 2022. https:​//​hope​-the​-other​-side​-of​-adventure​.en​.uptodown​.com​/android. 53. Brian Anthony Thornton, “Hope: The Other Side of Adventure Review.” GAMEZEBO. May 29th, 2013. Accessed December 26th, 2022. https:​ //​ www​ .gamezebo​.com​/reviews​/hope- the-other-side-of-adventure-review/. 54. Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka, The Legend of Zelda, Producer Eiji Aonuma (Nintendo, 1986–2023). Video Game. 55. Eli Hodapp, “Totally Free Experimental Game ‘Hope: The Other Side of Adventure’ Tells the Tale of a Captured Princess.” Touch Arcade. Last modified April 19th, 2013. Accessed December 26th, 2022. https:​ / / ​ t oucharcade ​ . com ​ / 2013 ​ / 04 ​ / 19 ​ / totally ​ - free ​ - experimental ​ - game​ -hope-the-other-side-of-adventure-tells-the-tale-of-a-captured-princess/. 56. KELSEYR713, “Review: Hope: The other side of adventure.” Nerdy But Flirty. Last modified May 25th, 2013. Accessed December 26th, 2022. https:​//​nerdybutflirty​ .com​/2013​/05​/25​/hope​-the​-other​-side​-of​-adventure-review/. 57. Google Play, “Hope: The Other Side of Adventure.” Wayback Machine, Internet Archive. Last modified October 14th, 2014. Accessed December 22nd, 2022. https:​//​web​.archive​.org​/web​/20141014231641​/https:​//​play​.google​.com​/store​/ apps​/details​?id​=com​.MrRoboto​.Hope. 58. Bacchilega, “Adaptation.” 59. Meluna Nowotny, “Hope: The other Side of Adventure—ENGLISH FULL GAME Playthrough—All endings.” YouTube. Last modified December 30th, 2021, accessed December 26th, 2022. https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=1M​_k8NMQOs4. 60. Izzzyzzz, “The Search.” 61. Eric A. Kimmel, “Confronting the Ovens: The Holocaust and Juvenile Fiction.” The Horn Book [February 1977]. 62. Jane Yolen, Mapping the Bones (New York: Philomel Books, 2018).

176

Imogen Nutting and Ryan Twomey

63. Some commenters have speculated that it was deleted due to the iOS App Store requiring higher processing capabilities than the game could match. However, no official statements have been released as to why Hope is only available on the Amazon App Store. 64. U/[deleted], “[Mobile] [2000s+] Episodic Fantasy ‘game’ where you play as a captured princess.” r/Tipofmyjoystick (Reddit, 2020). Accessed December 26th, 2022. 65. U/_vendettaone_, “[IOS][2010s(?)] Ghouls n Ghosts type game but it’s depressing.” r/Tipofmyjoystick (Reddit, 2020). Accessed December 26th, 2022. https:​ //​www​.reddit​.com​/r​/tipofmyjoystick​/comments​/hmuhgz​/ios2010sghouls​_n​_ghosts​ _type​_game​_but​_its/. 66. Kris Straub, “Candle Cove.” Ichor Falls. (2009). (Accessed through the Wayback Machine 19/07/23). Available at: https:​//​web​.archive​.org​/web​/20181008215224​ /http:​//​www​.ichorfalls​.com​/2009​/03​/15​/candle​_cove​/index​.html. 67. Commander Santa, “CLOCKMAN SEARCH WIDENS—Professionals Now on the Case.” The Flood, posted January 13th, 2012, accessed December 26th, 2022, https:​//​www​.bungie​.net​/en​/Forums​/Post​/3393860. 68. Dagmar Doubková, “O parádivé Sally,” AAA Studio (Krátký Film Praha, 1976), https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=74FNByoRYFk. 69. Kratka Studios, “The Wonderful Sally (aka Clock Man) 1976.” Internet Archive. Last Modified December 11th, 2017, accessed December 28th, 2022. https:​ //​archive​.org​/details​/CLOCKMAN. 70. Amazon App Store, “Hope: The Other Side of Adventure.” Amazon. Accessed December 26th, 2022, https:​//​www​.amazon​.com​.au​/Mr​-Roboto​-Hope​ -other-adventure/dp/B00CJV7ERA.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Acosta, Ricardo. Hope: The Other Side of Adventure. Mr. Roboto. 2013. Mobile game. Amazon App Store. “Hope: The Other Side of Adventure.” Amazon. Accessed December 26th, 2022, https:​//​www​.amazon​.com​.au​/Mr​-Roboto​-Hope​-other​ -adventure​/dp​/B00CJV7ERA. Bacchilega, Cristina. “Adaptation and the Fairy-Tale Web,” in The Routledge Companion to Media and Fairy-Tale Cultures, ed. Pauline Greenhill, Jill Terry Rudy, Naomi Hamer, and Lauren Bosc (New York: Routledge, 2018). Blacha, Marcin. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Producers Piotr Krzywonosiuk and Jędrzej Mróz. (CD Projekt RED, 2015–2016). Video Game. Commander Santa. “CLOCKMAN SEARCH WIDENS—Professionals Now on the Case.” The Flood. Posted January 13th, 2012, accessed December 26th, 2022, https:​//​www​.bungie​.net​/en​/Forums​/Post​/3393860. Disney Enterprise, Inc. Disney Princess Treasury. (New York: Disney Press, 2001). Internet Archive. https:​//​archive​.org​/details​/disneysprincesst02newy​/page​/n7​/mode​ /2up​?q​=cinderella. Doubková, Dagmar. “O parádivé Sally,” AAA Studio (Krátký Film Praha, 1976), https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=74FNByoRYFk.

Happy Endings, Only $1.99

177

Fleischer, Dave, and Seymour Kneitel. “Poor Cinderella” (Fleischer Studios, 1934). Grimm, Wilhelm, and Jacob Grimm. Kinder und Hausmaerchen (Berlin, 1812), Internet Archive, accessed December 26th, 2022, https:​//​archive​.org​/details​/ GrimmKinderUndHausmaerchen1​-1812​/page​/n29​/mode​/2up. Grimm, Wilhelm, and Jacob Grimm. Children’s and Household Tales, Volume 1 (Berlin, 1812). [from The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: The Complete First Edition. trans Jack Zipes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton, 2014]. Grimm, Wilhelm, and Jacob Grimm. Children’s and Household Tales, Volume 2 (Berlin, 1814), [from The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: The Complete First Edition. trans Jack Zipes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton, 2014]. Grimm, Wilhelm, and Jacob Grimm. Children’s and Household Tales (Berlin, 1857). from The Grimm Brothers’ Children’s and Household Tales (Grimms’ Fairy Tales), trans. D. L. Ashlimann, 1998–2020, available at: https:​//​sites​.pitt​.edu​/​~dash​/grimmtales​.html. Google Play. “Hope: The Other Side of Adventure.” Wayback Machine, Internet Archive. Last modified October 14th, 2014. Accessed December 22nd, 2022. https:​ //​web​.archive​.org​/web​/20141014231641​/https:​//​play​.google​.com​/store​/apps​/details​ ?id​=com​.MrRoboto​.Hope. Hodapp, Eli. “Totally Free Experimental Game ‘Hope: The Other Side of Adventure’ Tells the Tale of a Captured Princess.” Touch Arcade. Last modified April 19th, 2013. Accessed December 26th, 2022. https:​//​toucharcade​.com​/2013​/04​/19​ /totally​-free​-experimental​-game​-hope​-the​-other​-side​-of​-adventure​-tells​-the​-tale​-of​ -a​-captured​-princess/. Izzzyzzz. “The Search for the Lost ‘Disturbing Princess App,’” Last modified December 17th, 2021. Accessed December 26th, 2022. YouTube. https:​//​www​ .youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=fgUzKcC​_S8o. KELSEYR713. “Review: Hope: The other side of adventure.” Nerdy But Flirty. Last modified May 25th, 2013. Accessed December 26th, 2022. https:​//​nerdybutflirty​ .com​/2013​/05​/25​/hope​-the​-other​-side​-of​-adventure​-review/. Kimmel, Eric A. “Confronting the Ovens: The Holocaust and Juvenile Fiction.” The Horn Book [February 1977]. Kratka Studios. “The Wonderful Sally (aka Clock Man) 1976.” Internet Archive. Last Modified December 11th, 2017, accessed December 28th, 2022. https:​//​archive​.org​ /details​/CLOCKMAN. Lang, Andrew. The Blue Fairy Book, 5th edition (London: Longmans, Green, and Company, 1928). Internet Archive. https:​//​archive​.org​/details​/in​.ernet​.dli​.2015​ .174064​/page​/n7​/mode​/2up. Lin, Ming-Hsun. “Fantasy,” in The Routledge Companion to Media and Fairy-Tale Cultures, ed. Pauline Greenhill, Jill Terry Rudy, Naomi Hamer, and Lauren Bosc (New York: Routledge, 2018). Lindahl, Carl. “Definition And History of Fairy Tales,” in The Routledge Companion to Media and Fairy-Tale Cultures, ed. Pauline Greenhill, Jill Terry Rudy, Naomi Hamer, and Lauren Bosc (New York: Routledge, 2018).

178

Imogen Nutting and Ryan Twomey

López, Andres. “Hope: The Other Side of Adventure,” Uptodown, trans. Uptodown Localization Team, last modified June 29th, 2013, accessed December 26th, 2022. https:​//​hope​-the​-other​-side​-of​-adventure​.en​.uptodown​.com​/android. Meluna Nowotny. “Hope: The other Side of Adventure—ENGLISH FULL GAME Playthrough—All endings.” Last modified December 30th, 2021, accessed December 26th, 2022. https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=1M​_k8NMQOs4. Miyamoto, Shigeru, and Takashi Tezuka. The Legend of Zelda. Producer: Eiji Aonuma (Nintendo, 1986–2022). Video Game. Miyamoto, Shigeru. Super Mario (Nintendo, 1981–2022). Video Game. Penner, Erdman. Sleeping Beauty. Directors Wolfgang Reitherman, Clyde Geronimi, Eric Larson, and Les Clark (Walt Disney Studios, 1959). DVD. Perrault, Charles. Histoires ou contes du temps passé, avec des moralités: Contes de ma mère l’Oye. 1697. [From The Blue Fairy Book, 5th edition (London: Longmans, Green, and Company), trans. Lang, Andrew. 1891.] Sale, Roger. “Fairy Tales.” Hudson Review, Autumn 1977, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Autumn, 1977), 372–94 Shorette, Pierre, Dave Grossman, Adam Hines, Dan Martin, and Nicole Martinez. The Wolf Among Us, Producer Chris Schroyer (Telltale Games, 2013). Computer Game. Stillman, Joe, Roger S. H. Schulman, Ted Elliott, and Terry Rossio. Shrek. Director Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson (Dreamworks, 2001). DVD. Straub, Kris. “Candle Cove.” Ichor Falls (2009). (Accessed through the Wayback Machine 19/07/23). Available at: https:​//​web​.archive​.org​/web​/20181008215224​/ http:​//​www​.ichorfalls​.com​/2009​/03​/15​/candle​_cove​/index​.html. Thornton, Brian Anthony. “Hope: The Other Side of Adventure Review.” GAMEZEBO. May 29th, 2013. Accessed December 26th, 2022. https:​ //​ www​ .gamezebo​.com​/reviews​/hope​-the​-other​-side​-of​-adventure​-review/. Tiffin, Jessica. Marvelous Geometry: Narrative and Metafiction in Modern Fairy Tale (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2009). Todorov, Tzvetan. “The fantastic: A structural approach to a literary genre.” In: Sandner, D. (ed.) Fantastic Literature: A Critical Reader (London: Praeger, 2004), 135–43. U/[deleted]. “[Mobile] [2000s+] Episodic Fantasy ‘game’ where you play as a captured princess.” r/Tipofmyjoystick (Reddit, 2020). Accessed December 26th, 2022. U/_vendettaone_. “[IOS][2010s(?)] Ghouls n Ghosts type game but it’s depressing.” r/Tipofmyjoystick. (Reddit, 2020). Accessed December 26th, 2022. https:​//​www​ .reddit​.com​/r​/tipofmyjoystick​/comments​/hmuhgz​/ios2010sghouls​_n​_ghosts​_type​ _game​_but​_its/. Warman, Brittany. “YouTube and Internet Videos,” in The Routledge Companion to Media and Fairy-Tale Cultures, ed. Pauline Greenhill, Jill Terry Rudy, Naomi Hamer, and Lauren Bosc (New York: Routledge, 2018). Warner, Marina. Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). Whatman, Emma and Victoria Tedeschi. “Video Games,” in The Routledge Companion to Media and Fairy-Tale Cultures, ed. Pauline Greenhill, Jill Terry Rudy, Naomi Hamer, and Lauren Bosc (New York: Routledge, 2018).

Happy Endings, Only $1.99

179

Yolen, Jane. Mapping the Bones (New York: Philomel Books, 2018). Young, Katharine. “Storyworlds/Narratology,” in The Routledge Companion to Media and Fairy-Tale Cultures, ed. Pauline Greenhill, Jill Terry Rudy, Naomi Hamer, and Lauren Bosc (New York: Routledge, 2018). Ziolkowski, Jan M. “A Fairy Tale from before Fairy Tales: Egbert of Liège’s ‘De puella a lupellis seruata’ and the Medieval Background of ‘Little Red Riding Hood,’” Speculum, Jul. 1992, Vol. 67, No. 3 (Jul. 1992), The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Medieval Academy of America, 549–75. Zipes, Jack. Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion: The Classical Genre for Children and the Process of Civilization. 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2012). Zipes, Jack. “Introduction,” in The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: The Complete First Edition, trans. Jack Zipes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton, 2014).

PART IV

The Twenty-First Century and the Necessity of Trauma-Informed Narratives

181

Chapter 8

Standing Out, Not Sticking Out “Curing” Abnormal Childhood in Rob Harrell’s Wink Allyson Wierenga

INTRODUCTION: CURE, VISIBILITY, AND REPRESENTATION “[C]ure aims to make us as normal and natural as possible,” writes disability scholar and activist Eli Clare. “The pressure is intense, created and sustained by the consequences and dangers of being considered abnormal and unnatural.”1 In this quote from his book Brilliant Imperfection (2017), which explores and interrogates dominant ideologies of cure within the Western world, Clare lays bare the inherent relationship between normalcy, naturalness, and cure. He posits that what often motivates people to seek cure is the fear of being labeled as abnormal and unnatural by others. Clare notes that “normal” and “natural” are commonly equated with being “white male, middle- and upper-class, non-disabled, Christian, heterosexual, gender-conforming, slender, [and] cisgender”2 in Western society, thus labeling people whose identities fall outside of these as “other.” Cure, as well as normalcy and naturalness, are also connected to visibility. To be “considered abnormal and unnatural” might also translate to being hyper-visible in a crowd, rather than being accepted as someone who can blend in.3 Such visibility then rests largely on how one is perceived by others, rather than one’s conception of the self. However, as Clare points out throughout his text, cure is far more complex than the desire to lessen one’s visibility within society. He writes, “Cure is slippery. Cure saves lives; cure manipulates lives; cure prioritizes some lives over others; cure makes profits; cure justifies violence; 183

184

Allyson Wierenga

cure promises resolution to body-mind loss.”4 Cure, then, is a multifaceted term that puts forth a kaleidoscope of meanings and symbols that simultaneously clarify and contradict themselves. In Rob Harrell’s 2020 middle-grade novel Wink, the intersecting ideologies of cure, normalcy, and visibility are central to both the book’s plot and how relationships between characters are constructed. The book focuses on twelve-year-old Ross Maloy, an American middle schooler who is diagnosed with “mucoepidermoid carcinoma of the lacrimal gland,”5 a rare form of eye cancer. Ross’s weekly radiation treatments, which are supposed to eradicate the cancerous cells from his right eye, frame the story as the book begins with Ross’s first treatment and ends shortly after his last treatment, eight weeks later. While Ross undergoes treatment, his body begins to exhibit multiple physical symptoms, such as his eye leaking and his hair falling out. In addition to physical symptoms, Ross must also change his appearance to protect his body from environmental risk, wearing a cowboy hat indoors and out to shield his eyes from ultraviolet light. While his own visual appearance changes, the most drastic symptom to Ross remains the least visible to others, as he begins to lose sight in his right eye. Yet, while the world becomes, physically, less visible to Ross, Ross’s embodiment of his illness makes him hyper-visible to those around him, a fact made apparent by how other characters repeatedly comment on and viscerally respond to his appearance. Thus, ironically, while the radiation treatments are meant to “cure” his cancer and “make [Ross’s body] as normal and natural as possible” in Clare’s words, the effects of these treatments push his body, physically, more toward how Western society views abnormality and unnaturalness, vividly illustrating Clare’s theory that “cure is slippery.” As a result of this new, “abnormal” embodiment, readers see Ross continually fret over his loss of normalcy and wrestle with the dichotomy of normalcy and difference. Indeed, the word normal shows up more than thirty times throughout the book. However, toward the end of the novel, Ross comes to the conclusion that he would rather “stand out” than “stick out,” telling his best friend, Abby, “I think I’d be okay with standing out. Standing out, good. Sticking out, bad.”6 Ross puts this theory to the test at the end of the book, when he, Abby, and their friend Jimmy, all social misfits, perform as a band in their school’s talent show. During the show, Ross reveals his new “Mohawk” hairstyle and smashes a guitar, actions that draw attention to himself as a punk rocker of sorts. In doing so, he attempts to exert power over how others view him. Rather than “sticking out” as the kid who has cancer, Ross “stands out” as the kid unafraid to rock out in front of more conservative peers. Here, the main difference between “sticking out” and “standing out” appears to be agency. In other words, while a physically disabled child may not control that their body “sticks out” as abnormal by society’s standards,

Standing Out, Not Sticking Out

185

they can choose to stand out via self-expression. Thus, in Wink, I posit the “cure” to Ross’s “abnormal” image lies not in his cancer treatments, but rather in his own ability to alter the ways his body is made visible to others. By centering a childhood with cancer in the book, Harrell may be said to challenge the present definition of a “normal” American childhood where health is often prioritized. It is often assumed that while “normal” children may occasionally break a bone or catch the flu, they will have no serious illnesses or disabilities that impair how their bodies work. For instance, in Alex: The Life of a Child, Frank Deford’s memoir about caring for his young daughter with cystic fibrosis, he writes, “It’s different, a child dying. It isn’t just that children are supposed to keep on living. Imagine being eight years old and dead. It isn’t just what everybody always says either—that a child dying is unnatural. It’s much more than that.”7 By noting that “children are supposed to keep on living” and that “everybody always says . . . that a child dying is unnatural,” Deford articulates the widespread notion that children are expected to grow out of childhood into adulthood. “Normal” children, then, do not die, and should never even need to consider the imminence of their own mortality, unlike in earlier time periods where childhood death was common, even likely. Numerous quotes about childhood reaffirm these contemporary societal “rules.” For instance, literary scholars Sarah Chinn and Anna Mae Duane describe a child as “a work in progress rather than a complete human being, at once physically and structurally vulnerable and culturally powerful.”8 Though children are vulnerable, that they are a “work in progress” shows they will not always be this way; they will grow up and only then become fully realized humans. By writing a middle-grade text that centralizes a child with cancer, Harrell expands the representation of disabled individuals in children’s literature. The need for increased, accurate representation of marginalized groups is a popular topic in children’s literature scholarship. Since children’s literature scholar Rudine Sims Bishop’s groundbreaking essay advocating for books to function as “mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors” for children so they can feel valued by society,9 countless scholars have applied this theory to literary depictions of disabled characters. For instance, disability scholar Joan K. Blaska notes, “[c]hildren with disabilities or illnesses need to see people similar to them.”10 Despite the need for disabled children to find their mirrors in literature, there is a severely limited quantity of books that do this work. Disability scholar Hanna Björg Sigurjónsdóttir also points out that “Books with disabled children as characters were rare for a long time. Although their number has increased, they are still few compared to the number of books published every year.”11 In fact, education scholar Katie L. Doering notes that “[C]hildren with disabilities have been identified as one of the most poorly

186

Allyson Wierenga

represented groups in children’s literature.”12 Children’s literature scholars Julia Mickenberg and Philip Nel connect this lack of books to ableist notions of “the normalized body”: “The facts of disability are even more rare in books for younger readers, because their presence challenges cultural adherence to ideas of the normalized body.” It seems that, through representation, some scholars imagine that those existing outside of society’s norm can be incorporated into it, thus redefining and widening the definition of what it means to be “normal.” Others may look upon such hoped-for incorporation with suspicion, though, deeming it assimilationist and an erasure of one’s unique identity. In Ellen Samuels’s chapter “Passing” from the book Keywords for Disability Studies, she describes how, “In historical and colloquial usage, ‘passing’ was originally understood as a form of imposture in which members of a marginalized group presented themselves as members of a dominant group.”13 Speaking about “passing” specifically in relation to disability, she describes “the dominant perception that those who attempt to pass as nondisabled are merely yearning to assimilate or are seeking the social privileges conferred by the absence of visible impairment.”14 In other words, a desire for people to “pass” for “normal” and therefore be incorporated into the normal can be read as a desire to favor social privilege over maintaining one’s individuality. Though, on one hand, Wink can be seen as inclusive through its literary “normalization” of childhood cancer, on the other, it suggests there is an onus placed on disabled children to change and control their representation in society. Ross “sticks out” due to side effects from his cancer treatments, something he codes as “bad.” Thus, to Ross, being viewed as abnormal due to his disability is unacceptable and something he needs to fix by finding a new, different way to stand out. In sum, he—and, by extension, other children with visible disabilities—need to distract from their disability to be accepted as normal. This chapter argues that, rather than pushing against the exclusive notion of what it means to be “normal” in society, Wink appears to offer a way for disabled children to come closer to, though never fully achieving what society dictates as the norm. Additionally, while some might argue that Harrell, through the depiction of Ross, normalcy, and visibility in Wink, is consciously resisting Ross’s full-on assimilation into the dominant culture to maintain individuality via his disability. However, since his “standing out” seems to be contingent on ableist notions of what “acceptable” visual difference looks like, this choice seems less likely. Ultimately, this chapter offers readers new ways to “see” the concept of representation within children’s literature: as both a tool to give social power and status to children as well as a method that reaffirms problematic societal norms. “To understand the body,” writes Lennard Davis, “one must return to the concept of the norm, the normal body.”15 Disability scholars have long

Standing Out, Not Sticking Out

187

questioned the concepts of normalcy and normality as they relate to the disabled body. For instance, when describing the goal of The Disability Studies Scholar, a pivotal book within disability studies, Davis notes, “the writers in this reader are not simply trying to include disability under the rubric of normal but to question the idea of normality,”16 such as how modern conceptions of normality are descended from historical notions of the ideal.17 In Western society, the “normal body” is almost always one that is able-bodied, a notion tied to systemic ableism. Indeed, Jay Dolmage writes, “Ableism renders disability as abject, invisible, disposable, less than human, while able-bodiedness is represented as at once ideal, normal, and the mean or default.”18 What Dolmage reveals is that, in the Western world, normalcy can be translated to, quite frankly, power. Indeed, to be “normal” is to have access to social power and protection from discrimination that those who are “abnormal” do not. Due to these power dynamics, agency is, by nature, vital to discussions of disability, including the relationship between disability and childhood. Scholar of psychosocial and psychoanalytic studies Jessica Clark notes that, while agency has become a prominent point of discussion within Childhood Studies, “disabled children were still being measured against normative developmental frameworks,” such as being categorized as “normal” or “abnormal.”19 Clark adds that “the definition of agency dominating often unquestioned Childhood Studies frameworks remains problematic for disabled children” in that “agency is usually understood in a neoliberal context where individual autonomy and capacity for individual action rule.”20 She complicates this definition of agency by noting that “children with disabilities do not lack agency” and that “understandings of agency must be reconfigured to consider how it is enacted in being cared for, as well as doing caring, found in being vulnerable as well as capable, and bound up in resilience and reflection.”21 In essence, just as scholars like those in Davis’s text are, at times, interested in expanding the definition of normal to include disability, Clark expands the oft-considered “normal” definition of agency to be more inclusive of disabled children. In this chapter, I build on these existing conversations of disability, normalcy, and agency by discussing how, in Wink, Rob Harrell widens the definition of a “normal childhood” to include cancer while also catering to Western society’s belief that normalcy and able-bodiedness are linked, especially through Ross’s choice to change his visibility within society. By focusing on visibility and representation in particular, I aim to problematize not only how we decide what constitutes “normal” within childhood, but how disability representation in children’s literature is imagined.

188

Allyson Wierenga

CANCER IS NORMAL: CONSTRUCTING A “NORMAL” CHILDHOOD IN WINK In Kirkus’ review of Wink, the text is described as “Not your typical kid-with-cancer book” in that the book’s “driving force . . . is Ross’s justifiable anger.”22 The phrase “typical kid-with-cancer book” likely refers to the copious books that portray children with serious illnesses as intensely spiritual and saintly. For instance, Karin Nyqvist writes about the trope of the saintly, dying Victorian child, noting that “Children’s deathbed narratives of Victorian literature are often drawn out affairs, underlining the purity and innocence of the dead child.”23 Though Ross is not dead or dying like these Victorian children, Wink’s focus on Ross’s anger rather than a sort of otherworldly, gentle behavior is a new approach to an old literary trope of children experiencing serious illness. Yet, Wink does not try to disguise the fact that, ultimately, it is a “kid-with-cancer book” in that cancer is at the forefront of the narrative. For instance, the first chapter of the book focuses on Ross receiving radiation treatment. Though Ross’s cancer is centralized in the text, it is also enmeshed with his other more so-called normal middle school experiences, such as having a crush and experiencing friendship issues. Furthermore, the text shows other children, though not experiencing cancer, experiencing their own troubles, thus suggesting that Ross is not as isolated and alone as he feels. In this section, I will argue that, through its narrative structure, Wink draws on American society’s existing norms for middle school in order to “normalize” cancer as a part of American childhood. It is common for adolescents to develop a “crush” on another person. For instance, a study about other-sex crushes conducted in four New York middle schools found that “56% [of the participants] had at least one current other-sex crush.”24 The researchers also note that, in the study, “Significant associations between other-sex scores (scores reflecting the number of crush nominations received) and physical attractiveness, relational aggression, physical aggression, and popularity, as reported by same-sex and other-sex peers, were found.”25 Ross follows the middle school crush trend when readers see him develop feelings for one of his peers, Sarah. Readers first learn about Ross’s romantic feelings for her when, at school, he says, “Sarah Kennedy floats in and the room brightens like somebody upped the wattage in all the bulbs.”26 In this description, Ross connects his affection for Sarah with her visuality. Since Ross has feelings for Sarah, she is extra-visible to him. Regarding his crush, he says, “I know there’s nothing terribly enlightened about going all gooey over a girl I barely know, but . . . well . . . blame puberty.”27 Such a statement seeks to align Ross with the many other children his age who both have a “crush” on a peer and/or are going through puberty.

Standing Out, Not Sticking Out

189

Through much of the text, readers see Ross simultaneously delighted and intimidated when he interacts with Sarah. Ross’s intimidation is tied both to his feelings for Sarah and his insecurities about his cancer. For instance, in class, Sarah asks Ross how he is feeling and if his cancerous eye will heal. He replies by saying, “I’m gonna lose the vision in it, eventually, but for now it just stings all the time.” He soon confides to readers, “I don’t love talking about this stuff, but I’m having a legit conversation with Sarah Kennedy!”28 Here, Ross’s conflicting feelings about his cancer and Sarah merge together. Although Ross is uncomfortable talking about his cancer, he still appreciates that it gives him something to talk about with Sarah and that it helps him feel seen by her. Paradoxically, while Ross admits that he is losing his physical sight, he feels he is growing more visible to Sarah because of it. Though few American children have cancer, many would likely find Ross’s actions here relatable, even “normal,” since doing and saying things one is uncomfortable with is often seen as a small price to pay if it results in being “liked back” by a crush. Ross’s friendship troubles, too, serve to “normalize” his experience with childhood cancer. Like crushes, having friends and, by extension, friendship conflicts is also a sort of “rite of passage” for American middle schoolers. As scholars of adolescence Leah M. Lessard and Jaana Juvonen note, “Establishing friendships is considered a central developmental task of early adolescence” and “Young adolescents make new friends, while other relationships dissolve over time.”29 In Wink, friendship is one of Ross’s primary concerns. At the beginning of Wink, readers learn that Ross and his friends Abby and Isaac used to be a close-knit friend group. “Then,” Ross tells readers, “I got sick. And [Isaac] slowly stopped coming around. Or inviting us over. Or texting. Or responding to texts. It makes me sick to my stomach if I think about it too much.”30 The dissolution of their friendship, then, appears directly connected to Ross having cancer. Ross’s theory is confirmed when, toward the end of the book, Isaac apologizes to Ross for his silence, telling him, “I freaked out, Ross! . . . When you told me you were sick I just . . . I had zero idea what to do. What to say to you. Zero.”31 Isaac’s panic about Ross’s cancer easily connects to widespread societal fears about disability. Dolmage writes, “Fear of disability is in some shape [. . .] the fear that we are only temporarily able-bodied, a fear that the body is not static, rational, and whole.”32 Isaac’s “freaking out” about Ross’s cancer could then be read, in a way, as Isaac fearfully reckoning with the permeability of his own body and the possibility that he, too, could someday have cancer. Isaac’s fear is then not just a fear of the “other,” as Ross is often considered by his classmates, but a fear that he, too, could become othered. Furthermore, though Ross’s and Isaac’s conflict is directly related to Ross’s cancer, having a friendship conflict, like a crush, is considered a pretty “normal” experience for children

190

Allyson Wierenga

Ross’s age. Therefore, by showing that Ross is still like other kids his age in that he, to use Lessard and Juvonen’s words, experiences “relationships dissolve,” his cancer becomes, again, integrated into a “normal” American childhood. While Ross’s voice and experiences are prioritized in the text, readers also become familiar with two other child characters, Abby and Jimmy. Though distanced from Ross in that they do not have cancer, they are connected to Ross in that they both experience difficult circumstances in their lives that they have little to no control over. First, Abby, Ross’s best friend, tells him that her family is moving due to her father’s new job. Abby is depicted as being nervous about this move. In one particularly powerful moment, Ross attempts to vent about his day, but Abby tells him, “Nope. Not tonight, Ross. I just can’t tonight. I’m dealing with my own garbage. Sorry.”33 Though Ross wants to discuss the serious issue of being bullied due to his cancer, Abby shows that she, like Ross feeling stressed about his cancer’s side effects, is herself dealing with a life-changing situation that she cannot control. Additionally, Jimmy, who is described as both “the biggest kid” and “the sketchiest”34 in the class, is described experiencing his own, in Abby’s words, “garbage.” Ross and Jimmy frequently do not get along due to Jimmy’s snide remarks about Ross’s appearance and Ross’s disgust at Jimmy making “Jimmy wads,”35 or big wads of gum. Yet, partway through the book, readers are asked to sympathize with Jimmy or at least understand why he acts out in “sketchy” ways when another character tells Ross, “Maybe not a stellar home situation for Jimmy, as you might imagine. His mom’s a bit of a . . . ”36 Though it is not exactly clear why Jimmy’s home life is difficult and what his mother is like, it is suggested that he has neglectful guardians and, as a minor, likely can control little in his situation. Later in the book, the three— Ross, Abby, and Jimmy—become decent friends, suggesting that their struggles have a unifying effect. Indeed, as will be discussed later in this chapter, the three perform in the school talent show together, an experience they all find exciting and meaningful. Still, such normalization and unification could also be seen as a problematic flattening of issues since having cancer and having neglectful parents are different circumstances and difficult to compare. Nevertheless, by incorporating Abby’s and Jimmy’s struggles alongside Ross’s, Harrell reimagines what it means to have a “normal” childhood by showing that it is “normal” for children to struggle in different ways. In sum, these examples reveal how Harrell provides, in Bishop’s words, “windows and sliding glass doors” into other [non-normative] childhoods. Doering posits that “multidimensionality,” or rather that “the characters are credible and consistent information is included about the protagonists’ interests, and degrees of development are present,”37 is an important part of creating accurate representation in children’s picture books about cancer. By

Standing Out, Not Sticking Out

191

depicting Ross as a developed, complex character with various relationships, interests, and activities, Wink also provides child readers with a multidimensional text about childhood cancer. By not divorcing Ross’s experience with cancer from experiences coded more “normal” for people his age, Harrell thus presents a narrative in which it is not together “abnormal” for cancer to be a part of childhood. “STICKING OUT”: COWBOY HATS, EYE GOOP, AND (NOT SO) CONTAGIOUS BODIES Inasmuch as Ross’s childhood is narratively coded as “normal,” it is also portrayed as “different” because of his cancer. One major way this portrayal happens is by Ross’s metamorphosis into his class’s “Sick Kid.” Early in the book, Ross tells readers, “I used to be invisible. I could walk through a crowded library and escape completely unnoticed. Unscathed. Hardly anybody talked to me, and I lived peacefully under the radar like a stealth bomber in a hoodie. I never realized it before, but it was kind of great. Then, y’know . . . cancer.”38 In essence, Ross connects peace with being unnoticeable to those around him. Peace connected to invisibility reveals a certain amount of privilege: as a White, male, able-bodied, middle-class, heterosexual, and cisgender boy, Ross was used to being considered “normal” by those around him and, thus, was not hyper-visible. Those who do not fit these standards naturally cannot “escape” and hide in the ways Ross could, which makes them more vulnerable to discrimination. By comparing his invisibility to a “stealth bomber,” Ross articulates the social and political “power” of blending in, even suggesting able-bodiedness is a sort of weapon to be wielded against societal discrimination. However, Ross’s privileged invisibility disappears once he gets cancer. He says, “Gone were my big plans to sneak my way through seventh grade with my non-noteworthy B average, unnoticed. . . . Now I can’t walk the length of a hallway without someone studying me to see if I look sick.”39 Ross’s observation that others “study” and “stare” at him reveals his discomfort with increased visibility; whereas others would simply let him blend into a crowd, now his body is constantly monitored and assessed, placing him at risk of being judged or mocked. One poignant example of Ross’s increased visibility at his school is when he receives a card after his surgery. Since he had surgery during summer, he could keep his newly changed body away from his peers’ prying eyes. However, when Ross returns to school he finds “a huge card signed by the teachers and everyone in my class” with “messages all over it”40 wishing him well. Rather than viewing this as simply a kind gesture, Ross is “horrified”41 and instantly worries about how this card, which visually draws

192

Allyson Wierenga

attention to itself due to its large size, affects his image at school. He notes, “[E]xcept for some yellowing bruises . . . I looked relatively okay. But that card said, Forget sneaking back into school like Mr. Normal. It was like someone had hung a big lit-up sign over my head announcing what had happened. Sick Kid right here!”42 First of all, by noting that, besides his bruise, he “looked relatively okay,” Ross equates any physical difference or sign of illness with appearing “not okay,” or more specifically, not normal. Furthermore, for Ross, this card adds to his difference by making him, symbolically, appear different to his class. Rather than maintaining his privileged status as “Mr. Normal,” the card labels him, in his mind, as the school’s designated “Sick Kid,” connecting his identity with cancer. The selflabel “Sick Kid” shows up several times throughout the book, like when Ross tells Abby, “I don’t enjoy being ‘the Sick Kid,’” or when he says, “Abby’s always telling me to stop worrying about being the Sick Kid.’”43 Whether it is Ross, Abby, or others labeling Ross “Sick Kid,” that this name is even used is significant. Animal studies scholar Sune Borkfelt describes the inherent relationship between naming and representation: “A name is a representation and can therefore potentially carry all the values, ideas, perceptions and conceptions carried by representations and have the array of potential consequences, which can ensue from representation.”44 When applied to Ross’s self-label as the “Sick Kid,” this theory suggests Ross carries all the social and cultural connotations of sickness and disability and is thus vulnerable to the discrimination that sick and disabled people consistently face. In addition to being viewed as different due to his cancer, Ross’s body physically manifests this difference as he continues his radiation treatments. For example, to protect his eye from ultraviolet light, Ross’s doctor instructs him to always wear a hat, both in and outside. As he’s getting this news from the doctor, Ross states, “The rest of our talk is a blur to me, because all I heard in my head was panic. . . . All chances at being a halfway normal seventh grader are slipping away from me.”45 Rather than appreciate that this hat is an aid during the process of having his cancer “cured,” Ross connects it with abnormality. Just like the giant card identified him, in his mind, as the school’s “Sick Kid,” this hat will continue to push him away from normalcy, especially since it is a cowboy hat, an accessory generally not worn inside his middle school. The hat also shows the contradictions within cure: even as wearing the hat is a method used to help “normalize” him by returning him to a “healthy” body, it makes his body appear abnormal to others. Due to his fears, Ross takes it upon himself to explain the cowboy hat by “writing DOCTOR’S ORDERS”46 on it for the other students to see. This action demonstrates Ross’s internal pressure, a pressure likely driven by his social environment, to explain why he looks “different.” In other words, Ross’s environment problematically places an onus on a disabled child to

Standing Out, Not Sticking Out

193

explain why they are more “visible.” While students make cowboy-related comments like “Yeehaw!” to him throughout the day, Ross is pleasantly surprised with how the hat is received: “Nobody knocks it off my head or laughs in my face the way I’d dreaded. In fact, most kids just kind of look for a moment and then . . . accept it. Cancer Kids get hats, and that’s that, I guess.”47 Here, Ross’s relationship with “sticking out” at school is nuanced. Though visceral reactions to the uniqueness of his hat lessen by the end of the day, this phenomenon seems to be related to the learned idea that “Cancer Kids” are, inherently, “different.” If this relationship is the case, then students are accepting Ross’s visible difference only because they expect it of him, and not because they have come to see disability as a usual part of life. Though Ross is comforted by his peers seeming to accept him as not too visibly abnormal in his cowboy hat, this comfort is stripped from him when he finds out a peer made several memes of him. The first meme is captioned “Cancer Cowboy” and shows Ross wearing his cowboy hat and saying, “Yee Haw.” Ross describes this meme as “Kind of meanspirited,” but not as awful as he expected, suggesting that making fun of someone’s disability is conventional.48 The second, captioned “TFW” (that feel when) “You poop your hospital gown” also features Ross wearing his cowboy hat, but also hooked up to an IV, wearing a hospital gown, and farting.49 Though he laments that meme-ified Ross “looks awful,” another indication he is overly concerned about his appearance, it is the third meme that Ross calls “the winner. The icing on the cake. The piece de resistance.”50 In this image, viewers see a Grim Reaper, or “Death,” figure standing outside an airport and holding a sign featuring Ross’s name. Ross thinks, “So, Death is waiting for me? Is that what they’re implying? That I’m dying? Is that the joke?”51 In essence, not only are these ableist memes making fun of the fact Ross’s cowboy hat makes his body appear “abnormal” compared to the rest of his peers, they also find humor in that Ross’s cancer increases his risk of dying. Considering death and disorder, Clare writes, “I wonder what we would know about ourselves and each other if diagnosis projected acceptance rather than disorder onto our body-minds. Inside this imagined projection, pain and death might become familiar parts of our life cycle rather than markers of disorder to dread and avoid.”52 The third meme’s emphasis on Ross’s higher susceptibility to death serves to further “other” him since, as Clare points out, death is often coded as abnormal and a mark of disorder. In sum, by making a meme out of his higher potential for mortality, Ross’s peers similarly mark his cancer as a disorder and choose not to accept his experience as “normal” or “familiar.” The structure of memes themselves also open Ross to being othered by his peers. In an examination of how memes are used in visual culture, communications scholar Limor Shifman, drawing on Richard Dawkins’s work, describes memes as “gene-like infectious units of culture that spread from

194

Allyson Wierenga

person to person.”53 Genes, too, are involved when cancer spreads in the body: “Cancer begins when some of the genes in a cell become abnormal, causing the cell to grow and divide out of control.”54 Thus, meme units are comparable to cancer cells in that they also “grow and divide,” though cancer cells spread within one body whereas memes spread from body to body. By spreading these memes of Ross’s cancer throughout the student body, and thus further “infecting” the student body’s idea of which bodies are coded as normal and which are not, the student in charge of creating the memes—later revealed to be Ross’s crush, Sarah—attempts to mimic the spread of abnormal-gene cells in Ross’s body. Shifman adds, “At any given moment, many memes are competing for the attention of hosts; however, only memes suited to their sociocultural environment spread successfully, while others become extinct.”55 That Ross’s memes successfully get passed around to virtually his whole middle school speaks then to the “sociocultural environment” in which he lives. Ross’s environment is one in which visually othering physical abnormality or, more specifically, disability, is considered acceptable, even expected. Thus, that Ross has absorbed similar ideology and considers himself abnormal is not unexpected. However, whereas the other students can control which memes they look at and forward on, Ross cannot control his body’s cells, though his radiation treatment attempts to do so. Thus, biologically, socially, and now, digitally, Ross is depicted as someone who lacks agency over appearing “normal” to those around him. Nevertheless, Abby tries to get Ross to exert agency over the meme situation by suggesting they tell the principal. However, Ross adamantly refuses this suggestion, telling Abby, “NO! . . . We’re not doing ANYTHING, do you hear me? I don’t . . . I just want them to go away . . . we’re not giving them any more attention,” also forcing Abby to “pinky swear” not to tell.56 Though Ross’s refusal might be read as him exerting agency (he has the choice to report and chooses not to), it can also be read as him, again, being restricted by his society’s notions of acceptable visibility. Just like how Ross wanted to be “invisible” to others while attending school, he wants his meme self to “go away” and not be given “any more attention.” Still, Ross’s quest to be invisible and “normal” further evades him when the physical symptoms he experiences, namely oozing from his eye and hair loss, lead to other characters seeing his cancer as contagious. After his eye starts oozing, Ross notes, “On top of that, I notice kids keeping a little extra distance between me and them, like they think I’m contagious. In their defense, it does look like I have some sort of Gooey Creeping Crud.”57 Ross notices others are separating themselves from him now that his illness has become more physically apparent. Though Ross is obviously uncomfortable with his peers’ actions, he still defends them by acknowledging he “look[s] like [he has] some sort of Gooey Creeping Crud.” While describing his eye’s

Standing Out, Not Sticking Out

195

leaking in this way, Ross attempts to find humor in his situation. However, his defense of his peers’ behavior also illustrates adherence to society’s elevation of normalcy. Though Ross is mistreated because of his physical difference, he chooses to justify this mistreatment rather than decry it, a move suggesting that if someone besides him had cancer he would also maintain distance. In other words, Ross acknowledges he is physically “abnormal,” and in a way deserves to be othered. Other characters’ fear of contagion leads Ross to begin covering up his symptoms and feeling guilty about his cancer. He describes a time when, after trying to return a pen he borrowed from a boy named Jason Kelly, Kelly “looked really quick back and forth between my face and then pen, and swallowed. ‘I’m . . . I’m okay. You keep it.’” Ross then notes, “It was only after he darted away that I looked at the pen. It was shiny from my goop.”58 Jason appears uncomfortable touching a substance directly related to Ross’s illness, which reinforces Ross’s theory that others around him view him as contagious. As a result of this leaking “goop,” Ross tries to covertly bring cleaning wipes with him to school. He describes this situation as “humiliating, like I’d committed some kind of crime.”59 Writer Susan Sontag writes, “there is a link between imagining disease and imagining foreignness. It lies perhaps in the very concept of wrong, which is archaically identical with the non-us, the alien.”60 By likening his symptoms to “committ[ing] some kind of crime,” Ross illustrates how his physical symptoms have positioned him as “alien” and, by extension, somehow guilty of immorality. Such feelings of guilt also coincide with traditional theories of cancer that Sontag outlines in her book Illness as Metaphor. She writes, “Widely believed psychological theories of disease assign to the luckless ill the ultimate responsibility both for falling ill and for getting well. And conventions of treating cancer as no mere disease but a demonic enemy make cancer not just a lethal disease but a shameful one.”61 By feeling guilty about his symptoms, Ross subscribes to this societal idea that he is at fault for having cancer. Ross’s absorption of this idea is also apparent earlier in the book when he tells his father, “I feel . . . guilty” about having cancer,62 a statement suggesting that Ross ultimately feels responsible for his illness and, by extension, his perceived abnormality. Ross’s sense of humiliation and guilt, in addition to the fact that he is most likely the only student at his school to have cancer (as suggested by Ross’s feelings of isolation), seem to also position him socially as an “index case” or “Patient Zero” of sorts, “an infected person who transmits an infection to many others,”63 even though his illness is not contagious. In her book about outbreak narratives, Priscilla Wald connects the notion of an “index case” to a “superspreader,” “someone who infects large numbers of people.” She adds, “The metamorphosis of infected people into superspreaders is a convention of the outbreak narrative, in which human carriers rhetorically . . . bring the

196

Allyson Wierenga

virus itself to life.”64 Ross’s eye goop seems to reimagine him in the eyes of his peers as a cancer “index case” and potential “superspreader” for their school. In essence, his oozing eyes cause him to physically embody his illness and, as a result, mark him as someone to be avoided lest he spread his illness to others. Ross’s loss of hair functions in a similar way. While in the cafeteria, a clump of his hair falls out onto the plate of the girl he has a crush on, Sarah. Unsure of how to handle this situation, he confides to readers, “I don’t want to say, It’s okay, the doctor said this would start happening, or the word cancer, or the word treatments. Somehow, any of that makes it worse. More . . . contagious, even though it isn’t.”65 Here, Ross worries that using medicalized terms like doctor, cancer, and treatments makes his cancer appear contagious and himself appear abnormal. In addition, it separates him from his peers who (wrongly) fear that he could collectively “infect” or “harm” them. Ross’s worry over the word cancer coincides with Sontag’s idea that “[t]he most feared diseases, those that are not simply fatal but transform the body into something alienating, like leprosy and syphilis and cholera and (in the imagination of many) cancer, are the ones that seem particularly susceptible to promotion to ‘plague.’”66 In Ross’s case, his loss of hair due to cancer treatment “transform[s] his body into something alienating,” representing a false threat of “plague” where others could “catch” his illness and have their own bodies put at risk for transforming from normal to abnormal. That Ross’s cancer affects the appearance of his head and face also likely adds to his peers’ fears about his illness. Sontag writes, “Our very notion of the person, of dignity, depends on the separation of face from body, on the possibility that the face may be exempt [. . .] from what is happening to the body. And however lethal, illnesses like heart attacks and influenza that do not damage or deform the face never arouse the deepest dread.”67 In other words, humans see personhood as directly related to the face. Thus, if the face looks different from how society has deemed “normal” faces should look, then that person’s identity is consequently altered or diminished. Sontag adds, “Underlying some of the moral judgments attached to disease are aesthetic judgments about the beautiful and the ugly, the clean and the unclean, the familiar and the alien or uncanny.”68 That people conflate morality with disease, then, is directly due to societal notions of who is “beautiful,” “clean,” “familiar,” or, by extension, who is “normal.” Ross’s face has changed due to his cancer treatments, so his peers, viewing him through a lens of societal normalcy, can be said to, consequently, view him as having lost his dignity, personhood, and normalcy. That his face also implies the threat of contagion leads to fear, as these children do not want their own bodies to be met with the same “deepest dread.” Ironically, the fact that Ross’s cancer is not contagious puts him at even more risk of being excluded by his community. As Wald notes, “epidemic[s] [are] a shared experience on multiple levels”69 and “the interactions that make

Standing Out, Not Sticking Out

197

us sick also constitute us as a community.”70 When multiple people have an illness or share a threat of contracting an illness, it automatically makes them a community. Ross is, seemingly, the only student at his school who has cancer, and no students can contract his illness. Thus, Ross’s cancer is not a “shared experience” and cannot bring forth an epidemic/illness–forged community. If there were even one other student at his school with cancer, Ross would arguably be able to find some comfort in sharing the experience of having physical differences. However, since there is not, Ross is set apart. Ross’s feelings of being othered, especially through hair loss, are reinforced when his stepmother, Linda, tells him, “It looks like you’re starting to lose some hair there.” After Ross sarcastically responds, “Gee. Do you really think so, Linda?” she says, “Hey. I get it. I’d be upset too . . . Your hair is part of you.”71 In this exchange, particularly its focus on Ross’s hair as an extension of his body, Linda implicitly tells Ross that he is losing himself, his identity, to cancer. Again theorizing about the face-body relationship, Sontag notes, “What counts more than the amount of disfigurement is that it reflects underlying, ongoing changes, the dissolution of the person.”72 Linda’s idea that Ross’s hair reflects a loss of the self perfectly illustrates Sontag’s theory that facial disfigurement is, societally, connected to “the dissolution of the person,” thereby distancing disability from humanity. Nevertheless, though Linda remarks on Ross’s metaphorical “loss” of personhood, she also reassures him that it is not a permanent loss: “But just remember it’s temporary. You’ll be back to normal again really soon.”73 At the beginning of Illness as Metaphor, Sontag separates health and illness by situating them within their own “kingdoms.” She writes, “Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.”74 By describing Ross’s cancer as “temporary” and telling him he will soon “be back to normal,” Linda equates normalcy with health. Though Ross is currently a citizen of “the kingdom of the sick,” he will soon come “back to normal,” or rather come back to the “kingdom of the well.” Such an image paints Ross as having more agency than he does over his illness, as if he can travel to and from each “kingdom” at will. This notion is also problematic when considering people who are born with a disability, experience chronic illness, or are not privileged in the way Ross is to afford treatment for his life-threatening illness. Finally, being “back to normal” and returning from the “kingdom of the sick” are both notions tied to rhetorics of cure. If Ross’s cancer is temporary, then it is natural to assume that it will eventually be “cured” or eradicated in one way or another. Clare describes how “the ideology of cure aims to eliminate the trouble from either a single body-mind or the world at large,” and “The goal is to ultimately ensure that the trouble

198

Allyson Wierenga

no longer exists as if it had never existed in the first place.”75 By describing Ross’s cancer as only a “temporary” trip to the “kingdom of the sick,” Linda wrongly suggests that Ross’s cancer is something he will physically leave behind him and even pretend as if he never had. Predictably, Ross does not respond happily to Linda’s comment. He notes, “There’s that word again. Normal,” and tells Linda, “Thank you! I’ll remember that, Linda, as me and my temporary ABNORMALNESS wallow around tonight on our HAIRY FREAKIN’ SHEETS!” He adds, “Maybe, Linda— just maybe—we can ride along in SILENCE now, so I can contemplate my IMPENDING RETURN TO NORMALCY in a few short months!”76 Ross’s anger can be read as frustration that Linda has confirmed his fears: his cancer has made him both feel abnormal and appear abnormal to others. By emphasizing “impending return to normalcy,” Ross even suggests lack of faith in Linda’s words. Though she tries to comfort him by reassuring him that he will be normal again, he knows this is impossible after having been metaphorically branded the school’s “Cancer Kid.” Ross’s anger, though aimed at Linda at this moment, can also be read as a frustration with the society to which he has tried so hard to conform. As a newly disabled person, Ross is angry that he cannot return to, despite all his attempts, the physical “normalcy” he had before he had cancer. “STANDING OUT”: FROM CANCER KID TO GUITAR GOD Still fuming after this argument, Ross enters the radiation treatment center and finds Jerry, an older, Black cancer patient, in the lobby. Noticing Ross’s anger, Jerry empathizes, “This . . . it’s a big thing, Ross. Especially at your age . . . You’re supposed to be out playin’ ball and chasin’ the young ladies,” adding, “This isn’t normal what you’re doing. What we’re doing. It’s weird.”77 Jerry’s focus on sports and girls reinforces the notion that a “normal” childhood is reserved for those who are able-bodied and, apparently, those who are heterosexual, like how Clare describes Western conceptions of “normal” and “natural.” Yet, though Jerry calls Ross’s treatment “weird,” he calls himself the same, thus attempting to show Ross that, though he is coded abnormal by society’s standards (doubly so, given Clare’s point that racial identities other than Whiteness are consistently viewed as “other”), he is not alone, and there is comfort in the shared disabled community. There is privilege in even finding such a community since, as disability scholar Sunaura Taylor notes, “Disability community is something many disabled kids, and disabled adults, lack,”78 a fact Ross has failed to realize while continually comparing himself to his “normal” peers. Furthermore, by self-identifying as

Standing Out, Not Sticking Out

199

“weird,” Jerry encourages Ross to find power in difference, something Ross has resisted from the beginning. Rather than focusing on community and self-definition, Ross tells Jerry about his desire to be normal, saying, “Jerry? Can I tell you how sick I am of being different? I hate it! You have no idea what I’d give to be normal. Like, a normal kid with a normal hatless head, and a goopless eye, and a normal life, and friends who aren’t moving away and . . . and hair and . . . ”79 Here, Ross equates normalcy not only with health and able-bodiedness, but also with a lack of struggle and stress. Ross feels abnormal both because his cancer makes him extra visible and because his closest friend is moving. By imagining normalcy as both the ability to blend in and experience little to no personal struggle, Ross again views achieving normalcy as the ultimate goal, the “cure” to all his troubles. Rather than cater to Ross’s desires for normalcy by sympathizing with him, Jerry asks, “‘What’s so great about being normal?’” In response, Ross says, “Because it’s . . . normal. I don’t know. Normal is normal. Why is ‘good’ good? Why is ‘tasty’ tasty? Normal’s just the thing you shoot for.”80 Ross thus supports his desire to be normal by suggesting that, since it is “just the thing you shoot for,” wanting to be normal is a natural tendency for everyone. In other words, desiring normalcy is the norm. Jerry challenges Ross to reconsider by telling Ross, “I don’t think normal is a goal. At least not a worthy one.” He adds, “What if everyone was completely normal, Ross? . . . It’d be really boring, if you ask me . . . But different! That’s another matter. Different moves the needle. Different is where the good stuff happens. There’s strength in different.”81 Jerry’s comment encourages Ross, and others who have been labeled by the dominant society as other or abnormal, to feel empowered by their individuality, rather than ashamed of it. Furthermore, though semi-radical for Ross, Jerry’s idea to pursue difference is common within children’s literature. As paradoxical as this may sound, it’s completely normal—if not expected—for children’s literature protagonists to be dissimilar from others. Harry Potter is interesting largely because he, unlike the other young witches and wizards, is the “Chosen One.” Similarly, Charlie Bucket gets to “win” Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory because he, contrary to the story’s other children, exercises self-control and respect. That these characters stand out or are “abnormal” is what encourages readers to root for them and frequently drives their plots’ conflict and resolution. Though Ross is similar to the likes of Harry and Charlie in his difference, it takes another “different” character having to educate him.82 To further illustrate his point, Jerry tells Ross that he wanted to be a trumpet player but chose, now regretfully, to be a businessman since his father considered that profession more “normal.”83 By describing trumpet-playing as “different,” Jerry again challenges Ross to complicate his understanding of difference. While Ross connects difference with struggle and negativity, Jerry

200

Allyson Wierenga

views embracing difference as an exciting way to realize one’s full potential. By choosing to do a “normal” job rather than the job he loved but that was coded as “different,” Jerry denied himself joy as well as a sense of individualism. In essence, choosing normalcy was an act of violence against Jerry’s true self. While Jerry’s support of difference may be viewed as countercultural, especially for Ross, it also caters to society’s norms. By encouraging Ross to embrace the “difference” that comes with him having cancer, Jerry encourages Ross to accept that having cancer is “abnormal,” rather than interrogating how society problematically codes some bodies as normal and others not. Despite Jerry’s powerful rhetoric, Ross only tells him, “I think I get what you’re saying. I mean, kind of. Maybe,” making it unclear whether what Jerry’s said has really affected him. Hearing this uncertain answer, Jerry also backtracks: “Never mind. Eat your vegetables and stay in school. Anything else is just me talkin’ outta my neck,”84 thereby somewhat negating the radical ideas he has just shared. Yet, during a conversation between Ross and Abby several chapters later, Ross seems to have internalized Jerry’s ideas. Abby tells Ross she is nervous about switching schools because she “tend[s] to stick out in a way not everyone is drawn to,”85 then pointing out her colorful shirt, gloves, and tights. Abby does not have cancer like Ross does, but when she thinks about how others may or may not be “drawn” to her, she shows a similar insecurity about hyper-visibility. However, Ross disagrees with Abby’s sentiment by saying, “Abby, you don’t stick out. You stand out. It’s different,”86 suggesting the way Abby presents herself as different through fashion is admirable. Earlier in the book, Ross considers Abby’s visibility in relation to his own: “If there’s anything Abby enjoys, it’s standing out. Which is good, as her tangerine-colored hair can be seen from space. Add to that an eccentric sense of fashion—some would just call it insane—and Abby is someone you can’t miss. But her nutso style helps me out. I’m all but invisible standing next to her.”87 Here, Ross notes that Abby likes to be noticed for her fashion sense. As someone he spends much time with, Ross sees Abby’s “standing out” as helpful for him since he’s “all but invisible standing next to her.” In other words, since Abby’s fashion is so loud, Ross believes his association with her will make him less visible or “abnormal,” something he has hoped to achieve since becoming hyper-visible due to his disability. Though Abby and Ross are friends, Ross also views Abby in relation to utility and labor. Perhaps without Abby even knowing, Ross is placing labor on her to alter or “cure” how their peers view him by somehow “distracting” from his disability. This action also connects to the issues of privilege within Ross’s character that have been alluded to throughout this chapter. Abby’s response to Ross’s comment, “Says the guy voted Most Likely to Have a Mental Breakdown if He Ever Stood Out,” pokes fun at Ross for his obsession with his visibility. Rather than agreeing with Abby’s assessment of

Standing Out, Not Sticking Out

201

his behavior, however, Ross says, “Ah. No, see, I don’t think so. I think I’d be okay with standing out. Standing out, good. Sticking out, bad. In my mind, at least.”88 Though sticking out and standing out are similar in that they are both connected to hyper-visibility, their difference appears to lie within choice. Abby, according to Ross, chooses to “stand out.” Her “tangerine-colored hair” is likely not natural, but rather a dye color Abby chose to make a statement. Furthermore, she chooses to wear “insane” clothing combinations, rather than wearing what is considered more “normal” by her peers. In contrast, Ross seems to read “sticking out,” which he does, as something that naturally occurs, thus making one’s relationship to visibility more passive. He cannot help his eye leaking or hat-wearing, and thus his hyper-visibility is not a choice. Since Ross has idolized invisibility throughout the book, making it clear that he associates blending in with being normalcy, his admission that he would “be okay standing out” is surprising. It seems that Ross is less concerned with appearing “different” from others than he is with appearing “different” because of his disability. In essence, “standing out” seems to be something reserved for those tagged as “normal” within society and, in the context of this book, those who are able-bodied. Ross attempts to access this more “normal” hyper-visibility through his guitar-playing persona. In response to Ross’s apparent epiphany, Abby says, “Interesting. The Boy evolves. Is this New and Improved Guitar God Ross talking?” Though Ross replies to this statement with a noncommittal “Maybe,”89 it is suggested that Ross’s theory about visibility stems directly from his new interest in playing guitar. To Ross, standing out because of his music would be an artistic self-expression comparable to Abby’s clothing choices. Just like Abby has the power to turn on or off her visibility through her fashion, Ross being a “Guitar God” is something he can control, unlike his cancer and cancer treatments. Furthermore, while “standing out” as a Guitar God would still make Ross hyper-visible to those around him (there are no other known “rockstars” in Ross’s middle school), it is being visible in a way that is disconnected from his disability that Ross seems to like. That Abby connects Ross’s thoughts about “standing out” to evolving, too, suggests character growth. No longer fixated on being invisible, Ross’s guitar-playing has allowed him to see “difference” and “visibility” as not, altogether, things to avoid. He has learned to be comfortable with being noticed, but only on his own terms. The notion of evolution is also present in discourses about cure. As Clare points out, “[T]he ways we choose—or are forced—to engage with the ideology of cure often evolve.”90 Ross’s own idea about the “cure” for his perceived abnormality is apparently evolving through his ongoing transformation into a “Guitar God.” Ross’s transformation into “Guitar God” is initiated by several adults. Earlier in the text, Ross asks Frank, one of his radiation techs, to teach him

202

Allyson Wierenga

how to play the guitar. Directly before the talent show, Ross has his last radiation treatment. As he enters the lobby, he is met by family, friends, and employers at the treatment center all wishing him congratulations for finishing his treatment. During this celebration, Ross’s parents gift him with a brand-new electric guitar and amp, and his radiation technician, Frank, gives him his own guitar case. Ross’s father tells Ross “You deserve it,” demonstrating how the gifts are a reward of sorts for Ross finishing the radiation. However, the gifts also represent a symbolic shifting of identity.91 For much of the book, Ross has been defined, both by himself and those around him, by his cancer, thus forcing him to continually think about his body as existing outside of society’s norm. However, when he is given these guitar-related gifts, he begins to be and feel associated with music, rather than with illness and disability, a fact made more prominent by Ross holding a guitar in the facility that is treating his cancer. Ross puts his new “Guitar God” persona into full practice when he performs at the school talent show. Abby, Ross, and Jimmy intend to play as a band, with Ross singing and playing guitar, Abby playing bass, and Jimmy playing the drums. Before they start playing, Ross hears Jerry yell, “Go, Dime Slot!” from the audience, a nickname derived from Ross’s surgery scar on his forehead. Ross notes that “Just hearing him out there sends a rush of warmth through me . . . Maybe this was finally my epiphany. Just not the epiphany I’d been expecting.”92 The epiphany Ross mentions is a reference to him telling his father earlier in the text, “[S]ince I have cancer—aren’t I supposed to have some big epiphany? . . . I mean, on TV, I see people on the Today Show. Shows like that. Talking about how being sick taught them that every day is . . . ‘a precious, wonderful gift from above.’” Rather than experience this sort of spiritual transcendence, Ross tells his father that he simply feels miserable,93 which marks him as different from “normal” cancer patients who are supposed to feel spiritually enlightened. However, Ross’s own “epiphany” is ushered in by Jerry’s appearance and exclamation at Ross’s talent show. Since Ross knows Jerry through his radiation treatment center and “Dime Slot” refers to his surgery scar, Jerry’s presence and exclamation are both connected to Ross’s cancer. Being reminded of his cancer and all his feelings of abnormality that have come with it seems to be part of the catalyst that Ross needs to focus on his music. Jerry’s voice, too, likely also reminds Ross of Jerry’s choice to pursue a “normal job” rather than music-playing. During this epiphany, Ross says, “Suddenly, everything but us playing this song seems beyond stupid.” He adds that, “It’s like the part of me that worries about that stuff just fell out of my brain. Or like somebody found me the right glasses and I’m seeing things clearly for the first time in a long time.”94 “Everything” can refer to Ross’s bullies, so Ross is learning not to fixate on what others think of him. However, “everything” also includes his cancer

Standing Out, Not Sticking Out

203

and treatment, suggesting that, in “seeing” his music as the only thing that matters, Ross is simultaneously mentally distancing himself from his cancer. Interestingly, Ross connects his new way of “seeing” with physical sight by saying it is like he has “the right glasses” and is “seeing things clearly for the first time in a long time.” At this point in the text, Ross has begun to lose vision in his right eye. A few mornings before the talent show, Ross notices that, when he closes his “good eye,” his vision appears “melty” and “warped,” which causes him to “want [his] normal eye.”95 First, by referring to his non-cancerous eye as “good” and “normal,” Ross again aligns having cancer with abnormality and even immorality. Additionally, by telling readers that his music has made him “see clearly,” Ross uses rhetorics of cure to explain a shift in his self-perception. Just as impaired vision can be corrected or “cured” with the “right glasses,” Ross’s sense of identity has evolved to focus on his music rather than the other struggles he has faced. While this mentality is important since Ross is more embracing of his individuality, it also implies that, to reach this state, one must deny or downplay parts of oneself. In Ross’s case, he must downplay his disability to make space for his new visibility as a musician. The trio begins by performing “Take It Easy” by The Eagles, a song intended to appeal to the panel of older teachers judging the competition.96 Thus, they initially cater to what is expected of them in the context of the talent show, keeping in line with the book’s interest in societal norms. However, partway through the song, in a moment that the trio has rehearsed but the audience thinks is natural, Ross stops the song, saying “That just . . . That just didn’t feel right.” Then, they start playing a new song “‘Judy Is a Punk,’ by the Ramones,” a song that Ross believes “says what I want to say”97 through its lively tone. Ross describes the trio as “three dumb seventh graders, making the loudest noise we can, and it feels incredible. It’s a song and performance that will never win, and I couldn’t be happier.”98 By saying he is aware their performance will not win and not caring about this, Ross shows readers that, at this moment, he does not care what others think about his music—only that it gives him gratification. During their loud performance, Ross also reveals that he has shaved his hair into a “Mohawk” hairstyle by removing his hat for the crowd. Just like the reception of his music, Ross says he “do[esn’t] care” what others think about this hairstyle and takes pride in the fact that he “let Abby shave my head—my way.”99 First, few middle schoolers have “Mohawk” hairstyles, so Ross’s choice to have one shows a desire to stand out as “different.” Yet, that he does it his own way shows a desire for Ross to have power over his appearance, or rather, to “stand out.” Ross’s hair is already falling out due to his treatments, so rather than keep allowing that to happen without having a say, Ross takes preemptive action. In essence, since he knows having hair with bald spots will already make him

204

Allyson Wierenga

appear “abnormal” and hyper-visible to those around him, he exerts agency over the situation and chooses to embrace this hyper-visibility and have it manifest how he chooses. As a result, Ross chooses a hairstyle associated with punk music that will, in some ways, distract from his appearance of having cancer, signified by his hair loss. Still, it is important to point out that Ross’s exercising of agency here is connected to the suppression of others. Namely, Ross’s choice of the “Mohawk” hairstyle, though commonly associated with punk rock musicians, is also derived from a First Nations group, the Kanien’kehá:ka people.100 Though Ross feels confident about taking agency over his visibility through shaving his head, he is doing so via the appropriation of a marginalized, underrepresented culture. Thus, readers are urged to consider how representation is problematized when groups use the cultures of other groups to change their own representation all while still seeking to achieve a restricted standard of “normal.” In a final act of rocker hyper-visibility, Ross cathartically smashes a guitar onstage. After this, their performance ends and is met with first silence and then some applause, but “not like the standing ovation you’d expect at the end of a movie.” Indeed, Ross observes “there’s a good part of the crowd that seems unsure how to react” and they do not win the competition but declares that “doesn’t matter” since “It wasn’t for them. What matters is how I feel,”101 thus further illustrating Ross’s lessened interest in what others think about him. The book ends with Ross planning to meet up with Jimmy for band practice, suggesting that he will continue to embrace his identity as a “Guitar God.” However, the final line of the text is “Oh, and life is a precious, wonderful gift from above. Cherish every blah blah blah,”102 alluding to the so-called epiphany Ross believes he is supposed to have as a cancer patient. By ending in this way, Harrell seems to remind readers that, though this book is a text that features a child with cancer, it simultaneously mimics and overturns the genre conventions of this narrative type. Though Ross has an epiphany, it is more related to his newfound identity as a musician than his cancer. Since Ross spends much of the novel worrying about others’ opinions, especially regarding his appearance, his ability to break out of this mindset and focus only on his thoughts and not others’ can be read as an example of character growth. Ross moves from desiring invisibility to being comfortable with “standing out” amongst his peers. However, Ross’s methods in achieving this growth also play into ableist notions of normalcy and harmful and widespread disability tropes, namely the idea that disabilities need to be “overcome.” Writing about her experience growing up with a disability, Sunaura Taylor notes, “As a child I was instilled with a narrative of what disability scholars and activists critically call ‘overcoming.’ Clearly my disability was a drawback, a negative, but I could overcome it. I wouldn’t let it

Standing Out, Not Sticking Out

205

define me.”103 In Disability Rhetoric, Jay Dolmage includes a list of common disability myths and tropes found within culture. One of these myths is that of “Overcoming or Compensation,” which he describes as when “The person with a disability overcomes their impairment through hard work or has some special talent that offsets their deficiencies.” He adds, “In this myth, the connection between disability and compensatory ability is intentional and required. The audience does not have to focus on the disability, or challenge the stigma that this disability entails, but instead refocuses attention toward the “gift.”104 In sum, “overcoming” disability is a conscious choice one needs to make to distract others from disability. In Wink, Ross’s desire to “stand out” illustrates his need to showcase his “special talent” of playing guitar to overcome and distract from his disability. Without exhibiting this skill, Ross will “stick out” for having a disability, something he has tried to avoid throughout the text. Ross’s need to “overcome” his disability also connects to the medical model of disability, “whereby disability is conceptualized as a problem of the individual to be fixed whenever possible.”105 This model relies on ableist notions of the body, wherein anybody who does not conform to societal norms needs curing. Though Ross’s disability is not “fixed” in that he is not cured of cancer by the end of the book, his ability to semi-distract from his disability through his music can be viewed as him “fixing” or curing his social image. Knowing that social norms dictate that his body is labeled as “abnormal,” Ross takes it upon himself to “normalize” it in any way he can. While Ross is depicted as agentive in that he has the power to alter his image, that he needs to change at all simultaneously strips him of agency and suggests that, if disabled children want to be considered normal (or close to normal) by society, the onus is on them to change their representation and not on society to broaden or change its definition of “normal.” CONCLUSION: “CURING” CHILDHOOD AND REPRESENTATION The representation of child cancer that Wink puts forth is, as this chapter has indicated, quite complex. On one hand, Wink normalizes cancer within American childhood, thus forcing readers to contend with preconceived notions of what a “normal” American childhood and, by extension, Western childhood and children’s bodies should look like. The book also offers the field of children’s literature a depiction of a multidimensional character with cancer who is realistically angry as well as darkly humorous. The book is a welcome addition to a field wherein disabled and ill characters, but especially

206

Allyson Wierenga

complex and interesting characters with these identities, are hard to find. Furthermore, the mirror it provides for children with cancer is, arguably, the sort of mirror these children want. In a study about representations of cancer in children’s picture books, Doering found that most of these books “end happily.”106 Upon interviewing child participants who have cancer about her sample set of books, she found that “The participants responded positively to the happy endings, with four out of five of the children indicating that their ideal books about cancer would include recovery or a return to some sense of normalcy.”107 By ending with Ross happily performing in the school talent show and being “normal” in the sense that he is not, in his mind, defined by or overly focused on his disability, Wink fulfills this desire for a cancer book with a “happy ending.” Nevertheless, the “happy ending” Wink supplies is rife with ableist ideology and tropes of disability, wherein a disabled child can only be proud of his visibility when it is not directly tied to his disability. Indeed, though Ross’s changed appearance and identity is a choice he makes, thus exemplifying his agency as a character, it also shows that it is up to Ross to “cure” his abnormality, or rather change his visibility by “standing out,” rather than the society he is a part of needing to interrogate its definition of who “sticks out.” Though children’s literature scholarship has been interested in increased, accurate representation of marginalized characters, this chapter encourages the field to take a closer look at the ideology behind representation itself. As demonstrated in this paper, expanding representation often seems tied to widening the definition of who is considered “normal” by Western standards, thereby attempting to “cure” Western society’s restricted definition of normal. Yet, as Eli Clare writes, “At the center of cure lies eradication and the many kinds of violence that accompany it.”108 Could attempting to “cure” the Western definition of normal, on some level, give more credence to the exclusion it is built around, thereby enacting violence upon those outside of it? If so, is there a way to reimagine representation whereby “abnormality” itself can be cured, and a childhood such as Ross’s can be, simply, a childhood? NOTES 1. Eli Clare, Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017), 173, ProQuest Ebook Central. 2. Clare, Brilliant Imperfection, 173. 3. Clare also discusses invisibility in relation to othering. For instance, in the chapter “Structure of Cure” in Brilliant Imperfection, he notes how “people with ME/CFIDS” (myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome) work overtime to have their body-mind trouble acknowledged while doctors and the media ignore and

Standing Out, Not Sticking Out

207

trivialize it” (73). Therefore, he acknowledges that, while some identities are made other/abnormal by being made hyper-visible, other identities are coded abnormal by being “ignored and trivialized.” 4. Clare, Brilliant Imperfection, xvi. 5. Rob Harrell, Wink (New York: Puffin Books, 2020), 51. 6. Harrell, Wink, 225. 7. Frank Deford, Alex: The Life of a Child (Nashville: Rutledge Hill Press, 1997), 1. 8. Sarah Chinn and Anna Mae Duane, “Introduction,” Women’s Studies Quarterly 43, no. 1/2 (2015): 15, https:​//​www​.jstor​.org​/stable​/43958464. 9. Rudine Sims Bishop, “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors.” Scenic Regional Library, accessed November 30, 2022, https:​ //​ scenicregional​ .org​ /wp​ -content​/uploads​/2017​/08​/Mirrors​-Windows​-and​-Sliding​-Glass​-Doors​.pdf. 10. Joan K. Blaska, “Children’s Literature That Includes Characters with Disabilities or Illnesses,” Disability Studies Quarterly 24, no. 1 (2004): https:​//​dsq​-sds​.org​/ article​/view​/854​/1029. 11. Hanna Björg Sigurjónsdóttir, “Cultural Representation of Disability in Children’s Literature,” in Childhood and Disability in the Nordic Countries: Being, Becoming, Belonging, ed. Rannveig Traustadóttir, Borgunn Ytterhus, Snæfrídur Thóra Egilson, and Berit Berg (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 115. 12. Katie L. Doering, “Cancer in Children’s Picturebooks: Examining Quality of Text, Accuracy of Representation, and Reader Response,” Journal of Children’s Literature 47, no. 1 (2021): 98, EJ1292851. 13. Ellen Samuels, “Passing,” in Keywords for Disability Studies, ed. Rachel Adams, Benjamin Reiss, and David Serlin (New York: NYU Press, 2015): 135. 14. Samuels, Keywords for Disability Studies, 135. 15. Lennard Davis, The Disability Studies Reader (New York: Routledge, 2013), ProQuest Ebook Central, 1. 16. Davis, 22. 17. Davis, 5. 18. Jay Dolmage, Disability Rhetoric (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2014), 22, ProQuest Ebook Central. 19. Jessica Clark, “‘Speddies’ with Spray Paints: Intersections of Agency, Childhood, and Disability in Award-Winning Young Adult Fiction,” in Representing Agency in Popular Culture: Children and Youth on Page, Screen, and in Between, ed. Ingrid E. Castro and Jessica Clark (London: Lexington Books, 2019), 136–7. 20. Clark, 137. 21. Clark, 138. 22. “WINK,” Kirkus Reviews, November 9, 2019, https:​//​www​.kirkusreviews​.com​ /book​-reviews​/rob​-harrell​/wink/. 23. Karin Nyqvist, “In the Kingdom of Cancer: Dying Children Living Their Own Lives in the Contemporary YA Novel,” in Child Autonomy and Child Governance in Children’s Literature, ed. Christopher Kelen and Björn Sundmark (New York: Routledge, 2017), 122.

208

Allyson Wierenga

24. Julie C. Bowker, Sarah V. Spencer, Katelyn K. Thomas, and Elizabeth A. Gyoerkoe, “Having and Being an Other-Sex Crush During Early Adolescence,” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 111 (2012): 629, doi:10.1016/j. jecp.2011.11.008. 25. Bowker, Spencer, Thomas, and Gyoerkoe, “Having and Being an Other-Sex Crush During Early Adolescence,” 629. 26. Harrell, Wink, 32. 27. Harrell, Wink, 32. 28. Harrell, Wink, 234. 29. Leah M. Lessard and Jaana Juvonen, “Losing and Gaining Friends: Does Friendship Instability Compromise Academic Functioning in Middle School?” Journal of School Psychology 69 (2018): 143, doi:10.1016/j.sp.2018.05.003. 30. Harrell, Wink, 46. 31. Harrell, Wink, 288. 32. Dolmage, Disability Rhetoric, 111. 33. Harrell, Wink, 183. 34. Harrell, Wink, 33. 35. Harrell, Wink, 34. 36. Harrell, Wink, 126. 37. Doering, “Cancer in Children’s Picturebooks,” 103. 38. Harrell, Wink, 29. 39. Harrell, Wink, 29. 40. Harrell, Wink, 30. 41. Harrell, Wink, 30. 42. Harrell, Wink, 30. 43. Harrell, Wink, 44. 44. Sune Borkfelt, “What’s in a Name?—Consequences of Naming Non-Human Animals,” Animals 1, no. 1 (2011): 117, doi:10.3390/ani1010116. 45. Harrell, Wink, 68. 46. Harrell, Wink, 74. 47. Harrell, Wink, 78. 48. Harrell, Wink, 90. 49. Harrell, Wink, 91. 50. Harrell, Wink, 91. 51. Harrell, Wink, 92. 52. Clare, Brilliant Imperfection, 43. 53. Limor Shifman, “Memes in a Digital World: Reconciling with a Conceptual Troublemaker,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 18, no. 3 (2013): 362, doi:10.1111/jcc4.12013. 54. “Genes and Cancer,” American Cancer Society, accessed November 30, 2022, https:​//​www​.cancer​.org​/healthy​/cancer​-causes​/genetics​/genes​-and​-cancer​.html. 55. Shifman, “Memes in a Digital World,” 363. 56. Harrell, Wink, 93. 57. Harrell, Wink, 155. 58. Harrell, Wink, 156.

Standing Out, Not Sticking Out

209

59. Harrell, Wink, 156. 60. Susan Sontag, AIDS and Its Metaphors (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1989), 48. 61. Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1978), 57, https:​//​monoskop​.org​/images​/4​/4a​/Susan​_Sontag​_Illness​_As​_Metaphor​ _1978​.pdf. 62. Harrell, Wink, 59. 63. Richard McKay, “Patient Zero: Why It’s Such a Toxic Term,” Conversation, accessed August 1, 2023, https:​//​theconversation​.com​/patient​-zero​-why​-its​-such​-a​ -toxic​-term​-134721. 64. Priscilla Wald, Contagious (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 4. 65. Harrell, Wink, 169–70. 66. Sontag, AIDS and Its Metaphors, 45. 67. Sontag, AIDS and Its Metaphors, 40. 68. Sontag, AIDS and Its Metaphors, 40–41. 69. Wald, Contagious, 12. 70. Wald, Contagious, 2. 71. Harrell, Wink, 171–2. 72. Sontag, AIDS and Its Metaphors, 41. 73. Harrell, Wink, 172. 74. Sontag, Illness as Metaphor, 3. 75. Clare, Brilliant Imperfection, 70. 76. Harrell, Wink, 172. 77. Harrell, Wink, 175. 78. Sunaura Taylor, Beast of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation (New York: The New Press, 2017), 4. 79. Harrell, Wink, 175. 80. Harrell, Wink, 176. 81. Harrell, Wink, 176 82. It is also worth noting that both Harry and Charlie are, like Ross, White, able-bodied, cisgender males. Since both characters are prominent examples of the exceptionally “set apart” or “different” protagonist in children’s literature, readers can consider how, even in “difference,” a lack of diverse representation has often manifested in children’s literature. 83. Harrell, Wink, 177. 84. Harrell, Wink, 177. 85. Harrell, Wink, 225. 86. Harrell, Wink, 225. 87. Harrell, Wink, 28. 88. Harrell, Wink, 225. 89. Harrell, Wink, 225. 90. Clare, Brilliant Imperfection, 91. 91. Harrell, Wink, 281. 92. Harrell, Wink, 298. 93. Harrell, Wink, 185.

210

Allyson Wierenga

94. Harrell, Wink, 299. 95. Harrell, Wink, 259, 267. 96. Harrell Wink, 247, 299. 97. Harrell, Wink, 300. 98. Harrell, Wink, 301. 99. Harrell, Wink, 301. 100. Lisa Graustein, “Why We Don’t Wear Mohawks,” EmbraceRace, accessed November 30, 2022, https:​//​www​.embracerace​.org​/resources​/why​-we​-dont​-wear​ -mohawks. 101. Harrell, Wink, 304. 102. Harrell, Wink, 313. 103. Taylor, Beasts of Burden, 5. 104. Dolmage, Disability Rhetoric, 39. 105. Taylor, Beasts of Burden, 13. 106. Doering, “Cancer in Children’s Picturebooks,” 105. 107. Doering, “Cancer in Children’s Picturebooks,” 105. 108. Clare, Brilliant Imperfection, 26.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Blaska, Joan K. “Children’s Literature That Includes Characters with Disabilities or Illnesses.” Disability Studies Quarterly 24, no. 1 (2004). https:​//​dsq​-sds​.org​/article​ /view​/854​/1029. Borkfelt, Sune. “What’s in a Name?—Consequences of Naming Non-Human Animals.” Animals 1, no. 1 (2011): 116–25. doi:10.3390/ani1010116. Bowker, Julie C., Sarah V. Spencer, Katelyn K. Thomas, and Elizabeth A. Gyoerkoe. “Having and Being an Other-Sex Crush During Early Adolescence.” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 111 (2012): 629–43. doi:10.1016/j. jecp.2011.11.008. Chinn, Sarah, and Anna Mae Duane. “Introduction.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 43, nos. 1–2 (2015): 14–25. https:​//​www​.jstor​.org​/stable​/43958464. Clare, Eli. Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central. Clark, Jessica. “‘Speddies’ with Spray Paints: Intersections of Agency, Childhood, and Disability in Award-Winning Young Adult Fiction.” In Representing Agency in Popular Culture: Children and Youth on Page, Screen, and in Between, edited by Ingrid E. Castro and Jessica Clark, 133–56. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2018. Davis, Lennard. The Disability Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central. Deford, Frank. Alex: The Life of a Child. Nashville: Rutledge Hill Press, 1997. Doering, Katie L. “Cancer in Children’s Picturebooks: Examining Quality of Text, Accuracy of Representation, and Reader Response.” Journal of Children’s Literature 47, no. 1 (2021): 97–110. EJ1292851.

Standing Out, Not Sticking Out

211

Dolmage, Jay. Disability Rhetoric. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central. “Genes and Cancer.” American Cancer Society, American Cancer Society, Inc. Accessed November 30, 2022. https:​//​www​.cancer​.org​/healthy​/cancer​-causes​/ genetics​/genes​-and​-cancer​.html. Graustein, Lisa. “Why We Don’t Wear Mohawks,” EmbraceRace. Accessed November 30, 2022. https:​//​www​.embracerace​.org​/resources​/why​-we​-dont​-wear​-mohawks. Harrell, Rob. Wink. New York: Puffin Books, 2020. Lessard, Leah M., and Jaana Juvonen. “Losing and Gaining Friends: Does Friendship Instability Compromise Academic Functioning in Middle School?” Journal of School Psychology 69 (2018): 143–53. doi:10.1016/j.jsp.2018.05.003. McKay, Richard. “Patient Zero: Why It’s Such a Toxic Term.” Conversation, April 1, 2020. https:​//​theconversation​.com​/patient​-zero​-why​-its​-such​-a​-toxic​-term​-134721. Mickenberg, Julia, and Philip Nel. “Radical Children’s Literature Now!” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 36, no. 4 (2011): 445–73. doi:10.1353/ chq.2011.0040. Nykvist, Karin. “In the Kingdom of Cancer: Dying Children Living Their Own Lives in the Contemporary YA Novel.” In Child Autonomy and Child Governance in Children’s Literature, edited by Christopher Kelen and Björn Sundmark, 120– 33. New York: Routledge, 2017. Samuels, Ellen. “Passing.” In Keywords for Disability Studies, edited by Rachel Adams, Benjamin Reiss, and David Serlin, 135–7. New York: New York University Press, 2015. Shifman, Limor. “Memes in a Digital World: Reconciling with a Conceptual Troublemaker.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 18, no. 3 (2013): 362–77. doi:10.1111/jcc4.12013. Sigurjónsdóttir, Hanna Björg. “Cultural Representation of Disability in Children’s Literature.” In Childhood and Disability in the Nordic Countries: Being, Becoming, Belonging, edited by Rannveig Traustadóttir, Borgunn Ytterhus, Snæfrídur Thóra Egilson, and Berit Berg, 115–30. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Sontag, Susan. AIDS and Its Metaphors. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1989. ———. Illness as Metaphor. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1978. Taylor, Sunaura. Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation. New York: New Press, 2017. Wald, Priscilla. Contagious. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. “WINK.” Kirkus Reviews, November 9, 2019. https:​//​www​.kirkusreviews​.com​/book​ -reviews​/rob​-harrell​/wink/.

Chapter 9

The Trauma of Childhood and Emerging into Adulthood in A Court of Thorns and Roses Kirsten Bilger and Michael G. Cornelius

There is no traditional coming-of-age ceremony or observance specific to all of American society, though most individuals experience a time in their lives when they leave behind the sphere of childhood and enter adulthood. Christy Rishoi, author of the seminal study From Girl to Woman: American Women’s Coming-of-Age Narratives, notes that coming of age “is an imprecise, romantic phrase evoking the period in life during which a child is physiologically, sexually, morally, and socially transformed into an adult.”1 While legally and ritualistically, the age of eighteen is often marked as the end of childhood and the beginning of adulthood, which can be demarcated by several social milestones (graduation from secondary schooling; the ability to join the military or vote in elections), this stage is now more commonly being referred to as “emerging adulthood.”2 This emerging adulthood was first defined by psychological researcher Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, who notes that individuals between eighteen and twenty-five years of age often have more freedom than minor-aged children while simultaneously not having typical adult responsibilities, such as marriage, children, or career weighing them down. According to Arnett, it is also during this emerging adulthood phase that individuals discover their identity and place in the world. The time in between childhood and adulthood can be challenging, as Rishoi recognizes: “others created a narrative of adolescence, characterizing it as a difficult and unhappy time for both the adolescent and society at large.”3 Within these narratives of adolescence, individuals struggle with forming their unique identity while learning to manage the responsibilities connected to adulthood. Becoming an adult 213

214

Kirsten Bilger and Michael G. Cornelius

entails emerging fully into society and accepting the expectations that come along with adulthood; as such, individuals who deviate from these more rigidly ascribed narratives of adolescence can be viewed as frivolous, lacking, or even tragic figures. Authors of young adult fiction have long explored this transition from childhood to adulthood, often focusing on external and internal impediments that can hinder the psychosocial development of their main characters. Sometimes these hindrances can be taken to an extreme. Popular books such as the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Divergent by Veronica Roth, and The Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare introduce readers to fantasy worlds whose dystopian aspects are essential to the psychosocial development of their characters, though not without grave cost. Each of these works depicts adolescents coming of age and facing some form of trauma that pushes them from their childhood phase and into adulthood, whether they are ready for it or not. As the “chosen one” predestined to save the Wizarding World, Harry Potter battles Voldemort multiple times and encounters various dangers (even “dying” at one point). Katniss Everdeen fights for her survival and kills other children at the behest of a totalitarian government that she is asked to help overthrow. During testing that is meant to determine her role in her structured, dystopian society, Beatrice (Tris) Prior learns she is Divergent, not fitting into any one faction, which her society perceives as dangerous, and she ends up fighting for her life against a government and society that rejects Divergent-kind. In The Mortal Instruments series, Clary Fray learns she is a Shadowhunter and fights in a war to ensure peace with the Downworlders, facing death and betrayal as she uncovers the truth behind her past and the hidden world around her. All these books portray adolescents who, throughout the course of their series, move from childhood to adulthood, a movement that is characterized by violent and traumatic events. While these characters often initially face some of the more typical personal struggles of adolescence, such as adapting to a new environment or pursuing romantic interests, they all soon face traumatic events in the guise of violence, war, or death. As a result, as these characters are discovering who they are and building their identities, they must also overcome violence and the deleterious effects caused by their traumatic experiences before they can enter adulthood. To become full-fledged adults, these characters must not only survive their childhoods, but they must learn how to resolve their trauma and leave it behind them as well. Another series that depicts traumatic events and their impact on the main protagonist is Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses. Like the other series listed above, most of Maas’s characters experience trauma, in particular Maas’s female protagonist, Feyre Archeron. Unlike those series, however, Maas cynosures Feyre’s journey toward adulthood as an internal struggle



The Trauma of Childhood and Emerging into Adulthood

215

to overcome the trauma she must endure in the series’ narrative. This is not to say that Feyre does not suffer from external violence; nor does it suggest that the characters listed above must not conduct serious internal work to overcome the violence in their coming-of-age narratives as well. Yet perhaps because of Feyre’s age (she is nineteen at the start of the series, seemingly thus in the “emergent” period of her transition to adulthood), her internal journey takes on a centralized importance, emerging as a powerful metaphor for Feyre’s trauma, reflecting real-world definitions and symptoms of trauma-induced mental illness. After the traumatic events in her story, Feyre suffers from symptoms that are emblematic of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and anxiety. In her narrative, Maas emphasizes the psychological impact of trauma on Feyre and the processing necessary for her to finally overcome the trauma she suffers in the opening book of the series as a means to underscore Feyre’s transition from childhood to adulthood in the series. As such, in the books, Feyre must learn to face her traumas and overcome them, lest they define her and, essentially, define her adulthood. This processing toward transition suggests that Maas views contemporary childhood as being defined, at least in part, by trauma. Yet in defining childhood through trauma, Maas is careful to demonstrate that trauma need not define children nor adults. Rather, Maas highlights that processing trauma can be a way to gain agency and a sense of self-definition. If one must endure trauma, especially as a child, A Court of Thorns and Roses seems to suggest that it be resolved as a catalyst for good and the means through which childhood (and the traumas inherent to it) may be left behind, once and for all.4 Narratives that revolve around coming-of-age stories, also known as bildungsroman, have had their roots traced by scholars to late-eighteenthcentury German novels. The term itself was first coined by the German philologist Johann Karl Simon Morgenstern in 1819, though the term was not widely adopted until late in the nineteenth century. As coming-of-age works, the bildungsroman focused on the quest for the answers to the “big” questions in life as a metaphor for moving into adulthood. However, these works initially only depicted boys and their journey into adulthood. As Rishoi observes, “A traditional Bildungsroman describes the journey of a sensitive boy from childhood through his coming of age as an adult.”5 The boy’s coming of age begins by leaving the childhood home and journeying into an unknown setting in order to discover his true self and new identity as an adult. A key part of the traditional bildungsroman narrative focuses on the boy’s acceptance by society, an apt metaphorical indicator of movement into the adult world. With the emergence of young adult fiction, the bildungsroman moved from the metaphorical into the literal depiction of emergent adulthood. According to Michael Cart, author of Young Adult Literature: From Romance to Realism,

216

Kirsten Bilger and Michael G. Cornelius

young adult fiction “sprang into being near the end of the turbulent decade of the 1960s—in 1967, to be specific, a year that saw the publication of two seminal novels for young readers: S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders and Robert Lipsyte’s The Contender.”6 Both works depict a sense of gritty realism that other literary works for young readers did not; specifically, they dealt with the real problems of adolescents (socioeconomic differences, poverty, race, violence). Soon, young adult fiction rejected the then-typical coming-of-age narratives such as finding romance, moving out of the parental home, and learning to be mature or independent in favor of exploring more extreme stories of being in gangs, fighting addiction, sexual assault, and dealing with the ramifications of violence. While historic bildungsromans generally focused on male protagonists, there are early examples of a female coming-of-age narrative. Works such as Jane Eyre (1847) and Little Women (1869) have been considered by literary scholars like Aleksandar Stević and Katie Trumpener to be some of the first examples of the female bildungsroman.7 While these works introduced the notion of the female coming-of-age narrative, it was not until well after their publication that scholars began to closely examine them from the point of view of adolescence moving into adulthood. As Rishoi notes, “Denigrated for lacking universal values and consigned to the sentimental realm, literary texts focused on girls’ coming-of-age issues received scant public or scholarly attention before the final decades of the twentieth century.”8 Despite not receiving scholarly critique until later, these works opened the pathway for early and current authors to create their own female bildungsroman narratives. According to feminist literary scholar Elizabeth Abel, there are two narrative structures for a female bildungsroman: “first, the chronological narrative of apprenticeship that most closely resembles the traditional novel of development, and second, a narrative of significantly delayed development that describes a heroine who might have initially fulfilled traditional roles of wife and mother, but who then ‘awakens’ to her own lack of self-development and begins a process of self-discovery.”9 While the first narrative follows the standard masculine bildungsroman pattern of development from childhood to adulthood, the second pattern skews from the traditional path as the protagonist journeys off-course to discover her true self, seemingly even after she has moved into adulthood. As Abel further notes, “[t]he heroine’s developmental course is more conflicted, less direct.”10 Wanting more from life than the traditional roles ascribed to women, such as being a wife or a mother, the female protagonists of these delayed bildungsroman find adulthood wanting in their initial emergent stages; though they have achieved what society has oft-considered the pinnacle of attainment for women in these societies (marriage and sometimes motherhood), their own needs and desires remain vastly underfulfilled. As such, these characters sometimes walk away



The Trauma of Childhood and Emerging into Adulthood

217

from hearth and home in their journey of self-discovery; this is what Abel is referring to when she indicates that these journeys are “more conflicted” and “less direct.” The journey is as interior as it is exterior; while these characters face tremendous obstacles and societal pressures that must be overcome when they step away from their traditional roles, the journey is more about fighting for a new self-identity than it is in becoming an adult. While the traditional bildungsroman often commenced with some sort of emotional loss on the part of the narrative protagonist, the true impetus for most coming-of-age narratives is inherent in the genre’s name—the act of aging itself. Abel’s “delayed” coming-of-age story requires a greater disruption than simply growing up, since the female protagonists in these works have already achieved some level of emergent adulthood. As children’s literature scholar Maria Nikolajeva writes, “These disruptions often propel the main character forth on a journey—literal, metaphorical, or both—that leads to self-discovery, a higher level of emotional maturity, and, in general, a greater awareness of the identity. These disruptions serve to catalyze the emergence of a young adult from adolescence.”11 These disruptions are often the result of traumatic incidents and events that propel the book’s protagonist to (re)act. This is especially true because, as trauma scholar Janna Harner has observed, “The recurrent ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Where do I belong?’ questions that thread themselves throughout literature . . . carries more weight in the trauma narratives that enfold children’s literature.”12 Spurred forward by disruption ignited by trauma, these characters are often confronted with physical and, even more essentially, metaphysical challenges, precipitating an inward journey through trauma that results in psychosocial transformation—if, of course, the character is able to survive the outer and inner dangers that trauma brings with it. Maas’s central character, Feyre, is a prime example of the second narrative of the female bildungsroman that Abel mentions—one where the character rejects the traditional norms set for her and rediscovers herself. In A Court of Thorns and Roses (hereafter called Thorns), the world is split into two areas: the human world and Prythian, where the fairies, high Fae, and High Lords rule. Feyre Archeron and her family (her father and two older sisters) live in a small village after losing their wealth. Feyre’s father was crippled by debt collectors, leaving his leg shattered and unable to provide for his daughters. To avoid starvation, Feyre ventures into the woods to hunt. Desperate to find something to sustain her family, Feyre journeys ever deeper into the woods, where she finally comes across a deer. Before she can release the arrow from her bow, the deer is attacked by a massive wolf. Feyre worries that this wolf is a Fae, but with her hatred of the Fae and the need to provide for her family, she kills the wolf. Later that night, a beast destroys the door to Feyre’s house and demands to know who killed the wolf. Feyre is then

218

Kirsten Bilger and Michael G. Cornelius

faced with an ultimatum: die, or live in Prythian. After months of living with Tamlin, High Lord of the Spring Court, Feyre falls in love with him. It is then that she learns of a blight in the lands that is affecting the Fae’s magic. To save Tamlin, and the rest of Prythian, Feyre must journey Under the Mountain and confront Amarantha—a High Fae and the chief protagonist in the first book—and face her deadly tasks. The second book, A Court of Mist and Fury (hereafter called Mist), takes place three months after Feyre rescued and freed those trapped Under the Mountain by Amarantha. However, in the narrative, the dangers that Feyre faced and her time Under the Mountain have manifested into psychological symptoms that resemble post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety. Feyre has difficulty sleeping and experiences crippling nightmares when she does. She perseverates on her experiences, sometimes becoming physically ill as she does so. Tamlin refuses to allow Feyre to leave the Spring Court, leaving Feyre feeling trapped and suffocated. The only time she leaves is when Rhysand, the High Lord of the Night Court, comes to collect her as per the terms of the bargain Rhysand and Feyre made while she was held prisoner Under the Mountain. During her time at the Night Court, she learns that there is a war coming from the King of Hybern, a High Fae who wants to eradicate both the High Lords and the humans. Though Tamlin expects Feyre to fulfill a passive social role in the Spring Court, planning parties and (after they wed) producing heirs, Feyre realizes she does not wish to remain docile or simply be someone’s trophy, so she steps up and fights against the King of Hybern, as well as her own personal demons. For narratives revolving around traumatic events, it is important to understand what trauma is and how it affects characters. According to trauma literature scholar Cathy Caruth, “In its most general definition, trauma describes an overwhelming experience of sudden, or catastrophic events in which the response to the event occurs in the often delayed, and uncontrolled repetitive occurrence of hallucinations and other intrusive phenomena.”13 When experiencing a traumatic event, the brain can shut down to try to protect the individual from what he/she is seeing or enduring. This response often leads the individual to being numb during that traumatic experience, creating an inability to fully process what has happened until it is over. As Caruth states, “traumatic disorders reflect the direct imposition on the mind of the unavoidable reality of horrific events, the taking-over—psychically and neurobiologically—of the mind by an event that it cannot control. As such it is understood as the most real, and also most destructive psychic experience.”14 After the traumatic experience, in trying to understand what happened, the brain processes and reprocesses the event in the form of nightmares, hallucinations, or feelings associated with that event. Psychologically speaking, these



The Trauma of Childhood and Emerging into Adulthood

219

nightmares, hallucinations, or feelings can be signals of post-traumatic stress disorder. Jerrold R. Brandel and Shoshana Ringel, the authors of Trauma: Contemporary Directions in Trauma Theory, Research, and Practice, point out that trauma can be bifurcated into two distinct categories: “psychoanalytic writers have made useful distinctions between relatively impersonal trauma (e.g., natural disasters, technological disasters, automobile accidents) and interpersonal trauma (e.g., criminal assault, rape, sexual harassment, war, political violence), arguing that traumas associated with the latter group are, generally speaking, far more problematic and likely to culminate in serious mental disorders than those in the former group.”15 Although impersonal trauma can be psychologically damaging, and the experience of it would vary from person to person, psychologists and trauma scholars generally do not view impersonal trauma as lasting. Interpersonal trauma, on the other hand, generally causes more damage, as the experience of processing the trauma can last for weeks or months or years, imprinting itself on the present and future psychological development of an individual in startling and enduring ways. One of the essential components of processing trauma is in understanding the manner in which the traumatic event(s) has disrupted the individual experiencing trauma. As literature scholar Michelle Balaev observes, trauma “disrupts previous ideas of an individual’s sense of self and the standards by which one evaluates society.”16 The traditional bildungsroman and, indeed, coming-of-age narratives in general tend to start from a point of disruption, which implies that, despite the damage that trauma inflicts, the end result of processing trauma can be viewed as ultimately constructive. Moving through trauma and not being defined by it signifies adaptability, growth, and knowledge. In “The Significant Role of Trauma in Literature and Psychoanalysis,” Negin Heidarizadeh suggests, “trauma does not always have a negative meaning. . . . It is a movement which illustrates an episode of changing which begins from trauma, suffering and pain to knowledge and understanding.”17 In those narratives, such as Maas’s Court series, where childhood is in part defined by trauma, processing and moving past it leads to adulthood; as such, traumatic events are what help move the characters into adulthood. Trauma compels these characters to move forward, if only to make sense of what happened to them. As Jenna Jorgensen, author of “The Thorns of Trauma: Torture, Aftermath, and Healing in Contemporary Fairy-Tale Literature,” writes, “Experiencing trauma does not mean one is forever broke or abnormal; it may be a longer path to restore oneself to an existence not dominated by trauma, but it is possible.”18 As Jorgensen notes, it is common for young adult novel characters exposed to trauma to experience feelings of being damaged or beyond help. They may not feel worthy of help or experience feelings of guilt or shame. Eventually, though, trauma is often

220

Kirsten Bilger and Michael G. Cornelius

the impetus in these works for the characters to discover a new identity, one where trauma does not dominate their identity. DEFINING CHILDHOOD THROUGH TRAUMA Feyre’s traumatic experiences start after she learns of how she can save Tamlin, the Spring Court, and all the other Fae trapped Under the Mountain. Determined to help, Feyre enters Under the Mountain to discern the layout of the place and to locate Tamlin. However, she is caught by a creature known as the Attor, who drags her to the throne room and throws her before Amarantha, the High Fae who is keeping the Fae prisoners. Feyre makes a bargain with Amarantha to free everyone, but first Feyre must face three trials Amarantha sets up. These trials are stretched out over the course of three months, each one taking place upon the night of the full moon. After agreeing to the trials, Amarantha tells her creatures to give Feyre a worthy greeting. Feyre is attacked, receiving blow after blow by the creatures, her bones breaking, and she is soon beaten unconscious. Feyre thus experiences her first overwhelming trauma, a damaging physical assault, heightened by the feelings of insecurity and vulnerability that result from Amarantha’s sudden and unexpected attack. While Under the Mountain, Feyre is locked in a cell, where she hears the screams of other Fae being tortured, causing her to wonder what kind of torture Amarantha has planned for her. The anxiety of waiting, coupled with the dangerous setting she is in, threatens to unravel Feyre. Triggered by her setting, and listening to the screams, Feyre thinks of how those screams should be hers. Earlier in the story, while she was still at the Spring Court, Rhysand, the High Lord of the Night Court and an unwilling consort to Amarantha, visits Tamlin with a message from Amarantha. Even though Tamlin made Feyre blend into the darkness and appear as his emissary Lucien’s shadow, Rhysand notices a third plate setting. It is then that he discovers Feyre and asks for her name. To protect herself, Feyre gives him the name of a girl from her village, Clare Beddor. Later, when she travels to Under the Mountain and is brought into the throne room by the Attor, Feyre notices a mangled corpse hanging on the wall and eventually discovers it is Clare. When Rhysand told Amarantha the name of the mortal girl in Tamlin’s court, Amarantha sent her creatures to burn down Clare’s house and family and bring Clare back to Under the Mountain. Racked with guilt over this, Feyre sits in her cell, thinking, “Clare had probably cried similarly, I had as good as tortured her myself . . . I deserved this—deserved whatever pain and suffering was in store—if only for what she had endured.”19 For Feyre, the psychological guilt of her splitsecond decision is worse than any physical torture Amarantha may devise. As



The Trauma of Childhood and Emerging into Adulthood

221

Caruth writes, “The breach in the mind—the psyche’s awareness of the threat of life—is not caused by a direct threat or injury, but by fright, the lack of preparedness to take in a stimulus that comes too quickly.”20 Feyre’s essential core is being challenged as she endures the psychological trauma of events that she could not be prepared for, and the psychological torture in waiting and wondering about those events that are coming. Still, Feyre endures; to save Tamlin, and the realm, Feyre realizes she must be strong and become more than she is if she is to survive the tasks. This, truly, is the start of her delayed coming-of-age narrative: leaving the traditional roles that Tamlin had outlined for her and realizing that she must be more and do more if she, and the rest of her society, are to survive. As Feyre is locked in her cell before her first trial, she is plagued with restless dreams of Clare’s corpse; of Amarantha’s ring, which contains a human eye; and of how Amarantha will torture her: “While I’d sworn not to think too long on what tasks awaited me, I didn’t doubt Amarantha’s imagination, and I often awoke sweating and panting from my restless dreams—dreams in which I was trapped within a crystal ring, forever silent and forced to witness their bloodthirsty, cruel world, cleaved from everything I’d ever loved.”21 Here it is evident that Feyre’s mind is processing what she has witnessed and trying to make sense of it. The process is difficult, replete with nightmares and tortured thoughts over Feyre’s actions, of what she might have done differently, and of what Amarantha has planned for her. According to psychological researchers Anna B. Baranowsky and Teresa Lauer, “This first set of symptoms (the re-experiencing of your trauma) can be particularly challenging and disturbing as you may feel like it is happening repeatedly with the same intensity of feelings: recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of the event and recurrent dreams (and nightmares) of the event.”22 Already, what Feyre witnessed and endured has traumatized her. Her nightmares combine her feelings of being guilty and responsible for Clare’s death and her feelings of being trapped, and her worries of being tortured causes her to reexperience those feelings subconsciously. During her first trial, Feyre is tossed into a labyrinth, where she is hunted by the Middengard Wyrm. As she runs through the labyrinth, she slips and slides as the ground is smeared with mud: “Sliding and slipping on the reeking mud, I hurtled down the length of the trench, wishing I’d memorized more of the layout in the few moments I’d had, knowing full well that my path could lead to a dead end, where I would surely—”23 Feyre knows that if she makes one wrong move, the wyrm would catch and devour her. Desperate to form a plan, she finds an opening and squeezes herself through it, while the wyrm continues its original path. Realizing that the wyrm must be blind and hunts by scent, she slathers herself in the reeking mud, becoming essentially invisible to the wyrm. As Feyre continues through the labyrinth, she finds the

222

Kirsten Bilger and Michael G. Cornelius

wyrm’s nest, littered with bones. Grabbing the bones and breaking them, she lays a trap for the wyrm. Once her trap is laid, she finds the wyrm and leads it back to her trap. As Feyre leaps over the trap, the wrym falls in: It hit the earth and lashed its massive body to the side, anticipating the strike to kill me, but a wet, crunching noise filled the air instead. And the wyrm didn’t move. I squatted there, gulping down burning air, staring into the abyss of its flesh-shredding mouth, still open wide to devour me. It took me a few heartbeats to realize the wyrm wasn’t going to swallow me whole, and a few more heartbeats to understand that it was truly impaled on the bone spikes. Dead.24

In those moments of seeing the wyrm dead, Feyre’s brain is still processing the event in the labyrinth and sending her signals for fight or flight. Even though she defeated the wyrm, her sense of danger lingers. Baranowsky and Lauer note, “The Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS), along with the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS) makes up the Autonomic Nervous System, the branch of the nervous system that performs involuntary functions. Once the SNS is engaged to fight, flight or freeze, the more reflective information processing that occurs in the Sensory Cortex is short-circuited.”25 In other words, during a traumatic event, a person is fully engaged in that situation and experiences feelings such as fear and anxiety. When one is focused on the fight, flight, or freeze option, all other informational input is not processed as quickly in the sensory cortex. Processing shuts down. After watching the wyrm for any movement, Feyre realizes that it is dead. Only after this realization does her brain begin to process everything around her as her instinctual, acute stress response decreases as the threat of danger is no longer prevalent. Maas’s emphasis on the psychological processes of trauma are prevalent throughout Feyre’s trials. For Feyre’s second trial, she is lowered into a pit and sees Lucien, a Fae that she met at the Spring Court and a friend, on the other side of the chamber, bound in chains. In front of Feyre are three doors and a riddle. The task is simple: Feyre must solve the riddle and open the correct door. However, Feyre is illiterate and cannot understand the words of the riddle. As she tries to sound out the words, two giant, spike-encrusted grates descend into her chamber and Lucien’s chamber. With the threat of being impaled and crushed, Feyre decides to guess which door is correct. However, as she reaches for the door, a pain shoots through her hand. When she reaches for the same door, another pain shoots through her. Reaching for the correct door, Feyre does not feel any pain. As the spikes inch closer, Feyre closes her eyes, grabs the correct door, and opens it. Upon hearing a sigh from Lucien, Feyre opens her eyes and sees that the spikes are receding. When the spikes fully recede and Feyre is brought out of the pit, she wants



The Trauma of Childhood and Emerging into Adulthood

223

to break down, to fall to her knees and cry for the fact that she should have died. Through a psychic bond, Rhysand tells Feyre to be strong and face Amarantha head-on. Listening to him, Feyre eyes Amarantha, and then leaves without being dismissed. Here, Feyre shows strength in the face of her trauma and puts on a front to let others see how strong she is. As Bessel A. Van der Kolk, a neuroscience researcher and trauma specialist, observes, “It takes tremendous energy to keep functioning while carrying the memory of terror, and the shame of utter weakness and vulnerability.”26 Even though she is ready to break, Feyre refuses to show Amarantha and the Fae in attendance how much this trial has harmed her physically and, more significantly, psychologically. Instead, she pushes onward, past the terror of the trial and her shame over her illiteracy, moving (ultimately) toward a new identity forged through trauma and trial. Once alone and back in her cell, Feyre collapses to the floor: “I wept for hours. For myself, for Tamlin, for the fact that I should be dead and had somehow survived. I cried for everything I’d lost, every injury I’d ever received, every wound—physical or otherwise. I cried for that trivial part of me, once so full of color and light—now hollow and dark and empty.”27 Emotional breakdowns like this are common scenes in dystopian young adult fiction, where they can aid the protagonist in piercing through the physical and emotional pain that the character has endured. Often cathartic in nature, they can help to alleviate mental perseveration and provide clarity, which in turn helps the character move forward. Kalliopi Nikolopoulou, in her article “Reflections on Catharsis in an Anticathartic Age,” notes that catharsis is traditionally defined as “tragedy’s vehicle of resolving (thus in some way ‘positively’ transforming and ‘successfully’ healing),” which underscores “the healing possibilities of tragic catharsis.”28 At this point in her narrative, however, Feyre is not quite ready to move forward; rather, Feyre is stuck in the past, as her mind focuses on the traumatic event and what she was feeling at that time: “The walls closed in—the ceiling dropped. I wanted to be crushed; I wanted to be snuffed out. Everything converged, squeezing inward, sucking out air. I couldn’t keep myself in my body, but it hurt too much each time I tried to maintain the connection . . . The floor rose toward the lowering ceiling—I would soon be flattened.”29 Feyre’s trauma makes her relive those feeling of being trapped and the threat of being impaled. Instead of being present in the moment or processing her experience to help her be present, Feyre is stuck in the past, disassociating from her present situation; since Feyre is stuck reliving her experience, she cannot adapt or grow past them. Maas continually depicts how Feyre’s psychosocial progress is curbed by her trauma. This culminates in the third trial, a trial in which Feyre herself is in no physical danger. As Feyre stands before Amarantha, Amarantha tells her that her final trial is to kill three innocent Fae. With this third trial, Maas

224

Kirsten Bilger and Michael G. Cornelius

truly emphasizes the psychological aspects of Amarantha’s persecution; while the wyrm provided a largely physical challenge, this last trial is nothing more than a moral and metaphysical torture: “I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t like hunting; it wasn’t for survival or defense. It was cold-blooded murder—the murder of them, of my very soul. But for Prythian—for Tamlin, for all of them here, for Alis and her boys.”30 Forced by Amarantha to kill or watch all Fae die, Feyre picks up the ash daggers and kills the first and second Fae, each action further damaging her: “I wanted to get out of my body; I had to escape the stain of what I’d done; I had to get out—I couldn’t endure the blood on my hands, the sticky warmth between my fingers.”31 Here, Feyre begins to dissociate from her trauma as she tries to cope with her actions. According to Baranowsky and Lauer, “There are times when the memories and feelings surrounding a traumatic event are just too much to bear and so [those suffering the trauma] simply break away from consciousness; some in minor ways, some in more serious such as Dissociative Disorder where the personality splits off, experiencing a disconnect between the mind (conscious awareness) and body.”32 Breaking away from consciousness is also known as depersonalization, or the sense of not being in one’s body. That is clearly happening to Feyre here; desperately, she wants to escape her body and the horrors that have been inflicted upon her and which she has been forced to inflict upon others. After killing the second Fae, Feyre steels herself, telling herself that, with the death of one more faerie, they would all be free. This provides cold comfort: “One faerie—and then we were free. Just one more swing of my arm. And maybe one more after that—maybe one more swing, up and inward and into my own heart. It would be a relief—a relief to end it by my own hand, a relief to die rather than face this, what I’d done.”33 Psychologically destroyed in the moment, Feyre resolves to end her mental anguish in the only way she can imagine succeeding. Yet when the third Fae’s hood is pulled back, it is Tamlin who stares up at her. With the knowledge that Tamlin has a heart of stone, and thus will not die from the dagger, Feyre is able to thrust the ash dagger into his chest, completing her third trial and freeing all the Fae. Angry that Feyre completed her trials, Amarantha tortures her, breaking the bones in her body and eventually killing her when something cracks in her spine. Yet with Feyre’s success in completing the trials, Amarantha’s power over the Fae is broken, and their magic is fully restored. Tamlin, turning into his beast form, kills Amarantha and goes to Feyre’s side, cradling her body. In a show of gratitude for saving them, each of the High Lords shares a piece of their power to revive Feyre. When Feyre wakes, she is no longer human, as she was reborn with a High Fae body. The High Lords, unknowingly, also gave her powers that reflect each one of their unique abilities. With Amarantha



The Trauma of Childhood and Emerging into Adulthood

225

dead and the Fae freed, Feyre journeys back to the Spring Court with Tamlin, hoping to leave her traumatic experiences Under the Mountain far behind. EMERGING FROM TRAUMA AND INTO ADULTHOOD In On the Way to Language, the German phenomenologist Martin Heidegger writes, “To undergo an experience with something . . . means that this something befalls us, strikes us, comes over us, overwhelms and transforms us.”34 Heidegger notes the transformative power of experience, especially those experiences that leave the individual transfigured—something trauma surely does. The French philosopher Catherine Malabou labels such experiences as metamorphic, noting that one definition of metamorphosis is “a change of route, a new direction, and a change of form.”35 By traditional definition, a metamorphosis is the (literal or figurative) alteration of the physical form of a being or substance, changing the originating material, object, or individual from one thing to another. A caterpillar’s ultimate metamorphosis into a butterfly—the end of a three-stage transmutive process—results in what may be deemed as the maturation of the creature into its ultimate form or, conversely, results in another creature emerging from the cocoon altogether, depending on the perspective of the individual observing the transformative process. The movement from childhood to adulthood can be noted to work the same way. The adult materializes, like a butterfly from a cocoon, from a prior, earlier stage of existence, emerging as a being that society recognizes as different from the one before. Legally, figuratively, even linguistically, a child is not an adult, or vice versa, but rather a version—a different, matured version—of the being that once inhabited the now mature form. In A Court of Thorns and Roses, Feyre’s metamorphosis toward the end of the narrative—from human to fae, from mortal creature to immortal being—acts as a metaphor for the adult personage emerging from childhood, stepping into a new kind of existence. And yet the movement from childhood to adulthood is not an instantaneous process. Most societies have varying markers, often legal or legalistic, that demarcate adulthood from childhood. But simply turning eighteen, for example, does not mean that that individual is an adult, fully formed, in actual practice; it merely reflects a legal definition of a social construct. In the same vein, trauma, once experienced, is not usually quickly processed. Arnett notes that adulthood is “emergent” because he recognizes that the process of becoming an adult does not occur overnight. For Feyre, it is not her triumph over Amarantha’s trials nor her metamorphosis into a fae that truly marks the

226

Kirsten Bilger and Michael G. Cornelius

culmination of her journey toward adulthood; it is trauma, and the processing of trauma, that will mark her ascendancy into adulthood, for good and for ill. In many ways, Maas highlights this processing of trauma as the cynosure of the second book, A Court of Mist and Fury. Mist takes place three months after the events Under the Mountain. While everyone treats Feyre as a savoir, she is still tormented by what she witnessed and suffered there. Even the work of planning her wedding to Tamlin does not distract her, especially at night. Feyre is learning how to adjust to her new life and her new identity, but her trauma keeps her rooted in the past, in the realm of childhood. Every night, nightmares plague her sleep, making her relive her trauma and causing her to be sick. After one nightmare, “I vomited into the toilet, hugging the cool sides, trying to contain the sounds of my retching. And when I hadn’t been able to tell the darkness of my chamber from the endless night of Amarantha’s dungeons, when the cold sweat coating me felt like the blood of those faeries, I’d hurtled for the bathing room.”36 As time progresses, Feyre loses weight from being sick every night; her face is sunken, shadows hang under her eyes, and she avoids social interactions. Despite this, Feyre endures her trauma in silence, as she and Tamlin do not discuss the events Under the Mountain. Van der Kolk, referencing his time working with PTSD patients, says, “The traumatic event itself, however horrendous, had a beginning, a middle, and an end, but I now saw that flashbacks could be even worse. You never know when you will be assaulted by them again and you have no way of telling when they stop.”37 Wanting to forget about it and not burden Tamlin, Feyre suffers alone, with her constant nightmares causing her to relive her traumatic experiences. When she wakes from her nightmares, she struggles to tell the difference between her dreams and her reality. While Feyre has left behind the location of her traumatic experience—and indeed, even who she was then—she is not acknowledging or processing her trauma, and thus remains enmeshed in the trauma, unable to move past it or the self she was when it occurred. In many ways, despite having achieved the metaphorical/metamorphic trappings of adulthood, she remains stuck on the cusp of adulthood, still tethered to the traumas of childhood. Along with her nightmares, which torment her psychologically, there are physical objects that cause Feyre to relive her trauma. In A Court of Thorns and Roses, Feyre loved to paint and would catalogue anything new that she saw to paint later. However, she now despises paint, especially the color red, as it reminds her of the blood she spilled from those fairies. While she may be able to keep these thoughts private, everyone sees her reaction to the color red on her wedding day. As she is walking down the aisle, she notices white rose petals with red petals scattered in: “And red ones. Like drops of blood amongst the white, red petals had been sprayed across the path ahead.”38 Panicking, she again remembers killing those fairies and the



The Trauma of Childhood and Emerging into Adulthood

227

blood that stained her hands, making her unclean in her mind: “So unaware of the true extent of how broken and dark I was inside. How unfit I was to be clothed in white when my hands were so filthy. As inescapable as the vow I was about to make, binding me to him forever, shackling him to my broken and weary soul.”39 Feyre feels unfit to marry Tamlin, thinking she is too damaged by her traumatic experience. She feels unworthy and unclean. This reaction is another response to trauma; as Van der Kolk observes, “Feeling out of control, survivors of trauma often begin to fear that they are damaged to the core and beyond redemption.”40 Feyre considers herself a traitor and a murderer for what she has done, even though everyone treats her as a savior. She struggles with the constant attention that the Fae give her, as it only reminds her of her trauma. For Feyre, her traumatic perseverations come to head during her wedding ceremony. Unable to go through with it, Feyre halts her progress down the aisle, frozen in fear and indecision, her trauma echoing in her mind. Tamlin notices what is happening and tries to force her to continue the ceremony, but it is Rhysand who rescues Feyre. Since he is still psychically connected to Feyre through the agreement they made Under the Mountain, feeling her pain and anguish, Rhysand interrupts the wedding and whisks Feyre off to the Night Court, where she finally begins to acknowledge that something is wrong. Here, Feyre finally starts her journey to emerge into adulthood as she accepts that her trauma is real. When Feyre arrives in the Night Court with Rhysand, he comments on how frail she has become. Wanting to see some life in Feyre’s eyes, Rhysand gets her to focus on learning how to read and how to harness her new powers. During Feyre’s time at the Night Court, she hears of an upcoming war between the Fae and the mortal world. When she mentions the war to Tamlin upon arriving back at the Spring Court, he refuses to acknowledge it. Instead, he keeps her locked inside and places a wall of wind around the manor so that Feyre cannot leave. This causes Feyre to experience the same feelings of entrapment and anxiety that she experienced Under the Mountain: “He’d locked me in. He’d sealed me inside this house. Breathing became difficult. I was trapped. I was trapped inside this house. I might as well have been Under the Mountain; I might as well have been inside that cell again—I had to get out, because I’d barely escaped from another prison once before, and this time, this time—”41 While she is in a different setting, being trapped naturally stirs up memories of her traumatic experiences Under the Mountain. As a result, Feyre no longer feels safe in the place she called home. As Baranowsky and Lauer observe, “Perceived danger and the associated fear, anxiety and arousal, as mentioned, is a result of . . . trauma that gets re-ignited when exposed to reminders of the event. [The] traumatic event triggered a survival response that released chemicals into [the] body

228

Kirsten Bilger and Michael G. Cornelius

in order to fight, flee, or freeze. Triggering this memory again releases the same chemicals.”42 The progress she had made in the Night Court swiftly melts away when Feyre is reminded of her trauma back in the Spring Court. In fact, Feyre is unable to calm down until Morrigan, a Fae from the Night Court that she befriended, rescues her from the Spring Court and whispers multiple times that Feyre is free: “I must have started bucking and thrashing in her arms, because she said, ‘You’re out; you’re free,’ again and again and again as true darkness swallowed us.”43 Once in the Night Court, Feyre breathes easier and feels safer. On the nights when Feyre gets sick from her nightmares, Rhysand comforts her and shares his trauma of what he endured during Amarantha’s reign. By establishing an open communication—one Tamlin stridently avoided with her—Feyre understands that she is not the only one who is suffering. She begins to acknowledge her trauma by sharing her feelings and the nightly torments she endures. By having freedom and someone to talk to, Feyre is adapting to her trauma and finally beginning to process what happened to her. One of the functional tenets of adulthood is the freedom to choose: to choose where to live, what to be, and even to choose how to process trauma. Confined in the Spring Court, forced into a role she had no say over, Feyre struggled to process her trauma because, in some very real ways, bereft of the freedom to choose for herself, Feyre is still being perceived and treated like a child who must obey an authority figure. It is, of course, a bit flippant to suggest that children never get to choose or that adults have unfettered freedom; all people are subject to hierarchical systems and social castes and rules. Nonetheless, children are raised in more structured environments to ensure that the rearing of them is successful—to ensure, in short, that they will become adults. Once they achieve adult status, they have more freedom to choose, to control their own destiny. They have, in short, agency. According to the psychologist and social learning scholar Albert Bandura, agency is the ability to “influence one’s functioning and one’s life circumstances.”44 The literary scholar Paula Backscheider describes agency as being directly connective to “self-definition, an identity [people] have developed, discovered, claimed, and are willing to display.”45 Both definitions are focused very much on the self, both in the self’s ability to assert authority over its own existence and to broadcast that assertion through self-definition. The eminent legal scholar Kathryn Abrams takes this concept one step further when she notes that agency “manifests in various forms of self-determination and selfdirection that emerges in a context of grouped based oppressions.”46 Abrams notes the role of the group (society) in both determining agency (as a counterpoint of self-identification) and as an impediment to agency, since the group often concludes it is manifestly stronger if all members believe and act in the same manner. Society curtails social behavior, even in adults, and too much



The Trauma of Childhood and Emerging into Adulthood

229

agency can be frowned upon as too much “difference” from a psychosocial perspective. Feyre is given no freedom and no agency in the Spring Court; as such, her psychosocial development and her emergent adulthood remain stalled, locked in trauma, because it—like she—had nowhere else to go. In the Night Court, however, Feyre can finally begin to make decisions for herself—and, first and foremost, she decides that she does not want to go back to the Spring Court. Instead, Rhysand offers her a space at the Night Court, and a position of responsibility. He also offers to help her learn how to control the powers that she was gifted from the High Lords when they revived her. Lastly, Rhysand provides Feyre with information about the upcoming war, giving her the choice to get involved or stay on the sidelines. Agreeing to help, Feyre begins to test her powers. During one test, Feyre yet again finds herself in a life-or-death situation: “I pushed against the grip of the chimney, but couldn’t budge. I was going to die here. Black panic crushed in, and I was again trapped under a nearby mountain, in a muddy trench, the Middengard Wyrm barreling for me. I’d barely escaped, barely.”47 While Feyre panics, and momentarily remembers a source of trauma, this time, she is able to calm herself and work through her traumatic feelings: “I had survived the Wyrm—survived Amarantha. And I had been granted gifts. Considerable gifts. Like strength. I was strong. I was not a pet, not a doll, not an animal. I was a survivor, and I was strong. I would not be weak, or helpless again. I would not, could not be broken. Tamed.”48 When Maas first introduces Feyre to the reader, she and her family are eking out a hardscrabble existence on the edges of the mortal world. Her life is dominated by fulfilling the simple needs of her family. When Feyre is taken to the Spring Court, her life there is already outlined for her, taking on traditional, feminine roles as a passive agent in her forthcoming marriage and the Court itself. In both settings, the onset and outcome of Feyre’s life is largely decided for her, by circumstance, by tradition, and by figures of authority. Then, Feyre is forced Under the Mountain to face Amarantha’s trials. There, Feyre must learn to survive, but she must also learn to choose—as in the second trial, when she must choose the right door; as in the third trial, when she must choose between killing the three Fae or letting all fairy-kind suffer. Traumatized as she is by these choices, however, Feyre fails to realize at the time that they are, in fact, her choices to make. Thus, when Mist begins, she still remains a passive figure in her own life. But once Feyre starts to process her trauma, and to move beyond its debilitating impact, she begins to realize the authority that she does have in deciding her own path in life. It is only there, in the Night Court, training for an upcoming war she has chosen to fight, that Feyre realizes that she has the power to choose. This is the moment—if one must identify a single moment—when Feyre crosses over

230

Kirsten Bilger and Michael G. Cornelius

the cusp from childhood to adulthood. Finally, she has the determination and the authority to define herself. She has agency. And while she may realize that she will never be fully freed from the trauma she endured, she does realize something truly important in this moment: that trauma need not define her. Rather, Feyre realizes that trauma, when processed, can be the mechanism she uses to define herself. CONCLUDING THOUGHTS Young adult dystopian and dark fantasy series often require their adolescent protagonists to save the world. Doing so, however, does not guarantee movement into adulthood. In the penultimate scene of the Harry Potter series, Harry, age seventeen, having finally led the Wizarding World to victory over the forces of the Dark Lord Voldemort, finds himself longing for a bed in his school dormitory and a sandwich—a schoolboy’s reward, and hardly the image of a fully emerged adult. It is only in Rowling’s epilogue, when Harry is married with children old enough to attend his former school, that the reader sees the boy wizard as an adult—years removed from his emergent phase altogether. Adolescents are often asked to save the world of adults in young adult dystopian and dark fantasy series, but they are not always accorded direct entry into that world, even when they are the ones who have preserved it. That is because, as Maas seems to suggest, becoming an adult is not merely about the passage of time, or attaining key milestones, or even saving the world. For Feyre, the final push into adulthood comes after hard psychological work processing her trauma and realizing her own sense of self-identity and self-worth. It comes when she realizes she has the freedom to choose. This is not to suggest that adults are not encumbered by social structures and strictures that limit their ability to do whatever they wish— society puts limits on all its members. But one of the defining characteristics of adulthood is agency, the ability to define oneself and control one’s own destiny, even within the limits of social boundaries. This is what Feyre finally achieves in the second book in Maas’s series. The proliferation of dystopian and dark fantasy narratives for young adult readers suggests that most, if not all, childhoods, are not free from trauma, and, too often, these traumatic events shape children and the adults they become, perhaps even more than society might imagine. Maas’s strong emphasis on the psychological impact and processing of trauma in the second book in her series highlights this concept, that childhood can be heavily shaped by trauma and that, seemingly, true adulthood cannot be obtained until that trauma can be processed. Learning to cope is, after all, another tenet of skilled adulthood. For many scholars of trauma literature, the proliferation



The Trauma of Childhood and Emerging into Adulthood

231

of so many trauma-centered young adult narratives is indicative of the need for adolescents to understand the nature of trauma itself, as Harner observes: “Child audiences become traumatic survivors through traversing fictional landscapes, and likewise traverse the borderlands of innocence and experience.”49 Reading about trauma may help adolescents to both prepare for and begin to process actual trauma when it occurs. Indeed, Maas’s emphasis on the psychological processing of trauma and her use of key symptomatic indicators throughout Thorns and Mist, suggests that while, sadly, trauma may be inescapable for far too many adolescents, learning to process trauma may also provide an impetus for an adulthood defined by self-identity and a strong sense of self-worth. This will not come easily, as Maas demonstrates through Feyre’s struggles, and would only result from intense work with and on the inner self. Nonetheless, in the end, such work may be worth it; for while it is inevitable that trauma brings darkness, it is also true that, in the dark, it can be easier to finally see the light. NOTES 1. Christy Rishoi, From Girl to Woman: American Women’s Coming-of-Age Narratives (Albany: SUNY Press, 2003), 26. 2 Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens through Twenties (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 3. Rishoi, From Girl to Woman, 27. 4. While the series contains five books, for the purposes of this paper, we will only be examining Maas’s first two books, which encapsulates Feyre’s traumatic events, her journey through the coming-of-age lens, finding a new identity, and emerging into agency. Maas’s series began in 2015 when her first book, A Court of Thorns and Roses, was published. Her second book, A Court of Mist and Fury, was published in 2016. The subsequent books in the series are A Court of Wings and Ruin (2017); A Court of Frost and Starlight (2018); and A Court of Silver Flames (2021). 5. Rishoi, From Girl to Woman, 30. 6. Michael Cart, “How ‘Young Adult’ Fiction Blossomed with Teenage Culture in America,” Smithsonian, May 7, 2018. 7. Aleksandar Stević, “Realism, the Bildungsroman, and the Art of Self-Invention: Stendhal and Balzac,” in A History of Modern French Literature, ed. Christopher Prendergast (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), 414–35; and Katie Trumpener, “Actors, Puppets, Girls: Little Women and the Collective Bildungsroman,” Textual Practice 34, vol. 12 (2020): 1911–31. doi:10.1080/09502 36X.2020.1834709. S2CID 227033016. 8. Rishoi, From Girl to Woman, 11. 9. Elizabeth Abel, Marianne Hirsch, and Elizabeth Langland, “Introduction,” in The Voyage In: Fictions of Female Development, ed. Elizabeth Avel, Marianne

232

Kirsten Bilger and Michael G. Cornelius

Hirsch, and Elizabeth Langland (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1983), 11. 10. Abel et al., The Voyage In, 10. 11. Elia Michelle Lafuente, “Nationhood, Struggle, and Identity,” in Contemporary Adolescent Literature and Culture: The Emergent Adult, ed. Maria Nikolajeva and Mary Hilton (New York: Routledge, 2012), 33. 12. Janna Harner, “‘Killing is for grown-ups’: The Spatial Performance of Trauma in Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider Series,” in The Spatial Dynamics of Juvenile Series Literature, ed. Michael G. Cornelius (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020): 149. 13. Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 181. 14. Cathy Caruth, “Violence and Time: Traumatic Survivals,” Assemblage 20 (Apr. 1993): 24, JSTOR. 15. Jerrold R. Brandell and Shoshana Ringel, Trauma: Contemporary Directions in Trauma Theory, Research, and Practice, Second edition (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019), 45. 16. Michelle Balaev, “Trends in Literary Trauma Theory,” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, 41, no. 2 (June 2008): 150. 17. Negin Heidarizadeh, “The Significant Role of Trauma in Literature and Psychoanalysis,” Procedia—Social and Behavioral Sciences 192 (2015): 791. Science Direct. 18. Jeana Jorgensen, “The Thorns of Trauma: Torture, Aftermath, and Healing in Contemporary Fairy-Tale Literature,” Humanities. 10, vol. 1 (2021): 47. https:​//​doi​ .org​/10​.3390​/h10010047. 19. Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015), 305. 20. Cathy Caruth, “Parting Words: Trauma, Silence, and Survival,” Intervalla 2 (2014): 20. 21. Maas, Thorns, 314–15. 22. Anna B. Baranowsky and Teresa Lauer, What is PTSD?: 3 Steps to Healing Trauma (Traumatology Institute, 2012), 30. 23. Maas, Thorns, 319. 24. Maas, Thorns, 326. 25. Baranowsky and Lauer, What is PTSD?, 15. 26. Bessel A. Van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (New York: Penguin Books, 2015), 2. 27. Maas, Thorns, 367. 28. Kallipoli Nikolopoulou, “Reflections on Catharsis in an Anticathartic Age,” Minnesota Review: A Journal of Creative and Critical Writing, 87 (2016): 85, 76. Nikolopoulou’s article is an exploration and at times critique of the traditional definition of catharsis; nonetheless, in this instance, the traditional definition holds. 29. Maas, Thorns, 367. 30. Maas, Thorns, 389. 31. Maas, Thorns, 391.



The Trauma of Childhood and Emerging into Adulthood

233

32. Baranowsky and Lauer, What is PTSD?, 16–17. 33. Maas, Thorns, 393. 34. Martin Heidegger, On the Way to Language, trans Peter D. Hertz (New York, Harper and Row, 1971), 57. 35. Catherine Malabou, Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing: Dialectic, Destruction, Deconstruction (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 48. 36. Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016), 5. 37. Van der Kolk, Healing of Trauma, 16. 38. Maas, Mist, 40. 39. Maas, Mist, 41. 40. Van der Kolk, Healing of Trauma, 2. 41. Maas, Mist, 123. 42. Baranowsky and Lauer, What is PTSD?, 24. 43. Maas, Mist, 125. 44. Albert Bandura, “Toward a Psychology of Human Agency,” Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1, no. 2 (2006): 164. 45. Paula R. Backscheider, Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry: Inventing Agency, Inventing Genre (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 26. 46. Kathryn Abrams, “From Autonomy to Agency: Feminist Perspectives on Self-Direction,” William & Mary Law Review, 40, no. 4 (1999): 807. 47. Maas, Mist, 225. 48. Maas, Mist, 226. 49. Harner, “Killing,” 150–51.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abel, Elizabeth, Marianne Hirsch, and Elizabeth Langland. “Introduction.” In The Voyage In: Fictions of Female Development. Edited by Elizabeth Abel, Marianne Hirsch, and Elizabeth Langland. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1983. Abrams, Kathryn. “From Autonomy to Agency: Feminist Perspectives on Self-Direction.” William & Mary Law Review 40, no. 4 (1999): 804–46. Arnett, Jeffrey Jensen. Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens through Twenties. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Backscheider, Paula R. Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry: Inventing Agency, Inventing Genre. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. Balaev, Michelle. “Trends in Literary Trauma Theory.” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal 41, no. 2 (June 2008): 149–66. Bandura, Albert. “Toward a Psychology of Human Agency.” Perspectives on Psychological Science 1, no. 2 (2006): 164–80. Baranowsky, Anna B., and Teresa Lauer. What Is PTSD?: 3 Steps to Healing Trauma. Traumatology Institute, 2012.

234

Kirsten Bilger and Michael G. Cornelius

Brandell, Jerrold R., and Shoshana Ringel. Trauma: Contemporary Directions in Trauma Theory, Research, and Practice. Second edition. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019. Cart, Michael. “How ‘Young Adult’ Fiction Blossomed with Teenage Culture in America.” Smithsonian, May 7, 2018. https:​//​www​.smithsonianmag​.com​/ arts​-culture​/how​-young​-adult​-fiction​-blossomed​-with​-teenage​-culture​-in​-america​ -180968967/. Caruth, Cathy. “Parting Words: Trauma, Silence, and Survival.” Intervalla 2 (2014): 20–33. Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Caruth, Cathy. “Violence and Time: Traumatic Survivals.” Assemblage 20 (Apr. 1993): 24–25. JSTOR. Harner, Janna. “‘Killing is for grown-ups’: The Spatial Performance of Trauma in Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider Series.” In The Spatial Dynamics of Juvenile Series Literature, edited by Michael G. Cornelius, 149–70. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020. Heidarizadeh, Negin. “The Significant Role of Trauma in Literature and Psychoanalysis.” Procedia—Social and Behavioral Sciences 192 (2015): 788– 95. Science Direct. Heidegger, Martin. On the Way to Language. Trans Peter D. Hertz. New York: Harper and Row, 1971. Jorgensen, Jeana. “The Thorns of Trauma: Torture, Aftermath, and Healing in Contemporary Fairy-Tale Literature.” Humanities 10, vol. 1 (2021): 47. https:​//​doi​ .org​/10​.3390​/h10010047. Lafuente, Elia Michelle. “Nationhood, Struggle, and Identity.” In Contemporary Adolescent Literature and Culture: The Emergent Adult, edited by Maria Nikolajeva and Mary Hilton, 33–46. New York: Routledge, 2012. Maas, Sarah J. A Court of Thorns and Roses. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015. Maas, Sarah J. A Court of Mist and Fury. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016. Malabou, Catherine. Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing: Dialectic, Destruction, Deconstruction. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. Nikolopoulou, Kalliopi. “Reflections on Catharsis in an Anticathartic Age.” The Minnesota Review: A Journal of Creative and Critical Writing 87 (2016): 76–109. Rishoi, Christy. From Girl to Woman: American Women’s Coming-of-Age Narratives. Albany: SUNY Press, 2003. Stević, Aleksandar. “Realism, the Bildungsroman, and the Art of Self-Invention: Stendhal and Balzac.” In A History of Modern French Literature, edited by Christopher Prendergast, 414–35. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017. Trumpener, Katie. “Actors, Puppets, Girls: Little Women and the Collective Bildungsroman.” Textual Practice 34, vol. 12 (2020): 1911–31. doi:10.1080/09502 36X.2020.1834709. S2CID 227033016. Van der Kolk, Bessel A. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. New York: Penguin Books, 2015.

Index

abandonment, 113, 122, 124 abuse, 2, 25, 76, 87–88, 124, 157, 167 adolescence, 75–76, 81, 83–87, 189, 213–17 adolescent legal culture, 74–81, 94 adulthood, 1, 55–56, 75–83, 85, 164, 172, 185, 213–31 agency, 35, 39–42, 44, 112, 124, 166, 184, 187, 194, 197, 204–6 Alejandria Fights Back!, 40 Alex: The Life of a Child, 185 All American Boys, 89, 93 Allegedly, 88 Amara and the Bats, 40 Anger Is a Gift, 89 Audism, 58–62 bildungsroman, 85–86, 215–19 The Black Kids, 93 censorship, 86–88 Change Sings: A Children’s Anthem, 39 character development, 214–29 the child, 1–3 childhood, 1–3, 9–15, 21–27, 33–36, 44–45, 55–59, 75–81, 83–87, 106–11, 118–25, 136–38, 157–60, 169–72, 185–98, 205–6, 213–16, 219–26, 230–31; adult anxieties

surrounding, 1–3; American, 75–104, 183–212; Black, 84, 93–94; and civil rights, 38; and cancer, 184–206; and disability, 60–64, 185–206; disappearance of, 1–2; and the family, 19–25, 39–43, 111–18, 121– 26; fetishizing of, 106–9, 125, 147; idyllic, 11; and innocence, 1–3, 11, 22, 33–36, 86, 107–10, 116–19, 125, 158, 188; and play, 112–19, 135–56; and poverty, 106–10, 120–23, 126n3; as safe space, 2, 25, 44, 76–77; and technology, 62–67, 94, 139; and trauma, 2–3, 25, 161–67, 213–34 child activism, 33–50 child development, 25, 119 child neglect, 2, 105–32 children’s culture, 1–3, 37, 77–78, 83–86, 109–10; and Christianity, 159, 183; constructions of home in, 11–27, 112–18, 190; late capitalism and, 146–48; and politics, 33, 117–25; representations of abuse in, 2, 124; sexual content in, 77, 81–82, 92–93, 159 children’s literature. See children’s culture Conviction, 88 235

236

Index

Coronavirus: A Book for Children about COVID-19, 12, 24 A Court of Mist and Fury, 226–30 A Court of Thorns and Roses, 213–34 COVID-19 (virus), 9–32 Covid-19 Helpers, 12–13, 24 critical multicultural analysis, 37–38, 43 deafness, 51–54, 57–67 Disney, 105–24, 160–61, 168, 172 displacement, 112 El Deafo, 51–72 Even Superheroes Stay Home, 13 EyeWitness, 88 fairy tales, 157–80 family values, 113 The Florida Project, 105–32 Galloway, Alexander, 146–50 gender, 161, 164, 183, 209n82 Give a Boy a Gun, 75, 84 Harrell, Rob, 183–212 The Hate U Give, 89, 93 heroes, 63, 109, 158, 165 Hope: The Other Side of Adventure, 157–80 I Am One: A Book of Action, 39–41 If You’re Going to a March, 42–43 Illegal, 88 interiority, 16, 27, 217 Keeping the City Going, 11, 14, 19–21, 24–25 Larrick, Nancy, 1 Lubaya’s Quiet Roar, 40–43 Maas, Sarah J., 213–31 magic, 67, 158–62, 218–24 mainstreamed education, 51–62, 66 maternal, 160

maturity, 35, 81–82, 169, 217 Milo’s Museum, 41 The Mockingbirds, 90, 93 Moxie, 89, 92 nostalgia, 22, 118, 135, 157–58 The Nowhere Girls, 93 nuclear family, 113 Off the Record, 88–89, 92 otherness, 62, 146, 183, 189, 193–99, 206n3 Outside, Inside, 11, 15–26 The Outsiders, 76, 216 patriarchy, 160 playbor, 135–56 parental neglect, 114–16, 124 picture book, 9–32, 206 postmodernism, 158–65, 172 The Princess in Black, 15 The Protest, 41 psycho-emotional disablism, 58–62 Revenge of the Sluts, 91–92 Roblox, 135–56 Rocket Says Clean Up!, 39 Rules for Being a Girl, 93 Share Your Rainbow: 18 Artists Draw their Hope for the Future, 23–25 Something Happened to Ali Greenleaf, 93 Sophia Valdez, Future Prez, 39 subjectivity, 108 supercrip narratives, 62–66 transgression, 73–132 uncanny, 162, 167, 196 Unpregnant, 89 victim, 77, 89–91, 109 visibility, 183–87 visual rhetoric, 33–50

Index

Why We Stay Home: Suzie Learns about Coronavirus, 13 Windows, 11, 22 Wink, 183–206

237

Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass, 89–90 You Are Revolutionary, 39, 41

About the Contributors

Kirsten Bilger is an admissions counselor at Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. She holds a BA in English with a concentration in Creative Writing from Wilson College. She is currently working on her Master of Applied Leadership degree through Wilson College. Research interests include young adult literature. Sumaria Butt is a PhD candidate in the English department at UC Davis. She works primarily with Marxist theory, children’s literature, science and technology studies, and twentieth-century and contemporary American literature. Her dissertation research focuses on time-travel narratives in twentieth-century science fiction to ask how the child is figured in relation to value production. Cara Byrne is a full-time lecturer in the Department of English and the Research Advisor on Diverse Children’s Literature for the Schubert Center for Child Studies at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. She has published articles about children’s picture books in ImageTexT, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, and The Bloomsbury Handbook to Edwidge Danticat. Michael G. Cornelius is a professor of English at Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. He is the author/editor of multiple volumes on children’s literature, most recently Places of Childhood Fancy: Essays on Space and Speculation in Children’s Books Series (co-edited with Marybeth Ragsdale-Richards, 2023) and The Spatial Dynamics of Juvenile Series Literature (2020). S. Leigh Ann Cowan is an independent scholar with two degrees in English Literature and Language (BA 2018 and MA 2020) and a degree in Deaf Studies (MA 2022). She currently works as an assistant editor at the 239

240

About the Contributors

University of Illinois Press. Leigh Ann is also the critic-curator of a running list of fiction featuring deaf representation, aptly titled “Ranking Deaf Characters in Fiction.” James M. Curtis, PhD, is an instructor of English at Louisiana State University Shreveport, where (amongst other things) he teaches children’s and world literature. His work focuses on the intersections of psychoanalysis and children’s literature and appears in Children’s Literature in Education, the Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, Gender Forum, and edited collections like Family Films in Global Cinema (2015) and Children and Childhood in the Works of Stephen King (2020). Jamie M. Fine, JD, MFA, is a recent PhD recipient in Stanford University’s Modern Thought and Literature Program, with a minor in feminist, gender, and sexuality studies. As a former trial attorney and international educator, her research looks broadly at the interplay between adolescents, culture, and the law. Her interests focus on the connection between contemporary young adult literature and comics, law, and the adolescent reader, engaging—amongst others—issues of gender, race, age, and class that arise at this intersection. Joseph V. Giunta is a PhD candidate at Rutgers University-Camden’s Department of Childhood Studies who hails from Queens, New York. After earning his MA from the Cinema Studies program at NYU, his academic interests transformed from postmodern evolutions in children’s film into investigations of the ideologies of childhood and constructions of young people in multimedia narratives. By considering the oscillating representations of children’s moral agencies, peer cultures, and interactions with play, Joseph endeavors to highlight fantasy circumscription, subjectivity, and the pedagogical functions present within popular culture characterizations of youth. He plans on continuing his academic career and ultimately teaching cinema, media, and childhood studies at the university level. Kristin Kondrlik is an associate professor of English at West Chester University in West Chester, Pennsylvania. She also serves as co-director of the Professional and Technical Writing Minor program. She has co-edited an edited collection Veg(etari)an Arguments in Culture, History, and Practice with Cristina Hanganu-Bresch, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2020. She has also published research in Victorian Periodicals Review; ELT: English Literature in Transition, 1880–1920; and POROI: Project on the Rhetoric of Inquiry.



About the Contributors

241

Imogen Nutting is completing a PhD thesis in Discipline of Literature at Macquarie University. Her research focuses on the relationship between traditional and digital folklore, assessing how each grapples with and represents both reality and the fantastic. Her article “From Czechoslovakia with Nightmares: How the Search for ‘Clock Man’ Illustrates the Digital Deterritorialization of World Literature Online” was published in the Journal of World Literature in 2023. Dr. Ryan Twomey is a senior lecturer in the Discipline of Literature at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. An active member of the Literature and Cinema Network at the University of Sydney, he has published numerous articles and book chapters on the intersection between literature and television in series such as Watchmen, House of Cards, Fargo, Stranger Things, Mad Men, and True Detective. Dr. Twomey’s latest monograph, Curated Realism: Examining Authenticity in ‘The Wire,’ was published with Palgrave Macmillan in 2020. Meghan Whitfield is a doctoral candidate in the Language, Literacy, and Culture Concentration of the School of Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research interests include children’s literature, visual rhetoric, and social movements. Allyson Wierenga is an English PhD student at Texas A&M University. She received her bachelor of arts degree in English literature and writing from Calvin University and her master of arts degree in English from Case Western Reserve University. Allyson’s research focuses on intersections between the fields of children’s literature, health humanities, and disability studies.