Toward a Plan to Take Lit Crit, YA Lit (& Teens) Seriously, with some autobiographical extrania3/13/2021 Notes toward a new project OK. There's a new bug in my brain. There's a new stumbling block. I'm obsessing a bit on having lost A.S. King as a Twitter follower. We had gone back and forth a bit about the need for serious critical treatment of YA literature--like (in my head) examining YA fiction through the lenses of not only pedagogy (what is its educational value? how do I best teach YA lit?) and politics (Marxist, feminist, & postcolonial theories), but psychoanalytical, deconstructionist, and postmodernist theory. I had brainstormed a grand project investigating the meanings of surrealism, the connection between surrealism and adolescence, and King's surrealist novels. However, I blew it. I said something offensive or was just plain irrelevant and uninteresting on Twitter, or she didn't like the four-star review I gave Still Life with Tornado (which I may change, just because on rereading it for a paper, it gets better and better), and she left, just before her birthday. Or maybe it was just time for her to cut back on the number of people she was following, and I didn't make the cut. I don't know. All I know is three things: (1) That I'm bored with YA lit crit and want to inject something new into it, (2) I have difficulty restraining impulses to say things on social media (was it my comments about my past behavior with women that I regret, or the somewhat mean things I said about Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl, or ...?), and (3) I have a tendency to get really excited about connections and overstep boundaries. Anyway, she no longer follows me. Regardless, she seems like a stellar human being, and she's been through some rough stuff and come through the other side. I admire her, and my interest in her writing continues. Consider this a list of works to examine as a preliminary for a series of articles, and please suggest more if you know of anything, especially anything more recent: YA & Lit Crit
Akers, T. (2011). The legitimacy of children's and young adult literature as literature (Publication No. 105) [Master's thesis, Minnesota State University, Mankato]. Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works. Hunt, C. (1996, Spring). Young adult literature evades the theorists. Children's Literature Association Quarterly 21(1), 4-11. DOI: 10.1353/chq.0.1129 Roche, M. W. (2004). Why literature matters in the 21st century. Yale University Press. Schwartz, G. (2014, Summer). Enough apologetics: Time to be critical of YA literature. The ALAN Review 41(3), . DOI: 10.21061/alan.v41i3.a.2 Adolescence & Surrealism Breton, A. (1969). Manifestoes of surrealism. (Seaver, R. & Lane, H. R., Trans.). The University of Michigan Press. Erikson, E. (1968). Identity: Youth and crisis. W. W. Norton. Jung, C. G. (1954). The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 17: The Development of Personality (Adler, G., & Hull, R. F. C., Trans.). University of Princeton Press. Kafka, F. (2016). The metamorphosis. Norton Critical Editions. ... Because what could be more relevant to adolescence than waking up and finding that you are a bug? Mundy, J. (Ed.). (2001). Surrealism: Desire unbound. Princeton University Press Richardson, M. & Fijałkowski, K. (Eds. & Trans.). (2001). Surrealism against the current: Tracts and declarations. Pluto Press. Richardson, M. & Fijałkowski, K. (Eds.). (2016). Surrealism: Key concepts. Routledge. A.S. King King, A. S. (2009). The dust of 100 dogs. Flux. --. (2010). Please ignore Vera Dietz. Knopf Books for Young Readers. ... Although, I think this is probably an exception to the surrealist style of her novels in general. --. (2011). Everybody sees the ants. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. --. (2012). Ask the passengers. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. --. (2013). Reality boy. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. --. (2014). Glory O'Brien's history of the future. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. --. (2015). I crawl through it. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. --. (2016). Still life with tornado. Dutton Books for Young Readers. --. (2019). Dig. Dutton Books for Young Readers. --. (2021). Switch. Dutton Books for Young Readers. Still Life with Tornado Bird, J. (2007). Indeterminacy and (dis)order in the work of Cy Twombly. Oxford Art Journal 33(3), pp. 484-504. ... Because Twombly is referenced in the novel. Cullinan, N. & Serota, N. (2010, September). 'Ecstatic impulses': Cy Twombly's 'Untitled (Bacchus)', 2006—08. The Burlington Magazine 152(1290), pp. 613-616. ... Because this particular work reminds me of the tornado on the cover. Derrida, J. (1979). Scribble (writing-power). Yale French Studies (58), pp. 117-147. ... Because scribbles are a key metaphor in the novel.
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AuthorJeffrey Babbitt, MLIS, is a graduate of the School of Library and Information Science at Wayne State University who is pursuing a career as a librarian in Michigan. Subject Headings
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June 2021
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