Posthumanist Readings in Dystopian Young Adult Fiction: Negotiating the Nature/Culture Divide

Description

If there is one trend in children’s and YA literature that seems to be enjoying a steady rise in popularity, it is the expansion of the YA dystopian genre. While the genre has been lauded for its potential to expand horizons, promote critical thinking, and foster social awareness and activism, it has also come under scrutiny for its promotion of specific ideologies and its often sensationalist approach to real-world problems. In an examination of six YA dystopian texts spanning more than twenty years of development of the genre, this book explores the way in which posthumanist ideologies in particular are deployed or resisted in these texts as a means of making sense of the specific challenges which young people confront in the twenty-first century. Contents Introduction: Young Adult Dystopia and the Posthuman Perspective 1 Carrie Ryan’s Forest of Hands and Teeth: Sex, Infection, and Hopelessness 2 Lois Lowry’s The Giver: Biotechnology, Wilderness, and Government 3 Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking Trilogy: Language and the Nonhuman Other 4 Neal Shusterman’s Unwind: Posthuman Recycling and the Death of the Hero 5 Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines Series: Posthumanism, Evolution, Apocalypse, and Time 6 Adam Rapp and Mike Cavallaro’s Decelerate Blue: Solarpunk, Consumerism, and the Posthumanist Future Conclusion: Young Adult Dystopia and the Posthuman Perspective Bibliography Index About the Author