Kendall Henderson: Final Paper Topic Proposal

By -
For the Critical Response Research Paper, I want to examine how portrayals of adolescents in low-income homes affect adolescent literature readers from low-income backgrounds or home lives. I want to further try and answer these questions through my research: Do protagonists with low-income backgrounds encourage adolescents from low-income backgrounds to read more frequently/increase interest in reading? How does representation affect readership/enthusiasm for reading? Why has it become more common to have protagonists come from low-income backgrounds? How do low-income protagonists reflect the society in which their work takes place? How can readers apply the depictions of low-income protagonists to the world around them? Does reading about low-income protagonists increase self-esteem or empowerment for low-income adolescent readers? What do low-income protagonists teach non-low-income adolescent readers? How are protagonists from low-income homes portrayed differently than supporting characters from low-income homes, and what does this say to the reader?

I don't know a ton about why authors of adolescent lit seem to increasingly choose to set their stories in low-income areas or focus on protagonists from low-income homes, but it seems to me that it's an easy way to reflect the "underdog" characterization that adolescent lit protagonists often seem to have. It might also be a result of increasingly dystopian stories in which the protagonists and their families are the oppressed lower-class who seek revolution/uprising or common anxiety about the global economy and America's poverty epidemic in particular. I think for a non-low-income reader, reading characters who are low-income conveys a sense of struggle that feels universal for adolescents and an inspiring possibility for empowerment and action, but I'm curious how seeing portrayals of low-income characters affects low-income readers particularly. I want to look closer at what readers who identify with these characters' home life or financial situation feel and see when they read these stories outside of symbolic disadvantage.

Books we've read this semester that come to mind are The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, The Hunger Games, The World Made Straight, and to an extent Crank. I want to find as many scholarly journal articles as possible but I think the use of blog posts by librarians or news/media publications might be helpful because in my preliminary Googling those seem to be the sources that most directly address the issue. From what I've read so far, I think my claim is going to be something along the lines of seeing representation in literature is empowering for low-income students. I think I'll find some support for this in journal articles, but I foresee my biggest issue being finding articles that are really relevant to my topic.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Growing Pains - The Symbolism of the Tree in Speak

By -
I have felt the paralyzing pain of internal disease. The kind of trauma that causes your mouth to curl in and swallow you whole. I, like so many other women, are walking the halls in Melinda’s shoes in “Speak.” I thought Laurie Anderson did a phenomenal job of twisting all of the tribulations a high school girl goes through, into the tree that Melinda is. Whether we’re as strong as an oak or weak as a bush, we have all gone through the disease that strikes Melinda from the inside out. Melinda is like a half-dead tree. Some parts of her strive to blossom and create beauty. Other parts are broken and diseased. Like a dead tree, Melinda needs to save herself and “cut off the damage, [so it] is possible for the tree to grow again” (187). The symbolism of a tree is significant in “Speak.” Trees reflect her growing process. In the beginning, Melinda is a sick and lifeless tree. Her view is negative and dark. She’s so far past repair, bursts of sunlight do her no good. Sunlight would be pe
Read more

How Starr Goes from Acting to Embracing in The Hate U Give

By -
In The Hate U Give, Starr Carter is caught between two worlds. She lives in a predominantly black neighborhood, but her father sends her and her brothers to a private school where she is surrounded by white people. She talks about acting differently depending on what group she is around, which can create some identity problems. She says on page 11, "Funny how it works with white kids though. It's dope to be black until it's hard to be black." When at Williamson, she sees white kids that think it's cool to engage in black culture, but she knows they don't understand what she goes through in her Garden Heights community. She witnessed her friend Natasha's death when she was 10 years old, and she sees gang activity in her community all the time. When she is among her black friends, like at the party, they tease her for hanging out with the white kids. This reminds me of a Drake song where he says, "I used to get teased for being black, and now I'm
Read more

Speak and the Symbolism of Nature

By Anonymous -
   Laurie Halse Anderson's,  Speak , dives into the murky, muddy waters of adolescent rape culture. When the book was published in 1999, rape was not a comfortable topic to discuss with adults, let alone teenagers. Anderson writes about Melinda Sordino and her freshman high school experience which is turning out to be rather negative. Soriano stands as a thriving young role model for struggling teenage girls all over the world. Although she isn't an outstanding student or have plenty of friends to juggle, through Melinda, other young women can see that it's completely normal and okay to struggle in high school not only academically, but socially and emotionally. One of my favorite parts of the novel isn't a super obvious quality. Throughout the novel, Melinda's attitude changes and grows with the coming of spring and through nature and art, she learns to move past her troubling end of summer experience and once again find the importance of her voice.    Melinda st
Read more