Harden, Asia

Description

In 2019, only 6% of U.S. childrens books published were written by black authors. This portion of the publishing industry, and particularly the category of young adult literature (YA) has room for improvement when it comes to African American representation. To identify how this lack of representation affects readers, this study was broken into two parts which resulted in obtaining the African American female YA author perspective, as well as African American female readers. J. Elle and Kristina Forest were interviewed in the first portion of the study, and three focus groups were conducted in the second study with 13 African American female readers ages 18-25 to gauge their opinions on this matter. They spoke on the topics of inner conflicts as black readers, stereotypes perpetuated in YA, the need for people of color within publishing, black joy and black trauma, and the popularization of black voices in 2020. Ultimately, these readers found that representation in YA matters because it provided mirrors for black children; they only hope that black stories transcend the current trend.

Record Contributed By

University of Mississippi Libraries