Nerds, Goths, Geeks, and Freaks: Outsiders in Chicanx and Latinx Young Adult Literature (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781496827456)

Winner of the Children's Literature Association's 2022 Edited Book Award

Contributions by Carolina Alonso, Elena Avil駸, Trevor Boffone, Christi Cook, Ella Diaz, Amanda Ellis, Cristina Herrera, Guadalupe Garc? McCall, Domino P駻ez, Adrianna M. Santos, Roxanne Schroeder-Arce, Lettycia Terrones, and Tim Wadham

In Nerds, Goths, Geeks, and Freaks: Outsiders in Chicanx and Latinx Young Adult Literature, the outsider intersects with discussions of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. The essays in this volume address questions of outsider identities and how these identities are shaped by mainstream myths around Chicanx and Latinx young people, particularly with the common stereotype of the struggling, underachieving inner-city teens.

Contributors also grapple with how young adults reclaim what it means to be an outsider, weirdo, nerd, or goth, and how the reclamation of these marginalized identities expand conversations around authenticity and narrow understandings of what constitutes cultural identity.

Included are analysis of such texts as I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, Shadowshaper, Swimming While Drowning, and others. Addressed in the essays are themes of outsiders in Chicanx/Latinx children's and young adult literature, and the contributors insist that to understand Latinx youth identities it is necessary to shed light on outsiders within an already marginalized ethnic group: nerds, goths, geeks, freaks, and others who might not fit within such Latinx popular cultural paradigms as the chola and cholo, identities that are ever-present in films, television, and the internet.

Author: Trevor Boffone
ISBN-10: 1496827457
ISBN-13: 9781496827456
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Language: English
Published: 03/18/2020
Pages: 214
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.07lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.63d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 04/01/2021