This chapter places the book’s scholarly conversation in a framework of postcolonial, decolonial, critical race, American Studies, Latinx/Puerto Rican Studies, and children’s literature scholarship. The chapter elaborates on the role of youth, both as objects and participants, and youth literature in formation of Latinx studies, particularly in the formation of the historical and current ethnic studies movements and the history of Latinx literature in relationship to a “canon” of children’s and young adult literature.
This research, with data collected pre-COVID-19, provides insight into an interesting and rarely studied event, the young adult (YA) literature festival. Survey research conducted at a YA festival, with attendees generally from middle school through university age, provided useful insight into the motivations for visiting the festival, determination of the person making the decision to attend (surprisingly, the YA and rarely his/her parent) and the satisfaction and dissatisfaction factors that affected the attendee’s attitude toward the festival. In addition, Significance Performance Analysis (SPA) is introduced as an alternative to the widely used Importance Performance Analysis (IPA) model.
In this article, we share what young adult literature three male African-American adolescent participants in this study—Tariq, Tyrell, and Tyrone—chose to read when given opportunities to choose. We also share what they had to say about the literature, about reading, and about themselves as readers. The participants’ own words and text choices reveal much about what kind of young adult literature they find relevant, and why, and point to multiple motivations—both intrinsic and extrinsic, personal and social—for reading young adult literature.
Multiple Motivations to Read Young Adult Literature in the Lives of Three African-American Middle School Males