scholarly journals New Zealand Young Adult Fiction: National Myths, Identity and Coming-of-age

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Tina Manker
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Personal Growth ◽  
Extended Family ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Young Adult Fiction ◽  
National Myths ◽  
Low Expectations

<p>Tara, the 17-year-old narrator of Dear Vincent by Mandy Hager, struggles in the relationship with her mother and learns about her family’s past on a trip to Ireland. She must decide whether she follows in the footsteps of her sister who died by suicide or whether she chooses life for herself and what her life will look like. Whiti Hereaka’s Bugs follows the development of Bugs, who turns 17 about half-way through the novel. She faces low expectations and institutional discrimination at school and must make decisions about her future. While Bugs chooses to stay; her personal growth is like that of Tara who leaves. In Kate De Goldi’s The 10PM Question, we engage with 12-year-old Frankie, who struggles with anxiety and a permanently house-bound mother. Like the protagonists of the other novels, Frankie must determine who he is by forming his first strong friendship with a teenager of the opposite sex and by questioning the adults around him. He, too, must make decisions which contradict the actions of his family. All three, Tara, Bugs and Frankie, are supported in this process by friends and extended family, and, as we will see, these characters come to play crucial roles in each protagonist’s identity formation.  What this thesis shows is that their stories are both universal and local. All three novels include common elements of Young Adult fiction about identity formation and coming-of-age and they are firmly located in New Zealand by way of incorporating uniquely New Zealand national myths. These myths shape our collective identities and adolescence is a time when teenagers form theirs. It is during this time that they explicitly notice and, at times, question the myths that they have been raised to believe in. This thesis is concerned with Overseas Experience (OE) as a way to develop one’s sense of self and broadening one’s horizons, the egalitarian myth or the belief that ‘we are all equal here’, and the ‘she’ll be right’ myth, the assumption that things will somehow right themselves. It seeks to explore what these novels suggest about the three different national myths of New Zealand and their role in identity formation. It will also discuss whether different views are presented.</p>

scholarly journals New Zealand Young Adult Fiction: National Myths, Identity and Coming-of-age

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Tina Manker
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Personal Growth ◽  
Extended Family ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Young Adult Fiction ◽  
National Myths ◽  
Low Expectations

<p>Tara, the 17-year-old narrator of Dear Vincent by Mandy Hager, struggles in the relationship with her mother and learns about her family’s past on a trip to Ireland. She must decide whether she follows in the footsteps of her sister who died by suicide or whether she chooses life for herself and what her life will look like. Whiti Hereaka’s Bugs follows the development of Bugs, who turns 17 about half-way through the novel. She faces low expectations and institutional discrimination at school and must make decisions about her future. While Bugs chooses to stay; her personal growth is like that of Tara who leaves. In Kate De Goldi’s The 10PM Question, we engage with 12-year-old Frankie, who struggles with anxiety and a permanently house-bound mother. Like the protagonists of the other novels, Frankie must determine who he is by forming his first strong friendship with a teenager of the opposite sex and by questioning the adults around him. He, too, must make decisions which contradict the actions of his family. All three, Tara, Bugs and Frankie, are supported in this process by friends and extended family, and, as we will see, these characters come to play crucial roles in each protagonist’s identity formation.  What this thesis shows is that their stories are both universal and local. All three novels include common elements of Young Adult fiction about identity formation and coming-of-age and they are firmly located in New Zealand by way of incorporating uniquely New Zealand national myths. These myths shape our collective identities and adolescence is a time when teenagers form theirs. It is during this time that they explicitly notice and, at times, question the myths that they have been raised to believe in. This thesis is concerned with Overseas Experience (OE) as a way to develop one’s sense of self and broadening one’s horizons, the egalitarian myth or the belief that ‘we are all equal here’, and the ‘she’ll be right’ myth, the assumption that things will somehow right themselves. It seeks to explore what these novels suggest about the three different national myths of New Zealand and their role in identity formation. It will also discuss whether different views are presented.</p>

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Fox
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Financial Returns ◽  
Self Recognition ◽  
International Audience ◽  
National Identity Formation

The conclusion reaffirms the essential role played by cinema generally, and the coming-of-age genre in particular, in the process of national identity formation, because of its effectiveness in facilitating self-recognition and self-experience through a process of triangulation made possible, for the most part, by a dialogue with some of the nation’s most iconic works of literature. This section concludes by point out the danger posed, however, by an observable trend toward generic standardization in New Zealand films motivated by a desire to appeal to an international audience out of consideration for the financial returns expected by funding bodies under current regimes.

scholarly journals Voice and Silence in Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. BB102-BB118
Author(s):  
Helma Van Lierop-Debrauwer
Keyword(s):  
Young Adult ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Young Adult Literature ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Voice And Silence

In 2014, the American writer Jacqueline Woodson published Brown Girl Dreaming, the story of her childhood in free verse, which was classified as young adult literature. Most US reviewers characterized and appreciated the book both as a human rights narrative of a young brown girl’s coming of age against the socio-political background of racism and the Civil Rights Movement in the United States of the 1960s, and as a personal history of her development as a writer. In this article the major focus will be on how Brown Girl Dreaming as both a political memoir and an autobiographical narrative of identity formation is fleshed out. On the basis of my analysis of these two plot lines, I will further argue that its categorization as young adult literature disguises that the novel addresses a dual audience of adult and young readers. In my argumentation related to the political and personal character of the novel, as well as in my discussion of the crossover potential of Brown Girl Dreaming, I will focus on the presence of voice and silence.

Children’s and Young Adult Novels

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clare Bradford
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Publishing Industry ◽  
South Pacific ◽  
Young Adult Fiction ◽  
The South ◽  
Children’S Fiction ◽  
Twentieth Century Fiction ◽  
Children's Fiction

This chapter examines the history of children's and young adult fiction in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the South Pacific. During the mid-twentieth century, fiction for the young in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand did not yet occupy a prominent place. In Australia, most children's fiction was produced and imported by British publishers. In Canada, markets and children's reading practices were dominated by American and (to a lesser extent) British imports until 1975. In Australia and New Zealand, children's novels began to gather strength in the late 1950s and 1960s. The chapter shows how the significance of children's fiction in the project of nation-building became to be recognised as a result of the growth of the educational publishing industry following World War II. It also considers the transnational relationships that pervade children's and young adult novels from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the South Pacific.

scholarly journals Herstory in Young Adult Fiction by Joanna Rudniańska Based on the Examples of „Rok Smoka” and „Kotka Brygidy”

2019 ◽  
pp. 301-325
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Slany
Keyword(s):  
Young Adult ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Special Kind ◽  
Young Adult Fiction ◽  
Teenage Girls ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
The World ◽  
Detailed Interpretation

The paper discusses young adult fiction by Joanna Rudniańska, whose works belong to the stream of non-conformist coming-of-age novels marked by experiences of exclusively teenage girls/women, developing in Poland since the 1990s. Both Rok Smoka and Kotka Brygidy emphasise the personal quality of teenage girls and women, and present their fates with a particular consideration of their fairly individualised processes of maturation and intentional development of their identities. The author of this paper employs feminist methodologies to emphasise the ambivalent, borderline, and negative female experiences in the analysed texts. She offers a detailed interpretation of how the protagonists of the above-mentioned novels experience the world; she applies a metaphorical and fantastic perspective of telling herstories, while searching for matrilineal traces, the phenomenon of sisterhood, drastic rituals inscribed in the feminine domain, and the special kind of coming-of-age which constitutes the starting point for personal and subjective herstories.

Family Secrets and their Destructive Consequences: In My Father’s Den (Brad McGann, 2004)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Fox
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Historical Changes ◽  
Family Secrets ◽  
Effects On Children

This chapter analyses Brad McGann’s highly esteemed adaptation (2004) of Maurice Gee’s novel In My Father’s Den (1972) as evidence of a prevailing trend in New Zealand coming-of-age films whereby the vision of a source work is regularly updated to reflect the different values and perspectives of a later generation. In this case, the updating involves a shift of emphasis from the destructive effects on children of puritan religiosity and repressiveness to those of lack of communication among family members, combined with the preservation of unspoken, but collectively known, family secrets, reflecting historical changes that had occurred in New Zealand society since the generation of Gee (born 1931) and that of McGann (born 1964).

Creativity as a Haven: An Angel at My Table (Jane Campion, 1990)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Fox
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Personal Investment ◽  
Jane Campion

Through a comparison with Janet Frame’s Autobiography, from which it is adapted, this chapter analyses Jane Campion’s An Angel at My Table as the first New Zealand film to present all three of the main maturational phases characteristic of the coming-of-age genre, but as experienced by a Pākehā girl. Identifying the effects of a repressive environment as the source of the emotional stresses that lead the main character, Janet, to be institutionalized for schizophrenia, the discussion shows how she finds respite in fictive creativity and a world of the imagination. It also shows Campion’s personal investment in the story as a displaced representation of her own mother’s fight with mental illness.

The Formation of a Budding Man Alone: The God Boy (Murray Reece, 1976)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Fox
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
World War ◽  
Value System ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
The Family

This chapter analyses the earliest of the New Zealand coming-of-age feature films, an adaptation of Ian Cross’s novel The God Boy, to demonstrate how it addresses the destructive impact on a child of the puritanical value-system that had dominated Pākehā (white) society through much of the twentieth century, being particularly strong during the interwar years, and the decade immediately following World War II. The discussion explores how dysfunction within the family and repressive religious beliefs eventuate in pressures that cause Jimmy, the protagonist, to act out transgressively, and then to turn inwards to seek refuge in the form of self-containment that makes him a prototype of the Man Alone figure that is ubiquitous in New Zealand fiction.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document