“Best Feminist Young Adult Books”

Via Goodreads: a growing list of feminist literature for young adults. I’m teaching children’s literature right now, so it’s kiiiiind of work-related, but really I just want to go read a bunch of YA fiction for funsies. I think I may have skipped from children’s to adult literature and missed some interesting material.

What are your favorites?

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3 Comments

  1. Ruth
    Posted 30 July 2010 at 3:35 PM | Permalink

    That is a great list! As I scrolled through the list, I kept saying “I LOVED that book!” over and over. There are some I have not yet read, they are now on my list.

  2. Posted 30 July 2010 at 6:05 PM | Permalink

    Many of the books on the list are NOT YA. While I love the books I think it is important to distinguish between YA books and adult literature. If nothing else it might make us realize that we actually NEED more feminist YA literature. More importantly that the Twilight series are anti-feminist YA.

    • Molly
      Posted 30 July 2010 at 6:58 PM | Permalink

      Yes indeed–the (admittedly, collaboratively-produced) list seems pretty confused about what “young adult literature” is (and what “feminist” is, though of course that’s always a point of contention). I mean, I think of Harriet the Spy, The Secret Garden, etc. as books for children, not for teenagers / young adults–and of course the stuff by, say, Virginia Woolf and Jamaica Kincaid takes adults as its primary audience–though, yes! by all means! teenagers should be reading and enjoying those texts.

      There’s some (pretty unsatisfactory) discussion of the Twilight issue in the conversation under the list, by the way.

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