The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games (Postmillennial Pop 13)
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About this book
Winner 2022 Childrens Literature Association Book Award given by the Childrens Literature Association Winner 2020 World Fantasy Awards Winner 2020 British Fantasy Awards Nonfiction Finalist Creative Nonfiction IGNYTE Award given by FIYACON for BIPOC in Speculative Fiction Reveals the diversity crisis in childrens and young adult media as not only a lack of representation but a lack of imagination Stories provide portals into other worlds both real and imagined. The promise of escape draws people from all backgrounds to speculative fiction but when people of color seek passageways into the fantastic the doors are often barred. This problem lies not only with childrens publishing but also with the television and film executives tasked with adapting these stories into a visual world. When characters of color do appear they are often marginalized or subjected to violence reinforcing for audiences that not all lives matter. The Dark Fantastic is an engaging and provocative exploration of race in popular youth and young adult speculative fiction. Grounded in her experiences as YA novelist fanfiction writer and scholar of education Thomas considers four black girl protagonists from some of the most popular stories of the early 21st century: Bonnie Bennett from the CWs The Vampire Diaries Rue from Suzanne Collinss The Hunger Games Gwen from the BBCs Merlin and Angelina Johnson from J.K. Rowlings Harry Potter. Analyzing their narratives and audience reactions to them reveals how these characters mirror the violence against black and brown people in our own world. In response Thomas uncovers and builds upon a tradition of fantasy and radical imagination in Black feminism and Afrofuturism to reveal new possibilities. Through fanfiction and other modes of counter-storytelling young people of color have reinvisioned fantastic worlds that reflect their own experiences their own lives. As Thomas powerfully asserts we dark girls deserve more because we are more.
