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Most girls in Gopher Slough, Florida, worry about whether GSHS will win the next football game (they won't), when their boyfriends will take them muddin', and how many times they can sneak cigarettes behind the bleachers before they get thrown into in-school suspension. Libby Hoyer is not most girls. Instead, Libby is worried about her slipping grades, especially in Geometry, where she can barely keep her head up long enough to take the weekly quizzes. She's concerned about losing her friendship with her best (only) friend, Bobbi Jo, who's distracted with her own Aber-zombie boyfriend, and she's unsure of how to define her new relationship with Neil, a mysterious boy from her class who is not as carefree as he pretends to be. Libby is also troubled by the fact that she can't seem to remember her distant father, even though he only left five years ago. Everyone else, it seems, is worried about Libby's sporadic eating habits. If she continues to refuse to eat or to purge anything she's forced to eat, she might disappear. But Libby isn't afraid of disappearing. She's afraid of being seen.

Syftet med studien är att utforska representationer av asexualitet i samtida coming of age-ungdomsromaner med fokus på hur asexualitet (o)möjliggörs som en oproblematiserad position. Detta görs genom en närläsning av romanerna Tash Hearts Tolstoy, Let’s Talk About Love, Loveless och Beyond the Black Door utifrån ett queerteoretiskt perspektiv. Romanernas skildringar av asexualitet utmanar föreställningar om att sexuellt begär är en essentiell del i vuxenblivandet och tillåter den asexuella positionen att existera utan att formas av negativa stereotyper. Romanernas huvudpersoner genomgår processer av att komma till insikt om sin asexuella identitet, acceptera den för sig själva och komma ut med den för omgivningen. Den obligatoriska sexualiteten är ständigt närvarande i dessa processer men det är den asexuella positionens marginaliserade position jämte den obligatoriska sexualiteten som framställs som problemet snarare än asexualiteten i sig. / The aim of the study is to explore representations of asexuality in contemporary coming of age young adult novels with a focus on how asexuality is made (im)possible as an unproblematic position. This is done through a close reading of the novels Tash Hearts Tolstoy, Let’s Talk About Love, Loveless and Beyond the Black Door from a queer theoretical perspective. The novels’ depictions of asexuality challenge notions that sexual desire is an essential part of becoming an adult and allow the asexual position to exist without being shaped by negative stereotypes. The protagonists of the novels go through processes of realizing and accepting their asexuality for themselves and also coming out to their surroundings. Compulsory sexuality is constantly present in these processes, but it is the marginalization of the asexual position in relation to compulsory sexuality that is understood as the problem rather than asexuality itself. / <p>2021-06-02</p>

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Until it's Safe to Return to My Body is an autofiction novella that follows the narrator as she recounts her tumultuous childhood and attempts to understand why she survived while her best friend did not. The novella delves into the ways in which violence can manifest in subtle ways, particularly in intimate relationships, and explores the underlying trauma that can result. The story takes place across four states as the narrator revisits the people, places, and events that shaped her life. She grapples with the ways in which her family's poverty and the precariousness of their living situations were not solely a result of her parents' shortcomings, but also a result of the systems and institutions that they were forced to navigate. The novella examines the ways in which humans hurt each other and the links between desperation and survival. Ultimately, this novella is a powerful exploration of the complexities of human relationships and the ways in which people navigate the trauma and violence of their pasts. / Master of Fine Arts / Until it's Safe to Return to My Body is an autofiction novella.

As the Honduran presidential election of 2017 approaches, the world of 17-year-old Libertad Morazán gets louder and faster. Protests roar in every corner of Tegucigalpa. Mamí and Abuela work longer hours. Maynor, Libertad's older brother, sneaks out more than ever, carrying the dangerous secrets of a student-led movement against the government. The world only seems to slow down around Camila, Libertad's long-time friend who lately seems to hold Libi's hand and eyes two seconds too long. Libi and Cami's friendship always toed the line of something more— or did, at least, before Libertad's phone stopped working and their communication got cut to school-hours only. Libi can't help but think this is part of why Camila starts officially dating Pablo, the soccer team captain. If this isn't enough reason to desperately need her phone back, Libertad has just discovered the power of social media to speak against the conditions that keep her family— her country— in a permanent state of exhaustion and mourning. Using an anonymous Instagram account, Libertad posts short but charged poems denouncing the injustice local news outlets ignore. She finds an audience that resonates with her, but people who speak out in Honduras are rarely able to do so for long. Libertad knows this. Getting her phone back comes with a price, as both her political poetry and secret romance risk being exposed to Mamí and Abuela—the women who have sacrificed everything to raised her. The pillars of her life. In the midst of civil unrest, Libertad learns of the power and heartbreak in queerness, family, and activism. / Master of Fine Arts / Libertad is a young-adult novel.

This dissertation assesses rage and its utility for fictional Black girls and adolescents in asserting their humanity, accessing their voices, and developing strategies of resistance that contribute to their identity formation. Through analyses of six novels: 1) God Bless the Child, 2) Breath, Eyes, Memory, 3) The Hate U Give, 4) The Bluest Eye, 5) Daddy Was a Number Runner, and 6) The Poet X, this research presents rage as a canonical theme in Black women’s coming-of-age narratives and presents connections between rage, rights, and resistance. The connections, revealed through stimuli and adaptations associated with rage, frame an argument for North Americas as an arbiter of anger. The novels construct an “arc of anger” that places them in conversation about Black girl rage and presents a tradition of Black women crafting Black girl protagonists who are conduits for counternarratives of rage. This dissertation also examines how history, memory, and culture contribute to Black girls’ frustrations and knowledge bases. By looking to works published between the angry decade (the 1960s) and the age of rage (the 2010s), the research presents ways Black women novelists and their characters return to rage to combat social institutions and critique social constructions of Black girlhood and womanhood.