Race and Popular Fantasy Literature

Studies in the Fantastic, 2019

2017

This book chapter discusses race, gender and sexuality in the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien and in High Fantasy. The chapter argues that the discursive Tolkien, the Tolkien that emerges from scholarly reading and discussion of his works, is at risk of being obscured by the cultish popularity of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit books and films. It suggests that the privileged readings of Tolkien’s works are racist and sexist and posits “writing back” to Tolkien by creating more diverse Tolkienesque fiction as a way to intervene in and resist negative discourses about race, gender and sexuality arising from those privileged readings. The paper uses the author’s Young Adult fantasy trilogy, The Faeden Chronicles, as a case study of such a writing back.

Race in Literature , 2019

This research examines a broad range of racial issues that have coloured literature in English from historical times to the present day. Views/quotes from famous personalities are sampled in order to give insights into the nature of racism in the literary arts and its impact on the psyches of individual artists. The said personalities include Toni Morrison, Amiri Baraka, Milan Kundera, Dr. John Henrk Clarke, Elspesth Huxley, Zora Neale Hurston, Angela Davis, W.E.B DuBois, Alice Walker, James Baldwin, John H. Johnson, Gil Scott-Heron, Binyavanga Wainaina, Ntozake Shange, Tyler Perry and Dick Gregory. This paper shows that although there has been progress since the days of the 'Slave Narratives', the shadow of racism still hangs over the literary world, especially for Black writers.

2021

Elizabeth Turello will discuss how modern-day fantasy literature grapples with evolving gender roles. She demonstrates the various ways in which fantasy writers, including J.R.R. Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, and Leigh Bardugo, have engaged with the feminisms of their respective times, and argues that these writers\u27 texts must be read in the context of their historical moments. The capstone paper demonstrates the central role that literature plays in fostering an understanding of race and gender discrimination and in generating new narratives that advance a more equal society

Research on Diversity in Youth Literature , 2019

2019

[Doctoral dissertation, monograph] You can download the full text at: https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/299080 (bottom of the page) This study discusses the evolution of racialized concepts in the genres of the fantastic, especially fantasy, science fiction, and supernatural horror. It provides the first detailed interpretation of how such concepts are constructed and how they develop based on their interaction with the evolving cultural landscapes, thus showing how characteristics are borrowed from real world cultural stereotypes. The analysis concentrates on fantastic renderings of racialized stereotypes based on real world cultural fears. The concepts are examined both in their source cultures and through the lenses of transmediality and translation. As the fantastic arts have always been heavily transmedial in nature, the study is not limited to a certain art form, but views all media as complementary in producing concepts of the fantastic, either by adding new facets to the concepts, or by changing them on a temporal basis. Contextualizing concepts in the fantastic arts through their linkage to the real world cultural development provides a method through which we can perceive how the concepts are built on – and preserve – racialized stereotypes of their cultures of origin. In order to do so, this study provides a framework that utilizes several approaches from cultural semiotics as well as translation studies. Furthermore, it presents a view of the evolution of the genres in specific media through case studies. The framework is applied to some well-known fantastic concepts (orcs, dwarves, goblins, and gnomes), by mapping their entry into the fantastic arts and examining how the changes in their signifying imagery have affected their allusive links to the real world stereotypes that are (intentionally or non-intentionally) portrayed through them. In addition, translational tools are applied in a case study to examine how racialized features are transported to a new cultural setting in translation. The study argues that the inclusion of properties of racialized stereotypes from real world cultures to fantastic concepts is widespread and that especially negative racialized allusions often survive in texts of the fantastic, even after they have been perceived as offensive in the real world cultures from which they stem. It displays how racialized narratives can change when fantastic concepts inherit properties from new real world racialized stereotypes, and how inheriting signifiers from a “positive” real world racialization can affect the negative properties of fantastic concepts.

Children's Literature in Education, 2000

While there has been a notable increase in multicultural publishing over the past several years, this study indicates that the increase has not extended into genre fiction for middle-grade readers. The study entailed a content analysis of book reviews of fiction for the middle grades published between 1992 and 2001. A total of 4,255 reviews of genre fiction were analyzed. Although the 2000 U.S. Census indicated that about one third of the U.S. population of children is comprised of people of color, only 661, or less than one sixth, of the books were identified as containing at least one protagonist of color. In a more realistic representation of the world, about one third of the characters would be people of color. KEY WORDS: multiculturalism; genre fiction; juvenile literature; content analysis.

CAA Reviews, 2018

Depending on the context of its usage, the Spanish term género is definable as either "gender" or "genre." Katherine Clay Bassard takes up this dichotomy in line with questions of literacy when she opines that "[i]n speaking of gender and genre, then, [she works] from the assumption that form is not merely a matter of free choice or appropriate models but a function of how a writer perceives her/himself in the social order." This conflation suggests that whenever deployed, the context is never not haunted by the subtext as well as by the social location in which the usage finds utterance. In this same manner, when one speaks about "race," one could imagine that for some bodies of color, black ones in particular here, "[t]he fastest runner doesn't always win the race, and the strongest warrior doesn't always win the battle. The wise sometimes go hungry, and the skillful are not necessarily wealthy. And those who are educated don't always lead successful lives.

Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 2012

The author presents why and how to bring critical conversations on whiteness more explicitly into the secondary classroom through the use of young adult literature.

Council Chronicle, 2019

In this article, I explore the topic of speculative antiblackness through interviews with two respected authors and colleagues—Ebony Thomas, author of the recent book The Dark Fantastic: Race and Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games, and Zetta Elliott, author of Dragons in a Bag and Ship of Souls.

Education is not restricted to the formal, institutionalised processes associated with schools and universities, myths and ideologies – among other things – are also conveyed through culture; popular culture simultaneously transmits and shapes societal and cultural norms. Informal education is important, especially for children and young people as they absorb the culture around them. Unlike more conventionally ‘literary’ types of fiction, fantasy is popular, and thus can speak to and for the concerns and notions of large groups within society. Starting from these facts this chapter explores representations of diversity, racial and cultural difference in two popular fantasy worlds: J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Katharine Kerr’s epic ‘Deverry’ series. In both difference is mapped onto encounters between different species with different cultures, allowing exploration of diversity and difference in ‘safe’ imaginative space. Both authors create imaginative worlds where cosmopolitan societies are represented positively. This chapters argues that not only do these works, and others like them, provide positive models and thus contribute to education in and for a cosmopolitan society, but may also be of use in the classroom for the same reasons.

2014

With the steady increase of immigrant populations to the United States, there have come many intermarriages between different races and cultures. The year 2000 was the first time individuals were allowed to mark more than one race on the United States Census forms. The desegregation of schools in the 1950s also created a diverse population in kindergarten through high schools. This content analysis looks at current young adult literature to observe parallel trends in books for teens. Earlier studies on multicultural subject matters have focused primarily on monoracial, non-white characters. This study looks closely at the diverse individuals in literature who are products of different racial and cultural backgrounds, and the issues of identity surrounding them. The results of this study indicate that cultural identity does factor into many Asian and Hispanic sides of biracial characters. However, the white and black halves of the characters are not equally portrayed and relies on phenotype and racial characteristics rather than culture.

2020

You step through a lush green forest and out onto a winding path running alongside a softly gurgling stream. From the cozy cluster of little houses you approach, lazy swirls of smoke drift up from the chimneys. The gentle creaking of a mill's wooden water mingles with the happy murmur of voices escaping from open pub windows. Enveloped in nature, this hamlet's green grass surely rests on the proverbial "other side."