Uncanny Youth: Childhood, the Gothic, and the Literary Americas
BY SUZANNE MANIZZA ROSZAK
University of Wales Press, 2022
ISBN: 9781786838667
https://www.uwp.co.uk/book/uncanny-youth/
A literary study of childhood in the American Gothic.
Childhood in Gothic literature has often served colonialist, white supremacist, and patriarchal ideologies, but in Uncanny Youth, Suzanne Manizza Roszak highlights hemispheric American writers who subvert these scripts. In the hands of authors ranging from Octavio Paz and Maryse Condé to N. Scott Momaday and Tracey Baptiste, Gothic conventions critique systems of power in the Americas. As fictional children confront shifting configurations of imperialism and patterns of gendered, anti-queer violence, their uncanny stories call on readers to reckon with intersecting forms of injustice.
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‘Mining an impressive array of Gothic texts – including novels, short stories, plays, and literature written for young adult audiences – Uncanny Youth deftly argues for the subversive and revolutionary power of child and teen characters who confront (and only sometimes survive) the devastating impacts of white supremacy, colonialism, imperialism, and genocide.’ --Bridget M. Marshall, associate professor of English, University of Massachusetts, Lowell
Suzanne Manizza Roszak is an assistant professor of English at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands.
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