Post-disaster Fiction for Young Adults: Some Trends and Variations

Authors

  • Elizabeth Braithwaite Deakin University, Australia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21153/pecl2010vol20no1art1148

Keywords:

young adult fiction, postdisaster fiction, disaster fiction, speculative fiction

Abstract

Taking as its central question: 'What narrative functions does the disaster in young adult postdisaster fiction have?', this paper explores how the genre is utilised to make comment on a range of issues, and argues that there are three connected sub-genres within young adult post-disaster fiction, with the disaster having a different function in each, and the nature of the comments made by each of these sub-genres tending also to be different. Stephens considers that: 'The main distinguishing feature of the genre is that its texts are set in a fantasy future which exists some time after the world we know has been destroyed by a cataclysmic disaster, usually caused by human actions' (1992, p.126). This paper broadens this definition to include texts in which the disaster actually happens but in which the focus is on life after the disaster. It understands fantasy to include speculative fiction which seeks to portray pre-disaster life as similar to the implied young adult reader's, as well as works of high fantasy in which the disaster has made Earth into a kind of secondary world (see Sands 1998, p.232), and focuses on novels in which the disaster has clearly been caused by humans in some way.

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Author Biography

  • Elizabeth Braithwaite, Deakin University, Australia

    Elizabeth Braithwaite is a research assistant at Deakin University. She is especially interested in notions of identity, and how these are constructed in futuristic fiction for young adults. Her other particular area of interest is the performing arts.

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Published

2010-01-01

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Articles

How to Cite

“Post-disaster Fiction for Young Adults: Some Trends and Variations” (2010) Papers: Explorations into Children’s Literature, 20(1), pp. 5–19. doi:10.21153/pecl2010vol20no1art1148.