Helene BermanCatherine RichardsonKate ElliottEugenia CanasEveryday Violence in the Lives of Youth: Speaking Out and Pushing Back. Halifax, NS: Fernwood Publishing, 2020. $25.00 USD. pp. 232. ISBN 9781773631035.

Abstract

Everyday Violence in the Lives of Youth: Speaking Out and Pushing Back reports on a five-year study using youth participatory action research (Y-PAR) to analyze the effects of structural violence on youth health. Through focus groups across Canada of marginalized youth illustrating their experiences through art, the researchers connect political and socioeconomic oppression to mental and physical health. This connection opens interdisciplinary opportunities between health studies and economics, education, politics, and sociology to further examine correlations between wellness and societal equity. The editors and authors are researchers associated with the study (pp. xi-xv, 14-16).The book contains three parts divided into eleven chapters. Part 1 introduces Y-PAR's benefits and how youth can be misrepresented when excluded from research processes. Chapter 1 indicates that current literature and programs often blame individuals instead of structural violence, depicted as "racism, homophobia, classism, ableism or sexism" (pp. 3, 4-13). Chapter 2 describes the study's Y-PAR approach, which involves a National Youth Advisory Board (NYAB) appointed and facilitated by two hired coordinators to advise on the research process, plus thirty participant groups, though how they define youth is unclear (pp. 20, 27-33). Chapter 3 analyzes Canadian child protective services policies, highlighting insufficient supports for youth aging out of care (pp. 37-53). Chapter 4 examines discriminatory media representations of Indigenous and Muslim youth, highlighting how "the discourse of savagery gets translated into criminality" (p. 81) with redemption conceptualized as assimilation (pp. 57-82). This chapter could have benefitted from a more extended analysis of how these media representations of race are impacted by intersections with gender, sexual orientation, and homelessness. Overall, part 1 effectively establishes an urgent need for Y-PAR with marginalized youth in Canada, justifying the study's ambitious scope.