Review of Inclusive Young Adult Fiction: Authors of Colour in the United Kingdom

Abstract

Inclusive Young Adult Fiction might have preceded the Black Lives Matter protests that erupted in the wake of George Floyd's murder in 2020, but the points Melanie Ramdarshan Bold raises in this book resonate on many different levels with experiences that authors of colour have been sharing this year, as well as with conversations that have been taking place for decades about racism in publishing, including in the fields of children's and YA literature. This book is part of the broader social and political project of documenting racial inequalities in publishing by way of pushing the industry to reexamine its practices so that real, substantive change can finally take place. Ramdarshan Bold focuses on the representation of the British authors of colour who still form a very small percentage of published YA authors in the UK. In an earlier quantitative study, Ramdarshan Bold found that British authors of colour represented only 1.5% of authors who had YA books published between 2006 and 2016 ("The Eight Percent Problem"). In Inclusive Young Adult Fiction, Ramdarshan Bold draws on semi-structured

Young Adult Literature in an Age with Less Reader

“…Critiques of YAL span various perspectives, ranging from disdain for what some consider mundane and stereotypical content to negative perceptions arising from controversial subject matter and associated biases (Crowe, 2001in Bold, 2019. Jennings (1956: 226) asserts that YAL often features "contrived, unimportant, and meaningless" content, a sentiment echoed not only by literary critics but also by educators and librarians.…”