Trevor Boffone & Cristina Herrera 
Nerds, Goths, Geeks, and Freaks [PDF ebook] 
Outsiders in Chicanx and Latinx Young Adult Literature

Winner of the Children’s Literature Association’s 2022 Edited Book Award


Contributions by Carolina Alonso, Elena Avilés, Trevor Boffone, Christi Cook, Ella Diaz, Amanda Ellis, Cristina Herrera, Guadalupe García Mc Call, Domino Pérez, Adrianna M. Santos, Roxanne Schroeder-Arce, Lettycia Terrones, and Tim Wadham


In
Nerds, Goths, Geeks, and Freaks: Outsiders in Chicanx and Latinx Young Adult Literature, the outsider intersects with discussions of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. The essays in this volume address questions of outsider identities and how these identities are shaped by mainstream myths around Chicanx and Latinx young people, particularly with the common stereotype of the struggling, underachieving inner-city teens.


Contributors also grapple with how young adults reclaim what it means to be an outsider, weirdo, nerd, or goth, and how the reclamation of these marginalized identities expand conversations around authenticity and narrow understandings of what constitutes cultural identity.


Included are analysis of such texts as
I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter,
Shadowshaper,
Swimming While Drowning, and others. Addressed in the essays are themes of outsiders in Chicanx/Latinx children’s and young adult literature, and the contributors insist that to understand Latinx youth identities it is necessary to shed light on outsiders within an already marginalized ethnic group: nerds, goths, geeks, freaks, and others who might not fit within such Latinx popular cultural paradigms as the chola and cholo, identities that are ever-present in films, television, and the internet.

Über den Autor

Cristina Herrera is professor and director of the Chicanx/Latinx Studies Program at Portland State University. She is author of Chica Nerds in Chicana Young Adult Literature: Brown and Nerdy and Welcome to Oxnard: Race, Place, and Chicana Adolescence in Michele Serros’s Writings. She is also coeditor (with Trevor Boffone) of Nerds, Goths, Geeks, and Freaks: Outsiders in Chicanx and Latinx Young Adult Literature, published by University Press of Mississippi.