Girls Rising: Addressing Female Activist Characters in YA Literature through Critical Literacy

In this manuscript, the authors examine three young adult novels using critical literacy as a lens for addressing issues of power and justice around sexual violence and the actions taken by characters to make social change in their fictional schooling contexts. This piece uses scholarship around youth activism in young adult literature to engage with Jennifer Mathieu’s Moxie, Amy Reed’s The Nowhere Girls, and Renée Watson and Ellen Hagan’s Watch Us Rise.