Critical Conversations on Whiteness With Young Adult Literature

In this article, the author argues that whiteness remains an overwhelmingly absent dimension in literacy teaching that addresses systems of power from a critical perspective. One way literacy teachers may bring this dimension more explicitly into the classroom is by facilitating critical conversations on whiteness with young adult literature. As whiteness is neither a fixed nor static category, the author analyzes whiteness as intersected with multiple identity markers such as social class and gender in two young adult novels that are popular with adolescents and taught in middle and high school classrooms. The author concludes with recommendations for literacy teachers on how to bring whiteness more explicitly into critical literacy teaching and learning.