I Rise

Drawing on Jessica Taft's figuration of the girl activist in media, I explore how Black girls navigate their identities as activists in contemporary American children's literature. Through a comparative study of six middle-grade and young-adult novels that feature the Black Lives Matter movement, I analyze how race, desire for justice, and affect propel Black girls into activism. In doing so, I argue that Black girls become desirable symbols of rage, resistance, and rebellion, while their hopeful, harmless, and heroic white counterparts are configured as the antiheroes in the contemporary fight for Black civil rights.