Bleak Houses and Secret Cities: Alternative Communities in Young Adult Fiction |
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| Authors: | Marla Harris |
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| Institution: | (1) College of Information, Florida State University, 101 Louis Shores Building, Tallahassee, FL 32306-2100, USA |
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| Abstract: | This essay examines novels in which children or teens in an urban environment, left on their own for a variety of reasons (such as poverty, war, plague, nuclear disaster, or technological breakdown), join together to form a community that explores alternative versions of home and family. The urban survival novel, to distinguish it from the more popular wilderness survival story, encompasses a wide variety of genres, including fantasy, satire, science fiction, social realism, and historical fiction. These novels involve dramatic shifts of perspective—inside/outside, above/below, before/after—which challenge protagonists (and readers) to see the world around them differently and to confront other points of view. The 1970s ushered in a wave of urban survival fiction that has continued to the present; I speculate on why these survival scenarios have proved so compelling for young adult readers. |
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| Keywords: | urban survival community young adults |
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