From Adultism to Youth Empowerment: Children’s Rights In Contemporary Realist Young Adult Fiction

Dziri, Nourhene (2023) From Adultism to Youth Empowerment: Children’s Rights In Contemporary Realist Young Adult Fiction. Doctoral thesis (PhD), Manchester Metropolitan University.

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Abstract

Relying on a child-rights approach to textual analysis, this thesis addresses representations of young adults in contemporary realist young adult fiction across four key texts: The Sun Is also a Star (2016) by Nicola Yoon, Still Life with Tornado (2016) by A. S. King, The Hate U Give (2017) by Angie Thomas, and The Girl in the Broken Mirror (2018) by Savita Kalhan. The objective is to consider the first-hand experiences of the young protagonists of fifteen to seventeen years old as targets of adultism at the familial, national, or structural levels. The significance of the realist literary mode and the narrative form in emphasising such themes constitutes a primary concern for this thesis. In its denunciation of adultism, this thesis establishes a link between adultist beliefs, attitudes, and practices by relatives and non-relatives on the one hand, and children’s rights violations on the other. For this reason, the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC henceforth) is used as an important criterion in the delineation of young people’s freedoms. At the same time, this document and its implementation on different levels are interrogated with reference to cultural relativism for instance, as well as the ambiguity of some of the convention’s phrasings which can be easily manipulated to the child’s disadvantage. Accordingly, part one of this thesis identifies how adultism intersects with children’s rights to non-discrimination, to survival and development, to the prioritisation of their best interests, and to participation. The second part shifts the focus to constructions of adulthood in these narratives with regard to their roles vis-à-vis the targets of adultism. Finally, the thesis concludes by pinpointing youth empowerment as manifested in the lead characters’ thoughts, dialogues, and methods of counteracting adultist behaviours and the violations of their rights. The findings across the first part reveal that adultism is the driving force behind the plots as it facilitates the infringement of protagonists’ freedoms. Adultism is thus pinpointed as a literary device setting the protagonists in motion to surmount the confronted complex issues fuelled by this type of discrimination to fulfil the narrative convention of the disruption of the status quo leading to youth empowerment. Throughout this journey from adultism to youth empowerment, this thesis identifies three types of adult characters with regard to children’s rights and their violations: abusers, allies, and abusers who eventually become allies. It is argued that these adults, antagonistic or not, perform a crucial part in the story because they either challenge the young characters or help them towards their empowerment. For youth empowerment, this thesis resists the attribution of the young protagonists’ eventual successes and achievements to their transition into adulthood. The examples in the last chapter pinpoint that the lead characters triumph over obstacles specifically as young adults and not as adults. Further studies are needed to address more rights and to consider the experiences of secondary young characters and whether they go on a similar journey as that of the protagonists from adultism to empowerment.