Connecting Enviromental Justice to Black Speculative Fiction: Jewell Parker Rhodes's Ninth Ward
Title and/or Affiliation
Julianna Lopez Kershen, University of Oklahoma
Presenter Bio
Julianna Lopez Kershen is an Assistant Professor of English education at the University of Oklahoma. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in English language arts education and qualitative methods. Her research focuses on the development of expertise in teaching/mentoring practices, and issues of representation and access in young adult and war literature.
Session
Panel: Teaching Black Speculative Fiction
Location
Zoom
Start Date
28-6-2024 1:15 PM
End Date
28-6-2024 2:30 PM
Abstract
Young adult fiction offers rich and complex opportunities for readers to engage in critical reading and response. In particular, Black speculative fiction texts, such as Jewell Parker Rhodes’s novel Ninth Ward, can serve as a foundational space for exploring issues of environmental justice, disaster, and racism. In Rhodes’s novel, Lanesha, a resident of the New Orleans’ Ninth Ward neighborhood, experiences the 2005 traumatic events surrounding Hurricane Katrina. Using a restorying framework (Thomas & Stornaiuolo, 2016), Lanesha’s story invites young readers to critically examine how environmental racism resulted in decades of underdevelopment in New Orleans, contributing to Katrina’s disastrous effects. Readers can interrogate environmental racism through analysis of authorial intention, reflection, and reader response. These youth-led studies create a platform to explore new definitions of “disaster” as well as concepts of environmental justice and social justice narratives within that movement.
Connecting Enviromental Justice to Black Speculative Fiction: Jewell Parker Rhodes's Ninth Ward
Zoom
Young adult fiction offers rich and complex opportunities for readers to engage in critical reading and response. In particular, Black speculative fiction texts, such as Jewell Parker Rhodes’s novel Ninth Ward, can serve as a foundational space for exploring issues of environmental justice, disaster, and racism. In Rhodes’s novel, Lanesha, a resident of the New Orleans’ Ninth Ward neighborhood, experiences the 2005 traumatic events surrounding Hurricane Katrina. Using a restorying framework (Thomas & Stornaiuolo, 2016), Lanesha’s story invites young readers to critically examine how environmental racism resulted in decades of underdevelopment in New Orleans, contributing to Katrina’s disastrous effects. Readers can interrogate environmental racism through analysis of authorial intention, reflection, and reader response. These youth-led studies create a platform to explore new definitions of “disaster” as well as concepts of environmental justice and social justice narratives within that movement.