Uncanny Youth

Childhood, the Gothic, and the Literary Americas

By (author) Suzanne Manizza Roszak

Publication date:

15 May 2022

Length of book:

208 pages

Publisher

University of Wales Press

Dimensions:

216x138mm

ISBN-13: 9781786838667

A literary study of childhood in the American Gothic.
 
Childhood in Gothic literature has often served colonialist, white supremacist, and patriarchal ideologies, but in Uncanny Youth, Suzanne Manizza Roszak highlights hemispheric American writers who subvert these scripts. In the hands of authors ranging from Octavio Paz and Maryse Condé to N. Scott Momaday and Tracey Baptiste, Gothic conventions critique systems of power in the Americas. As fictional children confront shifting configurations of imperialism and patterns of gendered, anti-queer violence, their uncanny stories call on readers to reckon with intersecting forms of injustice.