Review Article: New Definitions of the Female Adolescent Hero in YA Speculative Fiction

In lieu of an abstract:In 2023, we saw the publication of three new and important contributions to the feminist study of YA speculative fiction: Melanie A. Marotta’s African American Adolescent Female Heroes: The Twenty-First-Century Young Adult Neo-Slave Narrative (University Press of Mississippi); Leah Phillips’ Female Heroes in Young Adult Fantasy Fiction: Reframing Myths of Adolescent Girlhood (Bloomsbury), and Cristina Santos’ Untaming Girlhood: Storytelling Female Adolescence (Routledge). Each of these works expands the theoretical reach of feminism in innovative and provocative directions.