“Bet You Can’t Wait to Get Out”: Complicating Narratives of Leaving in Rural Young Adult Literature

Abstract

Using critical theories of dominant- and counter-narratives, this study analyzed the texts of selected young adult books that focused on an underrepresented population of working-class rural youth in Appalachia. We explored how the dominant deficit narratives of these communities shaped the identity construction and choices of the books’ characters, especially their decisions to stay in, leave, or return to their rural hometowns. We showed how those narratives reflected the lives and decisions of real rural young people. We also looked at the identities and ways of being that are available to rural young adult readers and how those identities are connected to structural power and inequity. With over nine million rural students in the United States, each of them deserves to see themselves reflected in the literature they read.