Dr. Margaret Robbins's Recs: Books and Media with Empowered Female Protagonists

In June, my mother and I had the privilege of presenting on the panel together at the Transatlantic 3: Women of the Green Atlantic Conference. If you haven't traveled with your mom yet, I would highly recommend it. My mom and I both have literary interests, so we both enjoyed going to see Ulysses at The Abbey Theater, walking along the water, scouting local book shops, touring Trinity College, and taking a tour of the coast line and Malahide Castle. Ireland is a beautiful country, and I encourage others to enjoy its mystic presence on the other side of the ocean. At the conference, I discussed Asking for It by Louise O'Neill, which was published in 2016. O'Neill's critically acclaimed novel touched on issues pertinent to the #metoo movement before the movement took full force one year later. Emma, the 18 year old protagonist, endures sexual assault. She receives support from some family members and friends, but living in a small Irish Catholic town intensifies Emma...

I absolutely love Roxanne Gay's writing, and this book was no exception. The writers are all so witty and brilliant; the interactions between Ayo and Aneka were so powerful. The art work really took me to the World of Wakanda, and I enjoyed getting the female perspective on Black Panther events. I was sorry to hear that the series got cancelled and am convince that it would have kept going had it been released about now. This book definitely is full of feminist power, and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good love story, empowered female protagonists, and futuristic societies. In particular, I think the idea of having the king's main army comprised of female soldiers is bold and amazing. I also love how this universe has prominent scientists and leaders who are females. It truly is a society that portrays a better future.

Issues 19-23 were amazing and very timely during this political climate. They boldly touched upon issues regarding immigration, race, and not making assumptions about people. There are excerpts that I want to bring into classroom settings. I thought the momentum slowed down a little bit toward the end of the Volume, but overall, I really enjoyed this collection. I have mixed feelings about the arrival of Red Dagger, but hopefully, the writers will use his character as a way to bring in some gender social commentary. I hope to see more glimpses of Bruno's life in Wakanda, as he's always been one of my favorite characters. If you know of a spin-off series that he becomes a part of, I'd love to hear about it. :)

Click here to see my review in JoLLE! The Journal of Language and Literacy Education is geared toward English teachers and English Educators, but book lovers will appreciate the Children's and Young Adult Literature section.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past month, you know that the Black Panther film has been taking the movie theater box offices by storm and that the A Wrinkle in Time film is getting attention, both in entertainment and children’s literature circles. In some ways, comparing the two films is like comparing apples and oranges, since A Wrinkle in Time’s main target audience is families, and Black Panther has a larger audience span, particularly among lovers of comics. Yet, since I have a deep interest in both comics and children’s literature, I could not help noticing common threads between the two, especially since I saw them within two weeks of each other and because I studied diverse children’s literature, comics, and popular culture in graduate school. Because I had recently read this book about Afrofuturism by Ytasha L. Womack, I noticed that both movies promoted a better version of the future. Black Panther encouraged dialogue and action related to race relations...

Various forms of media become classics when they can stand the test of time. The Archie comics have been widely read and appreciated for decades. Everyone can relate to first love lost and wanting to find one’s place in the social hierarchy of high school. Yet the Riverdale television show series and accompanying comics present a modern-day, subversive take on a beloved tale that touch on such relevant issues as diversity, identity, and equality. The show is not only entertaining, but also progressive in its portrayal of diverse characters and current social issues. Here are just a few reasons to love a TV show that I believe will become a classic. A progressive portrayal of LGBTQ Characters: The life of Kevin Keller in Riverdale versus Jack in Dawson’s Creek, a popular show of my teen years, shows how attitudes toward sexuality have changed over time. In the late 90s, it was more nuanced for the show to have a gay central character, with Buffy the Vampire Slayer serving as one o...

Ursula Le Guin's influence on speculative fiction for both children and adults is highly noteworthy. Her work is especially relevant to my SSAWW circles because of how her feminist philosophies influenced her life and work. I am honored to have written a guest post for Dr. Steven Bickmore's YA Wednesday blog about Le Guin's work, which includes a presentation I did at CEE 2017 about diverse young adult literature and gender issues. You can click here to read it, and I hope you enjoy it!

This book felt like Lord of the Rings for teenagers and young women! I really enjoyed reading it, and the world building was stupendous. Plot wise, it took me a little while to get into it at first, but it was worth it during the second 2/3 of the book, when I started to see how all of the puzzle pieces fit together. The love story between Rook and Isobel resonated with me, and it has my head spinning about why seemingly ordinary, but very talented mortal females tend to fall in love with older men (even though the older men physically appear young) from other worlds. Is it because the other worlds offer them a place where they can be treated as power figures, which our current world sometimes doesn't? I also loved the emphasis on Isobel wanting to develop her artistic craft. As a writer, I could relate. As a teacher, I loved the idea that emotions bring strength, even though society teaches us that emotions make us weak. The book also brought up issues about morality and aging th...

In this collection, Kamala Khan is facing the aftermath of tragic events in New Jersey and trying to reconnect after her time in Pakistan with extended family. She is trying to encourage more people to go out and vote, in hopes that more people will choose the less high profile, but more qualified candidate, rather than the two frontrunners who lack integrity. In the meantime, a cyberbully has infiltrated Ms. Marvel's Battlecraft universe, and she must stop it, before this cyberbully hurts those close to her or forces Ms. Marvel into an act that goes against her principles. In the meantime, we get a glimpse of Bruno's new life in Wakanda, as he tries to make new friends and gain confidence after his severe accident. I was so excited about the next volume that came out today, I went ahead and ordered it with the Amazon gift certificate my parents got me for Christmas! The new Ms. Marvel continues to thrive as the character continues to grow, and as Brene Brown would say, brave h...

This is another novel that I reviewed for School Library Journal that I wanted to share here because I love it so much, and also because one of the major themes is female empowerment. At the start of the story, Quinn Sawyer is grieving deeply for her best male friend Dylan, who died in a tragic accident at their summer camp. There is indeed a male love interest in the story, the "new boy in town" named Alexander. So yes, there are some fairly common YA literature tropes in the story: girl falls in love with her male best friend, she loses him, and she later falls in love with a new person who sees her in a different way. We can all relate to this narrative, at least to a degree, which is one reason why I think it's so common both in literature and in television. But Carlie Sorosiak tells it with skill, which is how one can pull off story, since most stories have indeed been told before, and the trick is telling your narrative well with a new twist. The new twist to this...

This is the review I posted on Goodreads (4/4.5 Stars): This amazing, lyrical science fiction YA novel tells the story of a brilliant, sensitive, and creative teenage girl named Luisa, who has just been accepted into a high profile internship program as a result of her computer coding skills. But Luisa’s plans change abruptly when a mysterious virus erupts that affects thousands of people, including her best friend and her father. Luisa, her brother Ben, and their friends Kamal and Phoebe go on a cross-country journey to try to find a cure and to save the world, before it’s too late. Luisa gets hints in the form of mysterious poems, and she has to learn to trust faith and intuition that go beyond science and logic. Along the way, she better understands the positive side of her condition, which is seeing waves of color when her emotions run high. This book has depth, suspense, intriguing characters, and an engaging plot that moves along like a gripping action film. Highly recommended fo...

(A slightly different version was originally published on my other blog, comicsandyalit.blogspot.com, which includes reviews from my Goodreads selection).      Since my colleagues know that I am interested in comics and graphic novels, I frequently get asked to recommend graphica/comic books for classroom use and for adolescents to read for interest. Recently, I have been thinking in particular about comic volumes and graphic novels that have not yet been canonized the way such books as Art Spiegelman’s  The Complete Maus  and Marjane Satrapi’s  The Complete Persepolis  have. These important graphic novels paved the way for the exploration of comics and graphic novels in classroom settings. However, I am learning about so many other options out there! At various conferences I have attended, as well as courses I have taught. I have been reminded of how important it is for educators to learn about high interest readings for adolescents. By doing s...