Life Narratives and Youth Culture

Anna Poletti is Associate Professor in English at Utrecht University, Netherlands and a Senior Research Fellow at Monash University, Australia. Kate Douglas is Associate Professor in the School of Humanities and Creative Arts at Flinders University, Australia.

• Part I: Young Writers and Life Narrative Encounters.- Introduction. Youth and Life Writing: Three Forms.- 1. Youth and Revolutionary Romanticism: Young Writers Within and Beyond the Literary Field.- Part II: Writing War.- 2. War Diaries: Representation, Narration, and Mediation.- 3. Lost Boys: Child Soldier Memoirs and the Ethics of Reading.- Part III: Girlhoods Interrupted.- 4. The Riot Grrrl Epistolarium.- 5. Impossible Subjects: Addiction and Redemption in Memoirs of Girlhood.- Part IV: Youth publics.- 6. Zine Culture: A Youth Intimate Public.- 7. Youth Activism Online: Publics, Practices, Archives.- Conclusion: Youth, agency and self-representation: What cultural work can life writing do?

“Life Narratives and Youth Culture highlights the diversity in the life writing produced by young authors, including diaries, letters, memoires, zines, blogs and life writing on Facebook. … Life Narratives and Youth Culture is laudable for many reasons. The style is accessible and the arguments are backed up with well selected quotes and source references. … The authors open up a rich field of study that is relevant to many scholars working in children’s literature studies.” (Vanessa Joosen, International Research in Children's Literature, Vol. 11 (1), July, 2018)