“What did she see?”: The White Gaze and Postmodern Triple Consciousness in Walter Dean Myers’s Monster

In the post-modern novel Monster, Walter Dean Myers depicts the travails of a young black protagonist within the criminal justice system and the psychic effects of a hegemonic white gaze on this representative figure. As protagonist and narrator, Steve Harmon illustrates, in his journal and in the film script he composes, multiple forms of Du Boisian self-awareness as he attempts to manipulate the empowered wielders of the white gaze. Myers thus reverses the racial lens, exemplifying the potential of young adult fiction to engage readers in productive scrutiny of the effects of de facto white supremacy.