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Being an Athlete or Being a Girl: Selective Identities among Fictional Female Athletes Who Play with the Boys
- Children's Literature Association Quarterly
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 44, Number 3, Fall 2019
- pp. 290-309
- 10.1353/chq.2019.0034
- Article
- Additional Information
Abstract:
This article examines the experiences of female protagonists who join all-male teams in recently published middle grade and young adult sports fiction. Two frames of analysis, identity and intersectionality, are applied in examining the question of how female protagonists navigate girlhood identities given their nontraditional sports participation on historically male teams. Findings suggest that as the fictional female athletes move into male-dominated spaces, they must reconceptualize their identities within either/or binaries that reaffirm gendered expectations and that these binaries ignore the complicated multiplicity of identities and their associated privileges and oppressions.