Indigenous Young Adult Novels: An Introduction

This special issue participates in a watershed moment in the history of Indigenous Young Adult (YA) literature. In 2021, the American Library Association (ALA) for the first time awarded the Caldecott Medal for "the most distinguished American picture book for children" to an Indigenous artist, Michaela Goade (Tlingit), who illustrated We Are Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom (Turtle Mountain). The following year, the ALA for the first time presented a Newbery Medal Honor Award for "distinguished contribution to American literature for children" to an Indigenous writer, Darcie Little Badger (Lipan Apache), for her novel A Snake Falls to Earth. The ALA also included several Indigenous works in its "2022 Notable Children's Books" list: Ancestor Approved: Intertribal Stories for Kids, edited by Cynthia Leitich Smith (Muscogee Creek), whose novel Hearts Unbroken (2018) is the subject of one of the essays in this issue; Borders by Thomas King (Cherokee); Healer of the Water Monster by Brian Young (Navajo Nation); Sharice's Big Voice: A Native Kid Becomes a Congresswoman by Sharice Davids (Ho-Chunk) and Nancy K. Mays; and We Are Still Here! Native American Truths Everyone Should Know by Traci Sorell (Cherokee).

Such mainstream recognition and approbation is, of course, but part of the story. Indigenous people have been telling stories for young audiences for a very long time and writing children's and young adult books for well over one hundred years. From oral literatures that enthralled Indigenous youths gathered around the fire, to early written work by Charles Alexander Eastman (Dakota), Zitkála-Šá/Gertrude Bonnin (Yankton Dakota), Francis La Flesche (Omaha), Susette La Flesche (Omaha), and Luther Standing Bear (Lakota), to more recent YA texts including The Birchbark House (1999) by Louise Erdrich (Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa), The Night Wanderer (2007) by Drew Hayden Taylor (Curve Lake First Nations), Wabanaki Blues (2015) by Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel (Mohegan), The Marrow Thieves (2017) by Cherie Dimaline (Georgian Bay Métis), Apple in the Middle (2018) by Dawn Quigley (Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe), and Firekeeper's Daughter (2021) by Angeline Boulley (Anishinaabe), Indigenous authors have captivated young and adult audiences alike with stories that feature young protagonists, coming-of-age plots, and crucial insights about being and becoming in an often hostile world. Publications including Mandy Suhr-Sytsma's Self-Determined Stories (2019) and Debbie Reese (Nambé Owingeh) and Jean Mendoza's co-edited "American Indians in Children's Literature"—a blog devoted since 2006 to the critical analysis of Indigenous people in children's and YA literature and to the promotion of Indigenous-authored YA texts—have highlighted the long-standing significance of Native YA literatures for Indigenous communities. And the American Indian Library Association (AILA), founded in 1979 and an affiliate of the ALA, "addresses the library-related needs of American Indians and Alaska Natives. Members are individuals and institutions interested in the development of programs to improve Indian library, cultural, and informational services in school, public, and research libraries on reservations" ("About AILA"). Beginning in 2006, AILA has biennially presented the American Indian Youth Literature Awards, which are juried by a majority-Indigenous committee.

Despite this important work, however, scholarship largely has not kept up with the proliferation and increasing visibility of Indigenous YA literature. For this special issue, we wanted to instigate a timely intervention by gathering essays that examine Indigenous YA novels both in their own right and in conversation with the conventions of settler YA fiction more broadly. But, as these essays clearly demonstrate, what is most needed right now is detailed consideration of the texts themselves and the ways they negotiate the continuing systemic presence of a settler colonialism that reaches much farther and deeper than just settler YA writing. This is to say that the most pressing questions and concerns these authors raise about Indigenous YA fiction are the same pressing concerns and questions that drive much intellectual work in Native American and Indigenous Studies. The essays in this issue consider, for example, how Indigenous YA fiction addresses Indigenous sovereignty, community, resistance, resurgence, trauma, fear, dreams, desires, and futurities. Like Indigenous...