Ebook: Female Heroes in Young Adult Fantasy Fiction: Reframing Myths of Adolescent Girlhood

Hero stories are deeply rooted in Western Culture. From religion and myth to blockbuster films and YA literature, the story is everywhere, and it shapes how we, the ones who hear and see it, understand the world around us. For too long, hero stories, which could also be called dominant discourse, have undertaken this social and cultural work through the archetypal hero: a white, often 'god'-touched, young man who exists in opposition and superiority to that which he is not, including adolescent girls. This paradigm works by imposing radical alterity on that which is not-hero to ensure his heroicness. Crucially, while this exclusion affects all girls, it does not do so evenly. If the girl is also Black or Brown, disabled, or otherwise not performing expected and accepted versions of adolescent girlhood, marginalisation increases.
Female Heroes explores how the heroes in a subgenre of YA fantasy, one it names mythopoeic YA, intervene in this narrative of superiority by breaking the boundaries and blurring the borders of what it means to be hero, girl, and even human. These heroes — such as Tamora Pierce's Alanna the Lioness, Marissa Meyer's Cinder, and the heterogeneous 'crew' at the heart of Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows duology — disrupt heroic norms and standards by occupying the spaces between oppositions. This occupation frustrates violent hierarchy, radical alterity and erasure, particularly of bodily difference, while also disrupting isolating individuality. In so doing, female heroes offer an alternative and inclusive model of being-hero, one directly impacting adolescent girlhood and beyond.