Coming-of-age [COA] narratives are a malleable genre that has enjoyed three centuries of enduring popularity and international acclaim. Bildungsroman scholars frequently identify the origin of the genre in the relatable growing pains of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s eponymous Wilhelm Meister (1795) —a novel often identified as the first Bildungsroman, the originating and classic iteration of the broad and vernacular “coming-of-age” genre. Wilhelm was the first young protagonist to negotiate the opposing forces of self-determination against the demands of socialization that characterize all coming-of-age processes. Since then, the COA genre has itself come of age in variegated geographies and at the hands of a multitude of authors worldwide. The genre has mutated and matured at the hands of such celebrated authors as Austen, Dickens, Harper Lee, and Toni Morrison—to name a few. But it has also demonstrated its flexibility in film—with such key titles as Cinema Paradiso (1988), Boyhood (2014), Moonlight (2016), and Lady Bird (2017). It is ubiquitous in animated feature films.
Bildungsromane often include characteristics of the sister genres of memoir, biography (and autobiography), testimonio, and the picaresque. For long-time readers of graphic novels and serialized comics, the assertion that the COA genre frequently takes the form of graphic narratives (and that, more often than not, bestselling graphic narratives are COA stories), should come as no surprise. To name a few, there is Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis (2000), Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home (2006), and Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese (2006).
This panel explores the COA genre at the margins of both hegemonic society and of canonic literature.
Since there are four speakers, presentations have a time limit of 12 minutes.
Evan Chaloupka will present “Gaming the Bildungsroman: Participatory Richness and Player-Character Intimacy in Persona V.” In Chaloupka’s words: “I argue that a bounded participatory richness, created by the game’s “confidant” system, creates the conditions for player immersion. Though this ludo-narrative mechanic presents choices to the player, its appeal lies less in plot implications and more in the simulated process of intentionally coming to know characters working through experiences flush with stigma and trauma. The bildungsroman, then, affords an interactive legibility that facilitates feelings of immersed intimacy, which once theorized, might explain the contemporary reception and popularity of the form in new media."
Kevin Blanks will present “Childhood Queered: Reimagining Futurity and YA Literature for Children of Color.” In Blanks’s words: “I argue that children and adolescents of color experience a whip-lash sensation wherein the blackened flesh deems the child nonnormative and nonhuman as some Afropessimists argue, or on the other side, they are “adultified” and forced to transition much earlier into adulthood for mere survival purposes. By merging together the theoretical fields of black childhood, queerness, and disability, I offer an interdisciplinary approach where I examine how children of color who are othered through multiple interlocking systems of oppression, produce new ways of being, thinking, and knowing within YA literature. For the purposes of this project, I am pairing Hari Ziyad’s memoir Black Boy Out of Time alongside Jenkins and McCraney’s film, Moonlight.”
Joshua M. Murray will present “A Sliver of Gray: Adolescent Immigration and the Civil Rights Movement in Lila Quintero Weaver’s Darkroom.” In Murray’s words: “I argue that, at its core, Lila Quintero Weaver’s Darkroom: A Memoir in Black and White (2012) is a hybrid Bildungsroman that provides insight into the complexities inherent of a young immigrant thrust into an environment rife with racial inequities and tensions. Yet Weaver transcends the autobiographical confines of memoir by pointing outward as well, highlighting both the racist education system and the police brutality of 1960s Alabama.”
Jay N. Shelat will present “Desi Refusal: Novels and Growing Up Brown in the Age of Terror.” In Shelat’s words: “I argue that recent desi coming-of-age novels navigate model minority myths and post-9/11 racism through what I term desi refusal—a resistance to capitalistic and imperial ideologies that emerge from white supremacy. Sanjena Sathian’s Gold Diggers (2020) insists on shattering racist and classist mythologies of success rooted in familial and social expectations through communal solidarity, and Dure Aziz Amna’s American Fever (2021) rejects post-9/11 Islamophobic stereotypes about Pakistanis via an unapologetic embrace of desi identity.”