Names, Naming, Diversity, and Identity in Youth Literature

Recent years have seen a significant increase in works of fiction that champion and celebrate diversity and inclusion for young readers. At the same time, the world has witnessed a radical backlash against youth literature that positively explores issues of individual difference and group belonging. This multi-authored volume explores this growing tension and features chapters that critically examine how youth literature use names and naming to present child, adolescent, teen, and tween readers to the world's ethnic, cultural, linguistic, neurological, religious, diversity. The contributors to this work represent themselves a kaleidoscope of cultural and linguistic backgrounds while sharing a common academic background in literature and onomastics. Although the primary geographic focus of the chapters selected for this publication is Anglo-American a supplementary call for chapter proposals has explicitly solicited additional proposals that have a broader, international, range. The editor is an internationally recognized expert in investigation of names and naming. She is the past president of the American Name Society, one of the world's oldest and largest scholarly societies devoted to onomastic research.

I.M. Nick is President of the Germanic Society for Forensic Linguistics and Editor-in-Chief of NAMES: A Journal of Onomastics.

List of tables and illustrations List of abbreviations About the Contributors Acknowledgements 1 Onomasticon Fantasticum: Names and Cultural Diversity in Fantasy for Young Readers, Michael Adams (Indiana Univeristy Bloomington, USA) 2 Whispering Names, Shouting Identities: The Power of Naming in Youth Literature about Immigrants and Immigration, Sharon N. Obasi (University of Nebraska at Kearney, USA) 3 Asian American Names in Children's Literature: Opportunities for Cultural Pride or Promoting Cultural Assimilation, Jung Kim (Lewis University, USA) and Sohyun An (Kennesaw State University, USA) 4 Support, Hope, and Strength through Naming in Fiction for Young Readers: Young Protagonists Harnessing Names to Survive Powerlessness, Susan J. Behrens (Marymount Manhattan College, USA) 5 Who Am I? The Storied Worlds of Naming Practices and Selfhood in Multicultural Children's Picturebooks, Sally Brown (Georgia Southern University, USA) and Nahiris Lugo-Munoz (Georgia Southern University, USA) 6 My name is not "Ivy-Liz," it's "Iveliz": Naming Practices and Negotiations of Space and Identity in Latinx Youth Literature, Edcel Javier Cintron-Gonzalez (Illinois State University, USA) and Adriana De Persia Colón (University of Cambridge, UK) 7 Rainbow Onomastics: Literary Strategies for Naming Characters in Children's Books for and about Gender Diversity, I.M. Nick (President of the Germanic Society for Forensic Linguistics) Index About the Editor