Neoliberalism’s Erasure of Race in Young Adult Fiction

In this chapter, Sean P. Connors and Roberta Seelinger Trites argue that “neoliberalism has influenced the erasure of race” in contemporary YA dystopian fiction. They devise a framework for determining if a YA novel critiques or condones neoliberalism and, thus, “whether it is reproducing, complicating, or resisting” neoliberal ideologies. To demonstrate how YA dystopian novels reproduce neoliberalism as a means to privilege the individual and erase race and racist power structure, the essay considers Sherri L. Smith’s Orleans as a counterexample, arguing that Smith’s novel “employs neoliberalism” to challenge “the erasure of race.”