Whitewashing, White Supremacy and White Saviours: Reading Young Adult Fantasy

多样化的代表性在所有形式的媒体中正变得越来越重要，特别是在黑人生命也是运动的背景下。出版业出现了越来越多的“多元化举措”，公司希望出版更多BAME作者和以BAME人物为特色的故事。然而，几乎没有迹象表明这些举措正在奏效，事实上，有证据表明它们适得其反(Saha，2018)。梅勒妮·拉玛达山·博尔德(2018年)发现，2006年至2016年在英国YA市场出版的作者中，只有8%是BAME。这种多样性的缺乏在奇幻类型中尤为明显。罗森(2010)发现，在YA的畅销奇幻小说中，只有9%的小说包含了不同的角色(她的定义包括种族、残疾和性行为)。因此，尽管出版环境有所改善，但读者主要阅读以特定角度展示BAME人物的小说，其中许多故事侧重于种族、后殖民主义和难民(Bold，2019)。这一点在安吉·托马斯的《你给的仇恨》(2017)等小说的成功中可见一斑。正如Saha(2018)所说，“不是因为多样性倡议，而是因为多样性倡议，种族主义少数群体的代表继续被缩减为少数几个可识别的比喻，几乎没有变化。”在英国YA小说中，增加不同体裁的多样性是很重要的，尤其是在奇幻体裁中，因为这种模式是一种重要的手段，通过这种模式，读者可以“获得力量，并获得一种在现实世界中难以捉摸的超越感”(Thomas，2019)。《你的幻想》的成功说明了人们对真实世界压迫的奇幻故事的胃口和价值。其中一个例子是托米·阿德耶米(Tomi Adeyemi)的《血与骨的孩子》(2018年)，这是一部非常成功的小说，作者致力于讲述被美国警察部队杀害的年轻黑人。尽管有这样的成功故事，但在英国和美国的出版业，赋予黑人读者和人物权力的幻想仍然是少数。因此，这个项目的重点是分析奇幻类型，并确定为什么它仍然是一个独一无二的空间。我所说的专属空间不仅指的是有色人种作家在奇幻小说的出版中的代表性不足，还指的是这一流派植根于殖民叙事和意识形态的想法。纳洛·霍普金森(2004)讨论了在奇幻风格中写作的困难，这种风格植根于殖民意识形态，即其他有色人种，集中了白人和欧洲人的世界观，这表明她因为是写科幻小说的黑人女性而受到了“怀疑”。然而，她认为，尽管在我手中，马萨的工具不能拆除马萨的房子，但她可以使用这些工具来进行大规模翻新，并为我建造一座属于我自己的房子。这个翻新的想法是我在我的博士学位上形成的。结合批判性和创造性，我研究了奇幻类型，并寻找方法来“更新”先前存在的比喻和故事模式，以便“为我建造一座属于我自己的房子”。在YA幻想中，已经有一些关于多样性问题的批判性调查。例如，E.E.Thomas研究了黑人在流行的YA文本和媒体中的表现(2019年)，Ytasha L.沃马克调查了黑人创作的科幻和奇幻文化

Diverse representation is becoming increasingly important within all forms of media, particularly in light of the Black Lives Matter movement. There have been increasing 'diversity initiatives' in the publishing industry, with companies aiming to publish more BAME authors and stories featuring BAME characters. However there is little to suggest that these initiatives are working, in fact there is evidence to suggest they are counterproductive (Saha, 2018). Melanie Ramadarshan Bold (2018) found that only 8% of authors published in the UK YA market between 2006 and 2016 were BAME. This lack of diversity is particularly evident in the fantasy genre. Rawson (2010) found that only 9% of best-selling YA fantasy novels contained'diverse' characters, (her definition included race, disability and sexuality). Thus, although there has been an improvement in the publishing context, it is slight and readers are mainly accessing fiction that shows BAME characters in a particular light, with a lot of the stories focused on race, post-colonialism and refugees (Bold, 2019). This is evident in the success of novels like Angie Thomas' The Hate You Give (2017). As Saha (2018) contends, 'it is not in spite of but because of diversity initiatives that representations of racialised minorities continue to be reduced to a handful of recognisable tropes with little variation.' It is important that diversity increases across genres within UK YA fiction but particularly within the fantasy genre because this mode is an important means by which readers can be 'empowered and afforded a sense of transcendence that can be elusive within the real world' (Thomas, 2019). The success of YA Fantasy illustrates the appetite for, and value of, fantastic stories that engage with real-world oppression. An example of this is The Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi (2018), a highly successful novel that the author dedicates to young black people killed by American police forces. Despite such success stories, fantasies that empower black readers and characters remain in the minority in UK and US publishing. Thus, the focus of this project is to analyse the fantasy genre and establish why it is still an exclusive space. My term 'exclusive space' refers not only to the fact that authors of colour are under-represented in the publishing of fantasy but also to the idea that the genre is rooted in colonial narratives and ideologies. Nalo Hopkinson (2004) has discussed the difficulties of writing within fantastic genres grounded in colonial ideologies that 'other' people of colour and centralise a white, European view of the world, suggesting that she comes under 'suspicion' for being a black woman writing science fiction. However, she argues that although 'in my hands, massa's tools don't dismantle massa's house,' she can use those tools to 'undertake massive renovations [and] build me a house of my own' (Hopkinson, 2004). This idea of renovation is something I develop in my PhD. Combining the critical and creative, I examine the fantasy genre and look at ways to 'renovate' pre-existing tropes and story modes in order to 'build me a house of my own'. There have been some critical investigations of issues of diversity in YA fantasy. E. E. Thomas, for example, has examined representation of the black 'other' in popular YA texts and media, (2019) and Ytasha L. Womack has surveyed black-authored sci-fi and fantasy culture in