Rachel L. Rickard Rebellino
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781496827135
- eISBN:
- 9781496827180
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496827135.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
The mid-2010s saw a wave of nonfiction young adult literature published by authors who initially gained fame through YouTube. In addition to the authors’ shared background experiences, these memoirs ...
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The mid-2010s saw a wave of nonfiction young adult literature published by authors who initially gained fame through YouTube. In addition to the authors’ shared background experiences, these memoirs have another feature in common. Each example of life writing puts forward a consistent narrative regarding the rationale for their existence: increased intimacy. This chapter offers an analysis of YA YouTube memoirs, first identifying the unique features of this subgenre of youth literature and, then, exploring the question of intimacy across print and digital formats. Despite these author’s claims, intimacy in print or digital narratives might be an impossibility; however, analysis of these memoirs, which function as examples of transmedia storytelling, offers a fruitful space to explore the question of what counts as young adult literature and how scholars of YA literature might study this genre as it expands beyond print texts.Less
The mid-2010s saw a wave of nonfiction young adult literature published by authors who initially gained fame through YouTube. In addition to the authors’ shared background experiences, these memoirs have another feature in common. Each example of life writing puts forward a consistent narrative regarding the rationale for their existence: increased intimacy. This chapter offers an analysis of YA YouTube memoirs, first identifying the unique features of this subgenre of youth literature and, then, exploring the question of intimacy across print and digital formats. Despite these author’s claims, intimacy in print or digital narratives might be an impossibility; however, analysis of these memoirs, which function as examples of transmedia storytelling, offers a fruitful space to explore the question of what counts as young adult literature and how scholars of YA literature might study this genre as it expands beyond print texts.
