Displacement in Young Adult Literature: A Thematic Analysis

Providing spaces for adolescents to make sense of the world around them is often the work of educators, specifically those in Language Arts classrooms. In the current historical moment, adolescents often must make sense of the ways socio-political conflict impacts their world. Displacement, often an effect of socio-political conflict, is increasingly a theme in adolescents’ lives, and therefore a prevalent theme in the ways they see the world. Providing spaces for adolescents to discuss their relationships to displacement through Young Adult (YA) texts can provide educators a possible way to support to adolescents at this critical time in their lives. Using affect theory to analyze the ways emotion moves through YA texts and reading bodies, this article examines four YA texts: When Stars Are Scattered (Jamieson et al., 2020), Between Shades of Gray (Sepetys, 2011), Kira Kira (Kadohata, 2006), and They Called Us Enemy (Takei et al., 2019). In examining these YA texts, this article seeks to understand how displacement moves through each text and impacts adolescent characters.