ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights how gender identities are constructed through a negotiation with society and self and likewise deconstructed in an ongoing conversation, by describing elements of that negotiation as represented in their media at a moment of major social identification in the Amish teenage years. Amish young adult literature, while providing narratives of identity work and growth, at the same time provides enough restriction on gender expression to be limiting. In incorporating more intersectional analyses into the discussion of gender and society, the chapter focuses on the multiplicity of ways of being a man or a woman in the context of ethnic and religious identities. The discussions are extremely important, especially for studies on young adult literature, as literacy itself is a societal construct, as the racial, ethnic, and religious identities of readers often dictate their access to literature and their exposure to literacy.
