Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on a different critical approach and uses a different multicultural young adult text as an exemplar for the approach. It explores the lived experiences of urban and immigrant youth in relation to cultural narratives about the American Dream in Ibi Zoboi’s American Street. The book examines how theorizing dominant and oppositional gazes allows students to read multicultural young adult literature in transformative ways. Pointing to other young adult novels that provide rich explorations of the oppositional gaze, it offers one approach for helping readers analyze and appreciate literary perspectives that challenge the simplified stories that have kept certain groups in power. The book discusses the metaphor of an alloy—two or more metals, which, when combined, form a new metal that is often stronger than the sum of its parts—to explore the experiences of multiracial, multiethnic, and multicultural characters.