ABSTRACT
During the Black Lives Matter demonstrations roiling the United States in the late spring and summer of 2020, the bicycle once again displayed its frequent connections to liberation. This chapter focuses on some ways in which nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century English literature portrays the bicycle’s relationship to liberation in terms of age, gender identity and economic class. It demonstrates how literary genres ranging from young adult literature and science fiction, to realism and song lyrics, proclaim the emancipatory power of bikes for adolescents, gender nonconformists, and the working class. For these people, bikes are vital for breaking free of pernicious boundaries, accessing more wholesome and restorative spaces, destabilizing hierarchies, and providing an agile, nonimperious mobility. Young adult fiction contains several notable examples of adolescents using bikes to shatter barriers and gain independence, to find solace from their confusing or painful lives.
