English Honors Papers
Document Type
Honors Paper
Advisor
Hubert Cook
Publication Date
2026
Abstract
This thesis is an intertwining of disciplines and chronologies. Using English and educational theories, I employ thematic literary analysis, close readings, and lesson plan design to answer the following question: How do works of Afrofuturist and queer-futurist Young Adult literature present us with liberatory possibilities, and how can those stories be effectively pedagogically employed in classrooms to cultivate ‘future imaginings’? In this work, although it pertains to all students, I am especially concerned with the capacity of Black, Brown, queer, and trans* students to dream and construct futures given the operations of systems of oppression which attempt to tell them they have none.
To uncover the workings of these future-oriented texts, I focus on two objects of study: Pet (2019) by akwaeke emezi and All Boys Aren’t Blue (2020) by George M. Johnson. These two works differ in length, genre, and tone, but I argue that both enact Afrofuturist and queer-futurist theoretical ideas and, in doing, create worlds for their young readers. I dedicate a chapter to each. For emezi’s speculative novel, I engage with Bettina L. Love, Paulo Freire, and Tara J. Yosso as main educational thinkers and also bring in elements of various asset-based pedagogies. My chapter on Pet focuses on the cultivation of liberatory classroom spaces, using the novel as a guide for determining what an Afrofuturist learning environment entails. For Johnson’s self-proclaimed “memoir-manifesto,” a term I unpack at length, I bring in Larry Mitchell and José Esteban Muñoz for their worldbuilding work with their own manifesto texts and name the lineages and relationships I see between them. My chapter on All Boys Aren’t Blue exposes the question of being, leaning on Johnson’s solution-oriented and roadmap-like text as a sample of what enacting queer futurity and utopian relationality could look like for youth. Both chapters include lesson plans I designed to elucidate how these two works could be taught and explored in classrooms, with middle school students especially in mind.
This thesis raises as many questions as it answers. It is my intention that the work I have performed here provides scaffolding and support for future exploration of those questions long after this thesis has concluded.
Recommended Citation
Cardani, Westley Wrenn, "Portal to the Possible: Naming the Liberatory Classroom Applications Within Afrofuturist and Queer-Futurist YA Literature" (2026). English Honors Papers. 79.
https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/enghp/79
The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the author.