Alex, a fourth grader with AIDS, makes a new friend and learns that although he is sick, he can't misbehave in school.

Publisher Description

Contributions by Kristopher Alexander, Amanda K. Allen, Brianna Anderson, Catherine Burwell, Katharine Capshaw, Negin Dahya, Gabriel Duckels, Paige Gray, Gabrielle Atwood Halko, Natasha Hurley, Kenneth B. Kidd, Erica Law-Montes, Derritt Mason, Brandon Murakami, Tehmina Pirzada, Cristina Rhodes, Cristina Rivera, Jakob Rosendal, TreaAndrea M. Russworm, Vivek Shraya, Victoria Ford Smith, Joshua Whitehead, and Shuyin Yu How do we think about children’s and young adult literature? Children’s literature is often defined through audience, so what happens when children are drawn to and claim genres not built expressly “for” them? To what extent do canonical formations tend to overwrite or obscure less visible efforts to create and promote material for the young? These are the driving questions of Alt Kid Lit: What Children's Literature Might Be. Contributors to the volume offer theoretical meditations on the category of children’s and young adult literature as well as case studies of materials that complicate our understanding of such. Chapters attend to a diverse array of subjects including the “non-places” of children’s literature; child mediums; Black theater for children; children’s interpretive drawings; fanfiction; Latinx, Indigenous, and silkpunk speculative fiction; environmental zines; shōnen anime; Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal; South Asian television; and “emergency children’s literature.” The book also features interviews with two experimental writers about genre and alt-publishing and a roundtable conversation on video games and children’s digital engagements. Building on diverse approaches including queer theory and postcolonial studies, Alt Kid Lit shines light on materials, methodologies, and epistemologies that are sometimes underacknowledged in the field of children’s and young adult literature studies.

Camcorder AIDS activism is a prime example of a new form of political expression--an outburst of committed, low-budget, community-produced, political video work made possible by new accessible technologies. As Alexandra Juhasz looks at this phenomenon--why and how video has become the medium for so much AIDS activism--she also tries to make sense of the bigger picture: How is this work different from mainstream television? How does it alter what we think of the media's form and function? The result is an eloquent and vital assessment of the role media activism plays in the development of community identity and self-empowerment. An AIDS videomaker herself, Juhasz writes from the standpoint of an AIDS activist and blends feminist film critique with her own experience. She offers a detailed description of alternative AIDS video, including her own work on the Women's AIDS Video Enterprise (WAVE). Along with WAVE, Juhasz discusses amateur video tapes of ACT UP demonstrations, safer sex videos produced by Gay Men's Health Crisis, public access programming, and PBS documentaries, as well as network television productions. From its close-up look at camcorder AIDS activism to its critical account of mainstream representations, AIDS TV offers a better understanding of the media, politics, identity, and community in the face of AIDS. It will challenge and encourage those who hope to change the course of this crisis both in the 'real world' and in the world of representation.

Coming Out, Coming In: Nurturing the Well-Being and Inclusion of Gay Youth in Mainstream Society describes the process of "coming in" to a welcoming and nurturing family, from both the teen's and the parents' perspective. Linda Goldman draws on her personal and professional experience as a school guidance counselor, child and adolescent therapist, parent, and a member of the national group PFLAG to build a common language and a new paradigm for understanding sexual orientation and gender identity as a part of mainstream culture. Through the information, exercises, anecdotes, and extensive bibliography of additional resources provided in the book, parents, school administrators & educators, community groups and counselors will find the tools needed to facilitate nurturing and safe environments for our LGBT youth.

We Are Having This Conversation Now offers a history, present, and future of AIDS through thirteen short conversations between Alexandra Juhasz and Theodore Kerr, scholars deeply embedded in HIV responses. They establish multiple timelines of the epidemic, offering six foundational periodizations of AIDS culture, tracing how attention to the crisis has waxed and waned from the 1980s to the present. They begin the book with a 1990 educational video produced by a Black health collective, using it to consider organizing intersectionally, theories of videotape, empowerment movements, and memorialization. This video is one of many powerful yet overlooked objects that the pair focus on through conversation to understand HIV across time. Along the way, they share their own artwork, activism, and stories of the epidemic. Their conversations illuminate the vital role personal experience, community, cultural production, and connection play in the creation of AIDS-related knowledge, archives, and social change. Throughout, Juhasz and Kerr invite readers to reflect and find ways to engage in their own AIDS-related culture and conversation.

This is the book that covers the really tough problems teachers face: divorce, death, abuse, AIDS, violence, illness and more.