Chapter 11 of Emerging Aesthetic Imaginaries, Transforming Literary Studies Series, Lexington Books 2018, Ledbetter & Johannessen, Eds. If aesthetic imaginaries are the collective cultural aggregate of practices and possibilities for...
moreChapter 11 of Emerging Aesthetic Imaginaries, Transforming Literary Studies Series, Lexington Books 2018, Ledbetter & Johannessen, Eds. If aesthetic imaginaries are the collective cultural aggregate of practices and possibilities for perceiving (and in turn valuing), this chapter argues that prose narrative's engagement with the flexible time of the reading imagination is well suited to expanding our cultural repertoires to better include bodies "at odds" with hegemonic cultural norms. I use examples of 3 transgender memoirs and several YA novels featuring protagonists with craniofacial anomalies in order to demonstrate how their authors guide the use of imagination in reading to expand readers' habits of perception and valuation in service of embodied justice. Such works, I argue, prepare readers to respond more positively, recognize nuance, and engage more fruitfully with those whose bodies are "at odds" either with normate expectations of facial appearance, dis/ability in general, or expectations of gender performance.
