This book aims to provide a detailed study of young adult fiction concentrating on Mexican teenage (im)migrants to the United States and their search for identity. In its quest to define young adult (im)migration literature as a genre, the first chapter combines and questions classifications provided by literary scholars and educational scientists. The second chapter explores crucial factors which impact the protagonists’ transcultural identity construction. The third chapter engages in theory mixing: Louise Rosenblatt’s reader-response theory, the critical literacy approach of the New London Group, influences from the field of cultural studies and a model of literary competences are merged into an innovative theoretical framework that forms the basis of the teaching sequence presented.

Walburga Rothschädl taught English as a foreign language (EFL) in Austrian secondary schools for forty years. She also was a lecturer of English didactics at the University of Salzburg, Austria. Her main research areas are differentiation and autonomous learning, CLIL and literature in the EFL classroom.