Tracing Queer World-making in 7th Graders’ Superhero Storytelling

This article describes the work of three seventh grade authors in a superhero storytelling project that took place twice a week during their English Language Arts (ELA) class time. It examines how these youth used this storytelling space to design queer superhero characters who (a) flipped locations of societal stigma into sources of power and (b) challenged normative expectations around gender, sexuality, and the superhero genre. We examine themes from this group’s character-building to illustrate how they authored queer futurities through their characters, and, in doing so, imagined alternative possibilities for both the superhero genre and themselves. Ultimately, we demonstrate how playful authoring may make space for queer critical literacy work.