Teaching YA Cancer Narratives: The Fault in Our Stars and Issues with Voicing Illness

Abstract

Increasingly publishers are promoting illness as a commodifiable literary product. There is now a wide range of autobiographical and fictional texts that explore life-threatening illnesses from the embodied perspective of protagonists. This trend is also evidenced in the content of young adult literature where concepts of the diseased self, agency and mortality are explored. The aim of this paper is to provide some background context on illness narratives and offer a close reading of the young adult text, The Fault in our Stars by John Green, in order to highlight important issues such as the accurate and realistic portrayal of cancer, particularly in the lived experience of adolescent readers. It is anticipated that this discussion will allow classroom teachers to engage more fully in conversations about text selection and content, and the ways in which literature can advance realistic representation of illness that previously have been culturally taboo.