Girls Save the World: Activism, Persistence, and Solidarity in Hemispheric Latin(x) American Youth Literature

In her book, Medicine Stories, Aurora Levins Morales prompts us to locate young people at the center of discussions of social justice movements and activism: “we need to listen to children more than we talk to them. We must back the initiative of children themselves, secure resources and share skills, respect their right and ability to lead themselves, and learn to let them lead us” (108). As one of the original essayists for the groundbreaking work on intersectionality and women of color, This Bridge Called My Back, Levins Morales’s directive also points to the way that we, in fact, must let girls lead us as we elucidate the contours shaping resistance literature for and about young people on a hemispheric stage. Girls persist by finding avenues of resistance to the oppressions that impact them. Examining these forms of persistence is a means of listening to girls and letting them lead us. The hemispheric scope of this article on literature for young readers from across the Americas allows me to destabilize national silos and, by this intervention, to foreground connections that exist between diasporic Latinx girls in the US and girls in Latin America. In this way, I highlight the entangled, interconnected nature of our Americas and the possibilities girls offer for resistance. For this article, I examine three examples of youth literature from across the Americas. All the Stars Denied by Guadalupe García McCall (US, 2018), Olivia, el bosque y las estrellas (Olivia, the Forest and the Stars) by Nuria Santiago and illustrated by Ángel Campos (Mexico, 2014), and Al sur de la