Struggling in the Heartland: Romance Novels and Rural Adolescent Identity of Failure

ABSTRACT Like many adolescents who struggle with academic reading tasks, Suzanna (pseudonym) demonstrated a strong aversion to academic reading beginning in first grade. Secretly, however, Suzanna was a reader—an avid reader of romance literature she believed would not be deemed acceptable for use in school. To protect her burgeoning literate identity, Suzanna hid her passion for reading romance stories and embraced a public persona of literate failure. Resourceful and clever, Suzanna found ways to support her reading, even as a rural resident without reliable transportation and limited resources, through embracing the perceived anonymity of shopping at thrift stores and reading on the Wattpad storytelling platform. Suzanna shared her story with photographs she provided during four 1‐hour photo elicitation interviews (PEI). We explore Suzanna's perceptions regarding her literacy experiences in school through the interrelated theoretical constructs of adolescent literate identities and rural consciousness.