Young Women Athletes (Re)Crafting Conceptions of Self Through Sport in Young Adult Fiction

This paper explores how sport can mediate tensions between identities and cultural expectations among fictional young women athletes in three young adult novels set in differing global settings. Drawing upon narrative identity theory and employing critical content analysis, the paper aims to understand the protagonists’ experiences as athletes and young women in local contexts that do not allow these identities to exist simultaneously and how access to sport allows them to define who they are and want to be. Findings suggest that access to sport can provide a way out (an escape that creates space to discover the self outside of cultural expectation), a way through (a tool for navigating and reconciling dual elements of the self when they come into cultural conflict), and a way in (an opportunity to rediscover and reconnect with a part of the culturally informed self that might be missing).