Voices Beyond the Page

Adolescent Authorship and Transnational Negotiation of Girlhood

Bibliographic Data

ID19227265
AuthorsLidong Xiang (0000-0002-0877-9720, corresponding author)
Year2026
Publication date2026-01-28
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJeunesse Young People Texts Cultures (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1920-2601 • E-ISSN: 1920-261X
PublisherUniversity of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.3138/jeunesse-2025-0003
OpenAlexW7163189285
LanguageEN
References cited11

This article examines the tension between agency and commodification in adolescent authorship, centring on Chun Shu’s autobiographical novel Beijing Doll (2002) and its transnational reception. It explores how Chun Shu’s literary identity was framed as an authentic expression of adolescent rebellion while being simultaneously shaped and constrained by market forces. Through editorial mediation and commercial packaging, her voice was both amplified and disciplined to fit gendered and national expectations. The novel’s protagonist, Lin Jiafu, negotiates sexual agency through shifting relationships, complicating dominant discourses that position girlhood between innocence and fully realized autonomy. Rather than a fixed achievement, agency emerges as an ongoing process of assertion, adaptation, and defiance. Finally, the article examines Beijing Doll as a contested space where global and domestic forces converge: Western markets commodify Chun Shu’s defiant narrative, while domestic critiques seek to regulate her voice within national discourse. By foregrounding the ideological stakes of adolescent self-expression, this article highlights how Beijing Doll disrupts conventional narratives of female agency and reveals the uneven power dynamic shaping young female authors in a globalized literary landscape

Beijing · Commodification · Foregrounding · Innocence · Narrative · Negotiation · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Themes in Literature Analysis

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