Lilliam Rivera’s Eco-Dystopia, Dealing in Dreams: Nourishing YA’s Climate Literacy through Narratives of Disobedience and Hope

Raffaella Baccolini

doi:10.3989/reutopia.2025.1.1.11

Authors

Raffaella Baccolini University of Bologna https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8380-7867

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3989/reutopia.2025.1.1.11

Keywords:

Lilliam Rivera, Dealing in Dreams, eco-dystopia, climate change, Young Adult literature

Abstract

The article addresses some trends in recent Young Adult literature, including the “unspoken convention” that literature for young people needs to be reassuring. Although there is no question that climate change is a global emergency and that young people are among the most effective climate activists, scholars of children’s and YA literature have been slow to recognize the importance of this topic and, to this date, children’s literature organizations have no position statements on climate change. Several writers of YA lit., on the other hand, are openly addressing the issue, showing climate change to be a systemic and complex crisis that has no simple, single solution. They maintain, however, hope by choosing open and precarious endings that, through acts of disobedience, reaffirm care and interdependence. Lilliam Rivera’s eco-dystopia, Dealing in Dreams (2019), shows the educational journey that the protagonist undertakes, one that is paralleled by the readers.

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