This study of popular culture heroines is rooted in the empowerment audiences find in them, refuting a frequent feminist critique that rejects fictional violence and female action heroes as reinforcement of patriarchy. D’Amore argues that violence can be experienced as agency, and that stories empowering women to seek individual goals can be feminist. D'Amore posits “vigilante feminists” as characters acting outside the parameters of law and society because the system has failed them. These characters appeal particularly to teen girls developing a sense of identity and connection with their bodies… D’Amore combines accounts of each narrative with interpretation, giving particular attention to trauma, agency, consent, and rape culture, with frequent comparisons to real-world situations. This approach is effective in conveying the appeal of these texts and the benefits they convey to their audiences. Female students might especially appreciate this book as both reading recommendation and revealing analysis of culture they have enjoyed. Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.

Choice Reviews

In our current era of #MeToo, this book is vital. D’Amore’s scholarship speaks with girls and young women, not for them. In her analysis of violence and vigilante feminist characters, she shifts the focus from women as victim to women as agent. D’Amore positions young women and girls as active participants in their own stories, and reconfigures violence not as a tool of patriarchy and oppression, but of liberation and self-determination.

Harriet Earle, Sheffield Hallam University

D’Amore provides a refreshing take on violence, agency, and empowerment as well as the feminist lens that does not always serve the audience of young adults who are thirsty for stories of super/heroines. The “vigilante feminist” gives us a novel way of understanding not only trauma and violence, but the girls whose lives are shaped by these stories.

Sarah Hentges, University of Maine at Augusta

D’Amore skillfully blends interdisciplinary research and close readings to craft a necessary intervention in discussions of feminism, violence, and agency.

Kathleen McClancy, Texas State University

What Alison Graham-Bertolini does for our understanding of Vigilante Women in 20th-century fiction, Laura D’Amore does for our understanding of vigilante feminists in 21st-century young adult fiction and popular culture—which are the texts shaping the next generation’s belief in their ability to survive trauma and to protect themselves and others from pervasive structures of violence against girls and women. D’Amore reads YA fantasy novels, reimagined fairy tales, and superhero comics and television series alongside the real-world traumas that these stories invoke and equip their young audience to face: physical and emotional abuse, sexual violence and exploitation, and victim-blaming and justice-denying systems. D’Amore’s approach deconstructs the false choice between personal empowerment and structural change. The vigilante feminists in these texts claim bodily autonomy and the power to fight not only to protect self and others, but also to break patriarchal systems—particularly the underlying gender system that compels women to be passive in the face of personal and structural violence and to seek conciliation instead of justice. As D’Amore’s analysis shows, the violence wielded by these young adult heroines is neither anti-feminine nor anti-feminist. Rather, as Jack Halberstam puts it, “female violence transforms the symbolic function of the feminine within popular narratives and simultaneously challenges the hegemonic insistence upon the linking of might and right under the sign of masculinity”(251).

Kristina Deffenbacher, Hamline University