Abstract:
This article examines memories of 9/11 in two superficially very different texts marketed
to adolescent readers: a blog post on author Meg Cabot’s website, and a small episode in a
novel, Adeline Radloff’s Sidekick. Cabot recounts her own memories; the memories of Radloff’s
heroine, Katie, are entirely fictional. Cabot was in New York on the day, able to see the first tower
burning from her flat window; Katie was in Cape Town, where her superhero boss’s attempt to
help the victims failed because of his inability to get to New York. Cabot is an adult recounting
adult memories; Katie is seventeen in the novel, and was a child in 2001. In examining these two
different representations of 9/11 – “real” and fictional, geographically near and geographically
distant, adult and child/adolescent – the article explores issues of agency, power and hope, and
suggests that there are significant similarities between the texts because there are significant
similarities between their treatments of these issues. It concludes that power is central in both
narratives; that both narratives portray knowledge of power as concomitant with reminders of
powerlessness; and that geography profoundly affects questions of power and questions of
character in both narratives.
