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Author Biographies

April Vázquez, an educator at Princeton Day School, holds a PhD in education and master’s degrees in romance languages and TESL. Her research focuses on literature-based identity exploration and transformative reading experiences. An award-winning fiction writer, April is the author of the short story collection Scapegoats (One Subject Press, 2026).

Abstract

The narrative structure of the Hero’s Journey, first elaborated by Joseph Campbell in 1949, is employed in Pashmina by Nidhi Chanani and Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay. In these two works for young people, the protagonists travel to their parents’ native countries, encountering systems of oppression that fundamentally transform their perspectives and alter the trajectories of their lives. Each character follows the same narrative pattern: before the Hero’s Journey, they have led mostly unremarkable lives, have an encounter with the supernatural or the divine, confront systemic oppression in their parents’ native countries on a scale beyond what they have witnessed before, and garner insights that they will use to improve the lives of others. It is this last element, the Return with the Elixir step in the Hero’s Journey, that constitutes the essential takeaway from each of the novels because it is through this stage of the journey that the novels inspire young readers to take up their own fight against systems of oppression.

Publication Date

6-2026

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