ARTICLES: The Perils YA Lit vs. #YASAVES

[Ryan Goble]

Those of you who are big YA buffs likely heard all about these articles. I did not post about them because I was in the hospital when they were the "talk of the town." I

The big article from the JUNE 4, 2011 Wall Street Journal:
Darkness Too Visible by Meghan Cox Gurdon - Contemporary fiction for teens is rife with explicit abuse, violence and depravity. Why is this considered a good idea?

Basically, Gurdon's argument is along these lines...

If books show us the world, teen fiction can be like a hall of fun-house mirrors, constantly reflecting back hideously distorted portrayals of what life is. There are of course exceptions, but a careless young reader—or one who seeks out depravity—will find himself surrounded by images not of joy or beauty but of damage, brutality and losses of the most horrendous kinds.

Now, whether you care if adolescents spend their time immersed in ugliness probably depends on your philosophical outlook. Reading about homicide doesn't turn a man into a murderer; reading about cheating on exams won't make a kid break the honor code. But the calculus that many parents make is less crude than that: It has to do with a child's happiness, moral development and tenderness of heart. Entertainment does not merely gratify taste, after all, but creates it.

This created a firestorm of discussion on the web best captured in this short New Yorker article - #YASAVES: A TALE OF HASHTAGGERY. The author nicely frames the discussion...

To briefly sketch the outlines of this slippery disagreement: Cox Gurdon believes that very dark subject matter (which she defines as including “kidnapping and pederasty and incest and brutal beatings”) might endanger a teen-age reader’s “happiness, moral development and tenderness of heart.” The #yasaves-ers believe that Y.A. literally saves lives: on Twitter and around the blogosphere, Y.A. authors wrote of having received thousands of letters from teens who professed to having been “saved” by reading a book in which a protagonist suffers a trauma they themselves had suffered, whether a sexual assault, a hate crime, or just pressure to “go anorexic.” Another layer of the dispute concerns the jurisdiction and responsibilities of the parent: Cox Gurdon writes that what some view as censorship she views simply as good parenting; for some Y.A. authors, parents are precisely the thing they are writing around—they are writing for children who have been victimized, suppressed, or ignored by those who raised them. Tweeters were calling the fight the successor to the “Tiger Mother” firestorm, but in fact it’s much weightier and more difficult to tease out.

Then recently, catching up on some reading, I came across an excellent rebuttal from author Sherman Alexie in Rethinking Schools Magazine - Why the Best Kids’ Books Are Written in Blood.

The best passages:

So when I read Meghan Cox Gurdon’s complaints about the “depravity” and “hideously distorted portrayals” of contemporary young adult literature, I laughed at her condescension.

Does Ms. Gurdon honestly believe that a sexually explicit YA novel might somehow traumatize a teen mother? Does she believe that a YA novel about murder and rape will somehow shock a teenager whose life has been damaged by murder and rape? Does she believe a dystopian novel will frighten a kid who already lives in hell?

Now I write books for teenagers because I vividly remember what it felt like to be a teen facing everyday and epic dangers. I don’t write to protect them. It’s far too late for that. I write to give them weapons—in the form of words and ideas—that will help them fight their monsters. I write in blood because I remember what it felt like to bleed.

I know we're late to this classic debate at MC POP but I'd love to know what y'all think!

[Linda Janney]

Ryan, these books and their content speak to young adults. The world they will enter is not Disneyesque. Many have already experienced the harshness and cruelty. These stories let them know they are not alone. The protagonist in the stories often deal with life's difficulties in positive ways. They teach the reader that there are silver linings in most clouds. All one has to do is look.

[Ryan Goble]

Yeah, I certainly thought Alexie was on point but cede the point made by Andrea below and the complexity of the issue as articulated by the New Yorker above. If only life was black and white, eh? 

[Andrea Brown]

Certainly there is a lot of truth to the idea that teens deal with a lot of terrible things, and to ignore them in literature for teens is at best naive; however I've seen many books that are written to sensationalize the terrible things, rather than to help those who have suffered through them.  Obviously, I'm not talking about the folks like Chris Crutcher, Laurie Halse Anderson, or E.L. Konigsburg, but there are many others who are not "writing in blood" to help teens; they are writing that way to sell books.  I'm not sure that giving kids free reign to read all the dark books that have appeared over the last few years is wise or helpful to them.

[Ryan Goble]

See above :)