On Not Writing for Grown-Ups

Posted by Phoebe

There’s great article by Mary Pearson on tor.com right now on YA literature.

Who writes it?

People like me. People who find the teen years fascinating and the nuances of teen literature a challenge. I am not writing it as “practice” so I can one day write an adult book (I am asked that a lot.) Young adult books are not a lesser, watered-down version of adult books. They are not any easier or harder to read than adult books and they are certainly not any easier to write. They are just different. Just as with adult books, some teen books are easy and breezy and meant to be that way, and others, like Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta, or Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan, are complex and mulit-layered. They can offer social commentary, as with The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, or The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks by E. Lockhart, while being immensely entertaining at the same time. They can examine our flaws and failures and our hopes and dreams in quiet, elegant prose as in Thursday’s Child by Sonya Hartnett, or with fun, quippy prose as in Repossessed by A.M. Jenkins.

I think sometimes there is still this basal reader mentality when it comes to teen books, like it is a stepping stone to the “grown-up stuff.” Basal Reader Year 10. Hm, no. It is simply its own unique type of literature that explores the teen experience.

Recently I’ve heard some discussion about the “responsibility” of YA books and YA authors. Oh, I hate that word when it comes to books. I’ve heard complaints at both ends of the spectrum, far left and far right, wanting books to “guide” readers one way or the other. Their way, I imagine. Or not include sex or language or whatever, and sometimes the whatever is pretty ridiculous, under the guise that we must “protect” young minds. I have to say, I have seen just as much harm come to children who are over-protected as those who are not paid any mind at all. I have seen parents who sequester their children away from the world in order to protect them, but hey, the world is there, and one day the kid will be out in it. Do they really want to spring it on them cold turkey? Often the results aren’t pretty. Or wouldn’t they rather have their child test the waters while they are still under their wings and can come to them with questions?

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit because I’ve been working on a short story that involves a girl, and books. How we come to define ourselves through books, or through what we see in books, through oppositions or identifications:

Something Elsie noticed about her books: the girls—the sassy dragon tamers, the cross-dressing knight errants, the weyrwomen—all changed when true love got involved. They were held down. Stripped of their chain-mail. They’d cast their heads to the side, cry. They never went willingly, even if, up to that moment, everything had been up to them, everything had depended on them. After they were bested, and they were always bested, all that would matter were the men and the babies, the precious, peanut-toed babies. Elsie didn’t like it. She didn’t even care about babies. She never had.

I find the lives of teenagers, especially teenage girls, fascinating, not necessarily because it’s a different experience from the experiences of adults, but because many things are more amplified during adolescence: hormones, the emotional tenor of interpersonal relationships (mean girls are nowhere meaner than in middle school), family interactions, methods of defining personal identity. I enjoy writing from the perspective of teenage girls because everything can be examined in technicolor; I like writing with younger people in mind because I remember how important, how transformative books could be then. Books affect me now, sure, but not like they did then, when I was twelve or thirteen or fourteen. The whole landscape of my life could be changed in a single weekend, with a single paragraph. Maybe that sounds hackneyed. Maybe that sounds immature. Adults, after all, are, we assume, capable of maintaining distance from art. And other adults admire this.

Which is why, I guess, I’m not so excited about writing for them.

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Permalink | Comments (4) | Sep 11, 2009

4 Responses to “On Not Writing for Grown-Ups”

  1. Anonymous Says:
    September 16th, 2009 at 3:41 am

    Even if what you say is hackneyed, it doesn't make it any less true. It makes sense on several levels; younger minds, with nothing else to really go on, are easily molded by experiences and inputs. It's a mixture of these events and the consequences of the choices made based on these events that may, at least in large part, eventually cement one into an "adult." It's not necessarily a good or bad thing, but part of life.

    You can see this even more with even younger children (toddlers) that question every little thing in life (e.g. Why is the sky blue? Why do objects fall? Why is grass green?), as well as the adult contrast (e.g. Who cares?). But the YA demographic might be particularly interesting since this a level where people have higher cognitive understanding, but are still highly impressionable.

  2. Phoebe Says:
    September 17th, 2009 at 12:13 am

    Right–that's what makes YA lit scary (to what sort of things do we propagandize our kids to? This is, I think, where the issue of "responsibility" comes up, even if just because YA lit has often been used as teaching material, even if it shouldn't necessarily be) but also exciting!

  3. Anonymous Says:
    September 17th, 2009 at 4:02 am

    But is asking whether certain material is appropriate the best course of action? It somewhat implies sugar-coating reality in some ways (e.g. woman and man always fall in love, good guys always win). I guess the question is, under what circumstances do you tell yourself something just isn't right for kids to know, then hit the delete key?

  4. Phoebe Says:
    September 17th, 2009 at 11:45 am

    I think it depends what you consider a "kid"–I don't think i was that unique in that I was reading adult novels by thirteen or fourteen. "Kids" can take a lot more than we assume–and their lives are much more complex than grown-ups often remember. I think dark literature can, in some ways, "help" young readers–if helping them is what we're after, and I'm not sure it always is, rather than just entertainment.

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