Religion Seen as Most Difficult Topic for YA Fiction

I've written a number of posts on YA (Young Adult) Fiction because it has been showing good growth while sales of most other genres of fiction are described as stagnant or even declining.

Not surprisingly, given what anyone can easily find on the Internet, few topics are off limits for young adults (aged 12 to 18) except perhaps religion. That's the view of Donna Freitas, an author of such books and a person who has a doctorate in religious studies, as recently expressed in the New York Times  weekly book review section.

"A writer can go as dark and violent as it gets. Sex is more than fine. ... Graphic, instructive, erotic, romantic, disappointing: bring it all on.  Even better, current YA novels now have many L.G.B.T.Q. protagonists ... which was not the case 10 years ago."

In fact, "the sky is the limit," Freitas said, except for religion.  "Religion is the last taboo."

Since most wars these days seem to be grounded in religious differences, that's a curiosity even beyond the reasons Freitas gives in her article.

"As a frequent speaker on college campuses, I can confirm that while young people may be more skeptical about traditional religion, their hunger for a more inclusive, nontraditional spirituality is  constant," Freitas said. While teenage readers "search for themselves" in the books they read, few protagonists of YA fiction identify with a particular faith or claim spirituality as something of interest, she said.

Why don't authors address such interests?

"We worry someone may be trying to convert or indoctrinate teenagers; we resist preachiness about certain moral perspectives,"  Freitas said.  But at the same time, she conceded that "religions and religious people have done and still do reprehensible things in our world, to women, to children, to some of the people I care most deeply about."

Not to mention what they do to other societies in general that don't happen to adhere to their faith. Remember what ISIS did to their neighbors and what they apparently would have loved to do with us, and what we in turn did to them?  And all the "collateral damage" that occurred in the process?

But Freitas' point is nonetheless well taken.  And I say that as an agnostic.

Why Do People Read Fiction -- Beyond For Entertainment?

Why do people read fiction beyond the simple reason that it is entertaining or diverting?

One reason might be to expand one's horizons -- to find out more about the world in a fashion that is less dry or sleep-inducing than non-fiction.

When I lived in England, my chief means of finding out more about the English and their country was by reading their novels.  And when I lived in Japan, I did the same thing -- this time Japanese novels in translation, including "The Tale of Genji," which took me months to get through. Fortunately, there were a significant number of excellent translations of Japanese literature, both classic and contemporary.

But another reason is to find out more about oneself.

"Teenage readers search for themselves in books," said Donna Frietas, an author of Young Adult fiction, in a recent New York Times book review article.

Teenagers aren't the only ones.  When I self-published my first novella, "Manhattan Morning," some of my friends who were kind enough to read it said it wasn't that interesting for them because they could not identify with my protagonist and thus did not find him interesting.  And, indeed, I soon began to realize that much (but not all) of the feedback that I received said more about the person giving me their reaction than it did about my book.

It is a revealing exercise and one that leads to a certain amount of self-reflection.