Young Adult Fiction and Where We're At These Days

 I have to admit I don't read Young Adult Fiction, but I love reading about it because perhaps more than any other type of literature, it points to where things are headed.  In theory, it is targeted at readers 12 to 18 years old but the experts tell us a great many readers are considerably older.  If true, that in and of itself says something about the nature of U.S. society at present and may help to explain certain electoral trends.

But anyway, who are the authors and what are they writing about?  A recent edition of the New York Times Sunday Book Review contained a summary of four books targeted at Young Adults by authors who hadn't written one previously.  They are illuminating.

The first, "Every Body Looking" is by first-generation Nigerian-American writer and dancer Candice Iloh and it is about a young Nigerian-American woman who isn't happy about her body, in part it seems because she was sexually abused as a child. Moving forward, thanks to a question posed by a dance teacher, we are told she explores such things as artistry, divinity and sexuality. That reminds me a bit of Dante's "Commedia" and especially because Ms Lloh's book contains poetry.

In the words of NYT reviewer Jennifer Hubert Swan, "this blazing coming-of-age comet will have everyone looking up."  How's that for a blurb?

The second book, "Cemetery Boys," is by Alden Thomas -- self-described as a queer, trans Latinx who prefers the pronoun "they."

"Cemetery Boys" is described as a "supernatural romance" set amid East Los Angeles Latinx culture and the chief protagonist is a 16-year-old gay-identifying trans boy. Latin American witchcraft (here identified as the brujx community, brujx being a word that apparently includes both the male "brujo" and the female "bruja" practitioners) is central to the story and, not surprisingly, there is a lethal secret "festering" within.

According to Ms Swann, the story's queer paranormal romance is depicted within a lavishly detailed blend of Latin American cultures and, among other things, deals with cultural appropriation -- definitely a timely topic in the age of cancel culture -- the stale, old culture, that is. 

"Windows into the intersecting Latinx and L.G.B.T.Q. experience are plentiful here and the opportunities for discovery and discussion are endless," says Ms Swan. 

"K-Pop Confidential," the third Young Adult title under consideration, was written by Stephan Lee, a Korean-American, and the chief protagonist is a Korean-American teenager named Candace Park who lives in -- oh, no -- New Jersey.  We'll she's not long for the home of Bridgegate when, after taking a tryout on a whim, she ends up in Seoul and the now dazzling world of K-Pop where the glitter is apparently at least somewhat offset by stalker fans and social media backlash. 

Ms Swan summarizes this one as "a frothy bubble tea of a book."  That's a drink that apparently originated in Taiwan as opposed to South Korea (is there such a thing as Tai-Pop?), but one gets the idea.

Lastly, there is "Something Happened to Ali Greenleaf," by Haley Krischer, a Jewish writer and journalist, about a high-school girl who is raped by a school sports star (soccer rather than football -- itself a sign of the times) upon whom she has had a crush.  Behind all of this, in an author's note, are the Congressional confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and a painful episode in Krischer's life.

In the end, according to Swan, the book is more about female bonding than about retribution for the crime of rape, but at the same time "this novel serves as a sobering reminder: the fact that consent is being discussed in the classroom doesn't necessarily mean it's being enacted in bedrooms."

I previously wrote about rape and YA fiction here.

So there you have it: a list commendably devoid of any white male authors and one that deals with topics you won't learn about watching re-runs of "Leave it to Beaver." This is presumably the new world in which American children are now growing up.

How Iris Murdoch Opened a Young Woman's View of Life

I recently published a short post on why people read fiction and here is another on the same theme.

Susan Scarf Merrell, a novelist and creative writing instructor, has a recent piece in the New York Times in which she relates how discovering the works of Iris Murdoch at a young age opened her eyes to a different world than that in which she was being brought up.

Merrell relates how she grew up in a literary family where books were everywhere, passed around from one person to another and discussed at dinner, in the car or on walks. These included works by authors such as Dickens, Austin, Agatha Christie, C.S. Lewis, George Eliot -- you get the picture.

Iris Murdock was not in the family canon. And despite being a contemporary author who had, at the time Merrell discovered her work by chance in the closet of a vacation house in Sicily, written about half of the 26 novels she would eventually publish, was never mentioned in the Merrell household.

For the young woman -- and this is no doubt a story familiar to many -- Murdock's novels opened a new world of possibilities. Life could be considerably, and excitingly, different from what Merrell up to that point had imagined.

"Her people voiced prejudice, held misguided opinions, and Murdoch took them down, but with understanding and affection.  Marriages ended, things were said, there was way too much drinking and even some fighting, and life went on. Yes, in Murdoch's world characters behaved badly and were not always punished for it.  And even if they were, they found their way to reasonable fates."

And, of course, there was all the sex: "hetero- and homo-, extramarital, even incestuous, all charged with violence, betrayal and yearning -- utterly thrilling to an overly protected kid like me."

Did Merrell then share or discuss these works with other members of her family?  She did not, clearly feeling they were not part of that world.

"I had, I think, finally been introduced to the private world of reading that many people inhabit; a dream state I now regard as a portal to the act of breathing life into fictional works of one's own."

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.

JD Salinger Viewed As White Male Canon Fodder

With the white population of the U.S. declining toward minority status, the country's cultural traditions are episodically under attack and perhaps nowhere more forcefully than with respect to literature.

It's time to revise "the canon" -- the prevailing list of great books that are not just mostly euro-centric, but heavily the work of white male authors, reformers contend.  The canon, while unofficial, is nonetheless highly influential, particularly when it comes to deciding what books children should read in school or be taught in college.

The latest assault comes from Ron Charles, a white male himself, who reviews books for the Washington Post. He seized upon J.D. Salinger's 100th birthday (Jan. 1, 2019) to bash the relevance of "The Catcher in the Rye," an iconic coming-of-age novel that has sold over 65 million copies since it was first published in 1951.

"We live in a world overpopulated by privileged white guys who mistake their depression for existential wisdom, their narcissism for superior vision," Charles said.

"We have met the phonies and they are us," the critic declared, apparently feeling it expedient to  signal his own personal virtue. More accurately, he might have declared that "he" had met the enemy and it was "himself". Just who are the "we" and the "us," one wonders?

Noting that the U.S. is experiencing a renaissance in young-adult literature -- a topic I have addressed in several earlier posts (search on the label "young adult fiction") -- Charles said it is "no longer tenable to imagine that the anxieties of a white heterosexual young man [Holden Caulfield]  expelled from an expensive prep school capture the spirit of our era." Today's "snarky young anti-hero" is more likely to resemble the black French Canadian boy in a forthcoming book called "The Field Guide to the North American Teenager," by Ben Phillipe, a black male born in Haiti,  he said.

But, as Clark's article makes clear, Salinger and his small set of published works aren't dead yet.  The New York Public Library, he noted, is planning a special exhibition of manuscripts, letters, books and artifacts for October 2019.  And once Salinger dies, the trustees of his literary estate could seek to cash in on the theatrical, film and television demand for his stories estimated to be worth as much as $50 million.

"Don't think it won't happen," Charles said, implying demand for the white-male literary canon still has legs.

As for "The Field Guide to the North American Teenager," the public will in due course decide whether it needs 65 million copies or not.

One Older Reader of Young Adult Fiction

I have discussed various aspects of Young Adult (YA) fiction in a number of posts, which readers can find by clicking on the tag “young adult fiction” at the bottom of this submission.  The YA field is interesting in part because it has in recent years been one of the best, if not the best, performing genre for the publishing industry.

More Themes of Young Adult Fiction

I've written several posts about Young Adult (YA) fiction, in large part because it is one of the fastest if not the fastest growing category of books in print -- at a time when most categories are flat or declining.

What's in these books?  Well, just about everything and especially, it seems, crest-of-the-wave social topics. If you are young, you want to be with it, right?

Mental Health Topics and YA Literature

"At a time when young adult literature is actively picking away at the stigma of mental illness, Whaley carves off a healthy chunk with style, sensitivity and humor," says Neal Shusterman, reviewing a book called "Highly Illogical Behavior," in The New York Times.

As regular readers know, young adult, or YA, literature is one of my favorite topics because it appears to be the one genre of fiction experiencing significant growth.

The Life of a "Rock Star" YA Fantasy Fiction Author

I've written previously about YA, or Young Adult, fiction because it is about the only genre currently showing good growth in terms of sales. You can find my earlier posts by clicking on  "young adult fiction" in the list of labels on the right, or at the bottom of this post.

Over the weekend, The New York Times  led its "Sunday Styles" section with a lengthy feature on Cassandra Clare, one of the most successful YA authors. According to the article, she's "an alternative world builder" who sets her supernatural plots in urban settings.

Rape In Life and in the World of YA Fiction

I've written about Young Adult (YA) fiction previously, in large part because it is reportedly about the only literary genre experiencing significant growth in sales. As such, it has attracted a lot of attention and various established authors who previously ignored this segment of the market have started to write for it.

These are not children's stories. No topics are off limits and perhaps partially as a result of that, lots of adults are said to be readers of these books, too.

How Much Of A Book Do You Actually Read?

In the age of Big Data, publishers increasingly want to know just how much of a book purchasers actually read, or so says a story in the March 15 New York Times.

Amazon, Apple and other purveyors of e-books apparently already have a lot of such data when it comes to people reading books in electronic form, but that is roughly only about 25% of the market and readership of e-books is, at best, leveling off at present, various reports have suggested. Readership data for books on paper is another matter.

To fill the gap, The Times reported, a London-based firm named Jellybooks has a device readers can use, in exchange for free books, to track their reading activity and transmit that data to the company, which then provides it to participating publishing companies, presumably for a fee.

Is Quality Fiction a Victim of Declining Attention Spans?

I’ve written several posts in the past about Young Adult (YA) fiction, not because I have any interest in it per-se, but rather because it is apparently about the only genre where sales are actually increasing. And this is at least in part because it is popular with adults as well as with the target audience. 

What is behind the trend, one wonders? Is it yet another indicator of the failure of our much maligned education system?