A wonderfully clichéd way to begin this analysis of YA literature is to ask the most basic question: What is YA? Jen Doll’s article, aptly titled “What Does Young Adult Mean?” answers this question with spot-on accuracy, concluding that it has no technical definition. Despite initially claiming that it is a literary category aimed at ‘young adults’, specifically between the ages of 12- 18, seeing that about 55% of all YA novel buyers are 18 or older, this definition doesn’t seem to hold its own in the real world. Other analysts attempt to answer this question with the claim that these works are characterized by a teenage protagonist, rendering classic YA novels such as To Kill a Mockingbird and The Hitchhiker’s Guide, misfits in this category. Yet others have attempted to identify in them, a common theme of ‘struggle’. This seems to be the most ridiculous notion of all, considering that Tolstoy and Dickens, champions of ‘struggle’ literature, sure as hell aren’t young adult authors. Very clearly, YA lit is not a specified genre, far more a marketing gimmick designed to pull in readers of a certain age group, as well as those rebellious enough to want to break out of this ageist reading system. After all, what do the very real struggles of the cancer harangued lovers in TFIOS have to do with the fantasy world of vampires and werewolves sketched so vividly in the Twilight series? This disjunction between the term YA and its actual characterization, to me, suggests something very obvious: YA has, over time, become a term used by elitist critics to pick flaws in books they could not connect with, suggesting that they are too ‘simplified, inaccessible, immature’ for adults with ‘refined’ tastes. This is absurd. When there is no clear definition of the genre itself, on what basis are people looked down upon for reading it? Do only black people read black authors? Should only women read books with female protagonists? Ageism in literature is equally demeaning, and the sheer number of adults who read YA novels should prove that it is just too broad a set of books to be tied down to a certain ‘kind of people’.
Works cited:
Doll, Jen. “What Does ‘Young Adult’ Mean?” The Wire. Web. 22 Sept. 2014.
“New Study: 55% of YA Books Bought by Adults.” PublishersWeekly.com. Web. 22 Sept. 2014.
Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1960. Print.
Adams, Douglas. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. New York: Harmony, 1980. Print.
Green, John. The Fault in Our Stars. Print.
Meyer, Stephenie. Twilight. Print.
So rhetorically impassioned that I now feel guilty for every sneer I’ve given to a YA book.
THOUGH. Your point at the end about black writers, and female writers, doesn’t seem a perfect comparison to YA novels, which are not written BY young adults but FOR young adults. Worth teasing out the differences between authorship and audience here.