I am a fan of young adult books. I appreciate the gritty story lines and relatable content and the way the books are intended to speak to teenagers in a way that books written for adults supposedly cannot (a dispute I'll argue another day). I am also so excited that more and more diverse authors are getting published.
COMMA BUT.
I am beginning to wonder if the young adult books are getting just a bit too earnest, a bit too obvious in their desire to write an "important" book that deals with "real issues."
Nearly all of the African-American focused YA books I've read lately involve an abused girl, a pregnant girl, or a boy that is involved with gun violence or police brutality.
Salvage the Bones is a recent critically acclaimed book by Jesmyn Ward. The book's protagonist is young, sexually and otherwise abused, poor, and pregnant. A colleague recently read Push by Sapphire and that girl was raped, abused, pregnant and HIV positive.
Another book, Gabi: A Girl in Pieces, a book intended for a Latinx audience, included all of the following: a narrator who described herself as "fat" and struggled with body image issues, an abusive, meth-addicted and eventually (SPOILERS) dead father, a teenage pregnancy that resulted from a date rape, a middle-age woman unexpectedly pregnant by said meth-addicted father, a teenager -- different from the date rape pregnancy -- who has an abortion, first-time sex, and college admission stress.
The Hate U Give, police shooting an African-American teenager. Dark, African-American teenage boy shoots someone and then runs. Long Way Down, African-American boy considering avenging his friend's death by shooting the perpetrator. Dear Martin, Ivy-league-bound African-American boy unfairly arrested by police.
The Smell of Other People's Houses included yet another pregnant teenager (this time an Alaskan girl) and more abused teenagers (a set of brothers abused enough to flee Alaska as stowaways on a ferry and another girl terrified of her father).
Finally, None of the Above, a book written by a surgeon, tells the story of a student who discovers she is intersex. However, this book is trying so hard to educate its audience -- defining terms, forced medical conversations -- that the protagonist feels more like a cardboard cut-out of a medical patient than she does a real person.
I recognize that there are young adult books with lighter story lines. I also recognize that the gritty awfulness provided in the above-mentioned stories is real life for some students. And, lord knows, I certainly recognize that I am a long way from being a teenage reader.
I just start to wonder if authors are pandering a bit to what adults perceive a good YA novel to be. Many of the above-mentioned books have received critical acclaim, but those accolades often come from the adults trying to read them through teen eyes rather than from the actual teenage readers.
Perhaps as the YA market opens up more for diverse perspectives, the storylines will also broaden. New books on my must-read list include Odd One Out by Nic Stone, Darius the Great Is Not Okay by Adib Khorram, Love, Hate, and Other Filters by Samira Ahmed, and Pride by Ibi Zoboi. These are books about LGBT+ youth, first love, and mental health issues, but hopefully they also about real characters who feel like people rather than conduits for "important" messages.
