“Tired of that book yet?”
This was my roommate making fun of me for throwing down my copy of the Aeneid in a fit of angst. I was indeed “tired of that book yet.” I was having a bad day. I had 200 pages left to pick my way through. Suddenly, I no longer cared about the mythical origins of Rome. Or whatever.
This is the same roommate who is currently happily reading John Green’s Paper Towns. I remember being so envious…what I wouldn’t give to be able to read what I wanted again, to not have a reading list dictated by a syllabus.
I thought, is this what growing up is? Reading “adult” books, scholarly books, books that matter because other people say they do? It doesn’t seem fair that once I cross a certain threshold of age or education, certain kinds of literature automatically become “beneath” me.
The fact remains that no genre of literature has affected and shaped me as much as the broad category commonly known as “Young Adult.” I can enjoy and appreciate the classics as much as anyone can, but there’s something special about being a teenager in the golden age of YA lit, which is loosely defined as literature for those aged 12-18.
Is it really such a golden age? Emphatically, yes. Of course, books for young adults have been written before our time, but the huge YA industry we are familiar with is a relatively new phenomenon. Nobody thought there was much of a market for this demographic until (arguably) the success of JK Rowling. After that, some kind of cognitive switch got flipped, and now YA is a literary juggernaut.
And yet, the authors and readers of this genre have had to fight for legitimacy. I’ve scrolled through tons of articles about “Why YA is Important,” which only begs the question: why does it need to be defended in the first place? What is inherent about this type of literature that causes people to look down on it or regard it as second-class writing?
I’ve run into this in my own lifetime: my grandmother, always a lot cooler than she appears, had Harry Potter on her shelves before anyone else had even heard of it. She didn’t have young children, she isn’t a teacher…she read these books because she had heard they were good, target audience be damned. Meanwhile, her daughter, my mother, to this day cannot be persuaded to pick up a Potter book, no matter how many dramatic tantrums I throw (“It’s like not having read the Bible!”).
That’s only one example, but people everywhere are quick to discount the merit of a novel simply because of the age of its characters or its marketing category. The genre suffers from the same kind of frustration I often feel—literature geared toward adults is given respect and precedence that leaves YA novels of equal merit in the lurch.
People forget that YA lit can be and is just as thought-provoking and important as anything else out there. On top of all that, through social media (another thing our generation is often vilified for), prominent YA authors are connecting with their young readers and starting dialogues about the ideas in the books they read.
We need to get rid of the notion that certain age groups are only allowed to read the books written “for them”. Literature is transcendent; ideas can apply to anyone. Most of all, we need to stop treating young adult literature as a lesser genre, lest young adults continue to feel like their experiences, emotions, and problems are also lesser.
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Images 1, 2, and 3 provided by author, Image 4