On Race and YA Lit
by Guest Contributor Neesha Meminger
Young Adult (YA) literature has exploded in recent years with the phenomenal success of the Harry Potter books, the Chronicles of Narnia, Tuck Everlasting, Lord of the Rings, the Gossip Girl series, The Princess Diaries, and the more recent Twilight series to name a few right off the top of my head. There are some who look down their noses at YA lit and don’t consider it real literature. But, given the success of the aforementioned novels and series, I blow a big, fat raspberry in those people’s general direction.
Kidding. But, seriously. My guess is that the reason all those titles, and many, many others in the YA or MG (middle grade) categories have been so successful is that they reach across age barriers. If you look at the audiences for Harry Potter, Gossip Girl, Lord of the Rings and Twilight – books and movies – you’ll find fans ranging from nine-year-olds all the way through to the middle-aged, paunch set. The same cannot be said for high literary novels, or children’s books. YA and upper MG novels are right smack in the middle and appeal to that vast swath of almost-adult to inching-out-of-adulthood readers. There are often subtle, mature themes, and usually no gratuitous violence or sex.
I write YA because that is a time that ideals were still strong and fresh.
When I write, it is as if I was on the cusp of adulthood where things were still simple: good and bad were easy to define, as were right and wrong. It was a time when my inner life was more vivid than my outer and there were constant, brutal clashes between the two. It was a time where creativity was wild, unencumbered by the expectations and restrictions of adulthood. Anger, pain, joy – all were raw, enormous forces. It is still the place I go when I am seeking unrefined, unfiltered Truth.
My first novel, a YA release, comes out in March, 2009, and the road to getting it published has been full of surprises. I belong to a group of first time authors with Young Adult (YA) and Middle Grade (MG) novels coming out in 2009. We are all working together to promote our first novels. We share resources, commiserate about bumps and bruises along the way, and rejoice in one another’s accomplishments. It is completely voluntary, and no one is obligated to do anything they don’t want to, except participate in whatever capacity they can. The group is a wonderful social and networking space with some amazingly talented authors and many future stars.
And yet, something about the group caught my notice.
I don’t have any hard data or statistics in front of me, but several weeks ago as I was answering questions for my first online author interview, I was startled to realize that I was one of three YA authors of Color debuting in 2009.
The group is not all of the debuting YA authors for 2009, but it is a significant chunk. And though there are, no doubt, other debut authors of Color, I’m willing to bet that the overall demographic wouldn’t reflect a global reality. This, of course, is similar to the representation of “reality” as depicted on television, film, major magazines, and other mainstream media. In our little group of debuting authors, three are people of Color and three are men.
So what does this say about our society’s cultural production for young consumers?
About the stories that make it to print?
On the one hand, it’s great to have so many women’s voices and perspectives out there, especially in literature – a field that has been historically, and overwhelmingly, male-dominated (granted, fields related to children and caretaking – nursing, teaching, etc., have always been acceptable spaces for women to occupy). On the other hand, there is a glaring dearth of racially and ethnically diverse voices out there in YA lit. Same with sexuality. As far as I know, none of the debut novels in our group have a LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender or Questioning) main character.
Often, when I bring these points up to my contemporaries I hear, “Maybe there just aren’t that many people of Color/LGBT writers out there.” Or, “The market for that type of writing is probably small.”
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