Being a Teenager Isn't Shameful

The sun is shining. It’s Saturday. And another uninformed article defaming YA has been written this week. This time by Slate. It’s starting to feel like business as usual. And since it feels like business as usual, I had no intention of engaging this debate on my blog. I tweeted other writers’ and agents’ smart thoughts on the issue. I reblogged a great piece by Gwenda Bond on tumblr, Ten Reasons You Should Read YA (No Matter What Age You Are). I didn’t think this issue needed my specific voice.

And then I went on Facebook. 

And now I’m angry. I was frustrated before about the Slate article, but now I’m fuming. Because what I saw on Facebook were people who do not read YA using the Slate article as justification for their disdain for YA. As legitimatizing their feelings that YA's adult readers do not want to grow up.

When did interest in bildungsroman become an indicator of not wanting to grow up? Because that’s what YA is about—coming of age and all the baggage that goes with it. How many of our classic books are about bildungsroman? The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Sawyer, David Copperfield, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Candide, Jane Eyre, Great Expectations (Okay, let’s be real, so much of Dickens), and The Catcher in the Rye. And those are just a few classics that deal with coming of age. Should adults feel shame for reading those?

So. Is this really just derision of a marketing category? If these books were shelved in a different section in the book store or library would they be subject to the same vitriol? Is this a matter of judging packaging instead of engaging content? Because it’s easy to judge a book by its marketing.

The issues faced by teenagers, however, are real and important. Many of the philosophical and psychological questions teenagers wrestle with during adolescence are questions we struggle with throughout our lives. Because like teenagers, adults are human. And humans are cyclical creatures. We come back to the same ideas and issues again and again in our lives. We never stop growing and learning, even as adults. Or at least, I hope we don’t. In teenagers though, these questions are distilled into something powerful and raw, something that burns and cuts. 

Questions like: Who am I? (The first question of all philosophical inquiry.) What defines me? Does anyone love me? Can anyone love me? What is love? What is friendship? What’s the purpose to life? Do I have a purpose? Do I have meaning and worth? What gives me meaning and worth? What is my role in society? What is society? Is society good or bad? Why? What is family? What defines family? What’s my relationship to my family as I grow older?

Those sound like significant questions worthy of great literary consideration to me, not simplistic replacements for “adult” literature. And I can’t think of a single YA book I’ve read that doesn’t deal with a handful of those issues. Yes, even the ones some want to dismiss as not “serious literature.” In my experience, the majority of YA books ask the big questions of life more often than adult market books—sometimes head on and sometimes allegorically in genre YA.

But what troubles me the most about the Slate article and the responses I’ve read is the underlying presupposition that teenage experiences are something to be ashamed of. That wanting to understand teenagers and empathize with them implies you are childish, a Peter Pan. You never want to grow up. I concede those people exist. Of course, they do. But sweet mercy, who would want to go through adolescence again? It was, hand downs, the most difficult time of my life. And I went to books looking for answers, for escape. To know I wasn’t alone. To survive. 

Teenagers deserve a voice. They need their stories told. And they need to know their experiences, their identity is not something shameful. That’s why I proudly read and write YA. 

And that’s what this article claims: Adults should be ashamed and embarrassed to try to understand and empathize with people who are bleeding, who are hemorrhaging every day. Because we understand and gain empathy through stories. And if you think that’s unimportant, please don’t interact with teenagers. They can tell when someone has contempt for their experiences and existence.

      I will leave you with this thought:

“Critics who treat ‘adult’ as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” —C.S. Lewis

And because I like to usually end things on a positive note, what YA books have been important to you? Or what books in adolescence showed you that you were not alone? Give them a shout out here or on twitter or tumblr. Let’s promote great books!

P.S. I did not bring up the issue of the quality of YA literature, because it’s like claiming all detective stories are badly written because they’re detective stories. It doesn’t warrant an answer. However, if you’re interested, I can recommend a long list of excellently crafted YA novels. And if you disagree, fight me.