Publishing to save or poison?

The following post is a response to the recent Wall Street Journal piece “Darkness Too Visible” about young adult literature and publishing.  Susan Van Metre is the publisher of  Amulet Books, and has been editing and publishing books for children and young adults for more than twenty years.   Lauren Myracle is the author of bestselling books for young adults including ttyl, Bliss, and most recently Shine.

This past weekend, The Wall Street Journal published an article, titled “Darkness Too Visible,” criticizing contemporary young adult literature and what the author, Meghan Cox Gurdon, perceives as its dangerous and distorted depiction of life.

Within a few hours, the Internet was alight with infuriated responses from young adult authors, readers, librarians, and booksellers, many commenting via Twitter to the hashtag #YASaves about the life-saving importance of YA novels that look honestly and unflinchingly at real problems.

One of the books that Mrs. Gurdon calls out for its profanity and “pathologies depicted in gut-wrenching detail” is Shine by Lauren Myracle (Spring 2011), a novel about a hate crime in an impoverished Southern community.

Mrs. Gurdon’s thesis is that authors and publishers of young adult books are foisting gruesome, insidious content on young readers in a desperate bid for sales and relevance, and then, when parents object, shouting censorship and hiding behind the banner of freedom of expression. Her evidence of the last-gasp state of young adult publishing is anecdotal and comes from bookstore owner Jewell Stoddard, who doubts the popularity of young adult literature based on the recent visit of a class of seniors to her store, Politics & Prose, in which just three students in the group professed an interest in the category.

In fact, young adult books have never been more popular.  Sales of YA fiction jumped 23% from 1999 to 2005, according to industry analyst Albert Greco, and have continued to grow since. Greco projects that combined sales of children’s and young adult trade books will surpass adult trades sales by more than 70 million units this year, for a total of $3.29 billion in revenue. But perhaps the greatest proof of the popularity of young adult fiction is the number of successful authors of adult books–James Patterson, Alice Hoffman, Carl Hiaasen, Francine Prose, Dave Barry, John Grisham, and more–who are now writing for teens.

Per Mrs. Gurdon, Jewell Stoddard traces the root of the problem with young adult fiction to the “aesthetic coarseness” of young publishers. Since they themselves were fed on “video games and TV and really violent movies,” they are now trying to pass their taste for darkness on to the next generation.

I would laugh at this characterization of our industry if there were not two million subscribers to the Wall Street Journal.  This particular publisher happens to be middle-aged, last played a videogame in 1985 (Ms. Pac Man at the mall video arcade), and closes her eyes during episodes of  “House.” What I was fed on were great books, made available to me by parents who encouraged me to read widely and democratically, and who respected my intelligence and my ability to distinguish between fiction and reality. It was this cultivated love of books that led me into publishing. I suspect this is true of most of my fellow editors, as well.

I also had great teachers who handed me Lord of the Flies, Brave New World, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovtch, Darkness at Noon, A Turn of the Screw, and Macbeth. These books are on the curricula at many high schools and introduce teenagers to such dark topics as fascism, pedophilia, murder, torture, and more.  Where is the objection to these books? I suspect that Mrs. Gurdon doesn’t object to these because they are “literature,” without the qualifier of “young adult” before them. Darkness is okay when it comes from books written for adults but regularly assigned to teens.  It’s not okay when it comes from books written for teens because, we can infer, these books aren’t real literature and are therefore dismissible.

Mrs. Gurdon bemoans the lack of beauty in young adult literature and its distorted, “hall of fun-house mirrors” look at life, yet the summary she gives of Lauren Myracle’s Shine is itself a distorted reflection: a list of the darkest aspects of the book that fails to mention that it is also a story of forgiveness (of one’s self and others), faith, and love. Shine opens with words from the Gospel of Matthew, “You are the light of the world,” and the protagonist’s journey, though it takes her through darkness, leads her to a place where she can shine her light again and embrace the world in all its beautiful complexity.

We all deserve to see what’s best about life in the books we read, but sometimes beauty lives very close to ugliness, and it’s difficult to truly appreciate one without the other. Likewise, we can’t expect teens to intuitively know how to navigate a world rife with injustice and intolerance if we, the adults in their lives, feign ignorance of its cruelties. Implying that those who refuse to turn a blind eye to injustice are guilty of poisoning the minds of teenagers is truly ugly.

There is no question that young adult literature is high on drama and extreme circumstances, but this is no accident and certainly no agenda of “aesthetically coarse” publishers.  Adolescents are naturally attracted to extremes.  This is the age of self-definition, and it manifests itself in periods of wearing all-black and quoting Rimbaud or going for every possible academic award until your transcript looks like a laundry list.   What adults might see as melodrama often feels right to readers riding waves of hormones and lacking the perspective that age brings.

Nevertheless, I respect parents’ right to guide their children’s choices, and I certainly don’t cry censorship, as Mrs. Gurdon suggests, when a parent makes choices for his or her own children.  I do object when parents feel they can make the choice for all children, as is the case when books are formally challenged at our public libraries with the goal of withdrawing them from circulation.

I understand that what’s behind Mrs. Gurdon’s article is a desire to figure out what it means to be a good parent at this particular moment in time. This is a noble pursuit and one I can’t take issue with.  But as a girl raised in part by books, I hate to see the vital importance of good writing and storytelling, however dark, dismissed in this way.

For other responses to the WSJ article, follow these links or check out Twitter, where #YASaves was the third highest trending topic this week.

Lauren Myracle’s response

NPR’s ‘Seeing Teenagers As We Wish They Were: The Debate Over YA Fiction’

Salon’s ‘Has young adult fiction become too dark?’

One-Minute Book Review’s defense

The New Yorkers: ‘A Tale of Hashtaggery’

Laurie Halse Anderson’s reaction, ‘Stuck between rage and compassion’

The Guardian’s ‘Yes, teen fiction can be dark—but it shows teenagers they aren’t alone’ by Maureen Johnson

Sherman Alexie’s brilliant, heart-wrenching response in the WSJ itself