Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from how stupports
Speaker 1: dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
Speaker 1: and I'm Caroline and this is the two thousand fourteen
Speaker 1: annual Stuff Mom Never Told You Summer Book Edition Podcast,
Speaker 1: Episode Podcast Chapter four. Join our book Club, Join our
Speaker 1: book Club. Yeah, every summer we get real book nerdy
Speaker 1: and devote a podcast to some aspect of books, publishing, literature,
Speaker 1: and partially timed with the Fault in our Stars coming
Speaker 1: to the big screen this summer, and partially because stuff
Speaker 1: I've Never told You folks really seem to like this
Speaker 1: idea when we tossed it out on Facebook and Twitter.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about why a lit young adult
Speaker 1: literature that's right? And of course this immediately, like all
Speaker 1: of my research for this episode was really just REVERI
Speaker 1: just just me going back into time traveling sequence in
Speaker 1: my mind, remembering reading books like The Giver or Catcher
Speaker 1: in the Rye a separate piece The Outsiders, Stay Gold,
Speaker 1: pony Boy, and I just reread Enders Game not too
Speaker 1: long ago in anticipation of seeing the movie, and then
Speaker 1: I heard that it was not so great. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if that's true. Correg me if I'm wrong, but
Speaker 1: I just didn't want to ruin it because I love
Speaker 1: Enders Games so much. Well, an Enders Game and The
Speaker 1: Fault in Our Stars are by no means the only
Speaker 1: y novels that have been developed into movies. I mean,
Speaker 1: we are definitely living in a time of the reign
Speaker 1: of y A because if you think about it, Harry Potter,
Speaker 1: Twilight and the Hunger Games, those massive franchises as they
Speaker 1: are now all start it out as y A books. Yeah,
Speaker 1: why A books that drew humongous audiences of all ages.
Speaker 1: Because key to the success of so many books is
Speaker 1: not just having the fourteen year old or the eight
Speaker 1: year old or however old you are picking up the
Speaker 1: book or asking mom to buy it. It's sucking in
Speaker 1: those grown ups who are just fascinated by the clear
Speaker 1: and compelling, incredible storylines that a lot of these books have.
Speaker 1: And I gotta tell you, Caroline, I read The Fault
Speaker 1: in Our Stars by John Green, which right now, that's
Speaker 1: like I mean, it has been on a best seller
Speaker 1: list for ages at this point, and I had seen
Speaker 1: the book mentioned in a lot of places. I had
Speaker 1: read a glowing review of it in the New York Times,
Speaker 1: and so of course I bought it. I was going
Speaker 1: on vacation and wanted a book to read, so I
Speaker 1: picked it up and I started reading it, not knowing
Speaker 1: that it was a y A book. And it's fantastic.
Speaker 1: It really is a great read. But there were times
Speaker 1: when I was like, you know this, this really this
Speaker 1: is really reading like a adult novel, and got on
Speaker 1: the internet again, Well, what was it about it that
Speaker 1: made you think it was written like a young adult novel?
Speaker 1: Just the way that young adult novels are, particularly in motive,
Speaker 1: and just the way that John Green writes the characters
Speaker 1: internal monologues and their conversations with each other. Um, just
Speaker 1: there's a particular y a tone of just sheer honesty,
Speaker 1: like cutting through all of the lyric pros that you
Speaker 1: might see in more adult fiction, which kind of just
Speaker 1: sounds like porn. Uh. It's that they kind of gave
Speaker 1: it away as a Y book, but it's it's nonetheless good.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's another example of a y A
Speaker 1: title that is now beloved by young and old well right,
Speaker 1: and that has a lot to do with in the
Speaker 1: Association for American Publishers ranked Children's and young adult books
Speaker 1: as the single fast, just growing publishing category. A lot
Speaker 1: of people are having that reaction to these books that
Speaker 1: I mean, young or old, wherever you fall. A lot
Speaker 1: of people just love these books. And I think that's
Speaker 1: so important. One thing that you hear people say, and
Speaker 1: have heard people say forever about like Harry Potter, for instance,
Speaker 1: is that it doesn't matter if the writing is that
Speaker 1: more emotive young adult style or if it is about
Speaker 1: witches and wizards. The fact that you're getting kids to
Speaker 1: read is so important. And um there was a twenty
Speaker 1: Scholastic Kids and Family Reading Report survey, for instance, that
Speaker 1: talked to kids between nine and eleven. Six of those
Speaker 1: kids said they read books for fun and to be
Speaker 1: inspired by storylines and characters, and half said that they
Speaker 1: read books to help figure out who they were and
Speaker 1: who they could become. So how important that we give
Speaker 1: them good quality storylines and reading material to sort of
Speaker 1: go on those personal journeys with. And I remember going
Speaker 1: on some of those personal journeys particularly, and I feel
Speaker 1: like this excuse on the younger end of y A.
Speaker 1: But I devoured Beverly Cleary books, the Ramona series, and
Speaker 1: I felt like I identified with her so much, and
Speaker 1: when she would experience something that I had experienced, it
Speaker 1: validated like my experience, and yeah, I totally get it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because these books are being used by kids, and I mean,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk more about this, but these books
Speaker 1: are being used by kids to work through things, you know,
Speaker 1: especially when we get into the topic of boys and
Speaker 1: young men being given books that give them more credit
Speaker 1: as readers than just being about football or just being
Speaker 1: about like solving you know, solving a problem on their
Speaker 1: sports team. Yeah, and and for why a lit today too,
Speaker 1: it's really breaking new ground exposing kids to protagonists who
Speaker 1: are transgender, or might have gay parents, or you know,
Speaker 1: like kind of exposings to more diverse perspectives. And um,
Speaker 1: it's not just young adults that this is appealing to,
Speaker 1: as we have now established, there's also been the rise
Speaker 1: of quote unquote kid lit book clubs among older readers,
Speaker 1: adults getting together intentionally reading say the Fault in Our
Speaker 1: Stars or the Giver or are you there, God, it's
Speaker 1: me Margaret. I would love to be in a Judy
Speaker 1: Bloom book club. I'm just saying, so, first of all,
Speaker 1: why don't we kick off with a brief history of
Speaker 1: y A because, uh, this genre hasn't been around forever. Well, right,
Speaker 1: because when you think about our history as a society,
Speaker 1: let's not get too big with us. But if you
Speaker 1: think about our own history and give it some context,
Speaker 1: when did teenagers become a thing? I mean that wasn't
Speaker 1: until about the nineteen forties that teenagers were even their
Speaker 1: own distinct social group with special teenagery types of needs,
Speaker 1: you know, like going and getting a mall and playing
Speaker 1: some tunes on the jukebox with Johnny. We're really we
Speaker 1: would have been real hip teams back then, Caroline, I'm
Speaker 1: obviously so hip. But in two you have the publication
Speaker 1: of Maureen Daily's seventeen Summer Consider the first ever young
Speaker 1: adult novel, and of course it's followed by a bunch
Speaker 1: of sports books for boys and more first love books
Speaker 1: for girls. They were pigeonholed as those being their only
Speaker 1: interests very early on, and then in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: not so long ago, the Young Adult Library coins the
Speaker 1: term young adult, and moving into the seventies, we see
Speaker 1: a popularity peak in y A with none other than
Speaker 1: Judy Bloom And you also have Robert Cormier's The Chocolate
Speaker 1: War and Lois duncan Uh, and all of this kind
Speaker 1: of spun off into y A as a genre of
Speaker 1: the single problem novels. Right, And a lot of people
Speaker 1: who are passionate about young adults, the young adult genre, um,
Speaker 1: whether they're writers or just readers, kind of complain about
Speaker 1: this period in young adult history, about the formulaic like
Speaker 1: solving one problem, whether it's you know, parents splitting up,
Speaker 1: or whether it's drugs at school or whatever. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of people out there saying, hey, life is
Speaker 1: more complicated than just solving one problem. You know, life
Speaker 1: is not a sitcom. Yeah, I mean this was essentially
Speaker 1: the Degrassi of the novelized version of Degrassi, where every
Speaker 1: single episode is a new tough teen issue to tackle. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But in the nineteen eighties we start to see more
Speaker 1: genre fiction, including one of my personal favorite writers growing
Speaker 1: up are Al Stein. He releases his Fear Streets series
Speaker 1: in the eighties. You also have Sweet Valley High, which
Speaker 1: Kristen I never I never read Sweet Valley High. I
Speaker 1: never read The Babysitters Club. I read some Babysitters Club.
Speaker 1: My older sisters read Sweet Valley High. I think that
Speaker 1: by the time I got around to Sweep Valley High,
Speaker 1: I was in a very strong little women face, so
Speaker 1: I just reread that a lot. So. Also in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, even though we're seeing different types of genre
Speaker 1: fiction emerged for young adults, a National Endowment for the
Speaker 1: Art to study showed that between two and two thousand two,
Speaker 1: the number of young adults reading actually dropped a significant percent.
Speaker 1: It was down, but starting in two thousand two and
Speaker 1: going through two thousand eight, it was up twenty one percent.
Speaker 1: Amid all this, you have some really interesting things going
Speaker 1: on in the young adult publishing world. Though. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: really in the early two thousand's where publishers begin marketing
Speaker 1: directly to teens and lo and Behold, when you start
Speaker 1: targeting your audience, you start getting a lot of returns.
Speaker 1: And this is also when we have the rise of
Speaker 1: the dystopian teen novel allah, Hunger Games, and um. Jennifer
Speaker 1: and Barnes is a young adult author and a cognitive
Speaker 1: science scholar who was asked about the particular early two
Speaker 1: thousand the early aughts dystopian appeal, and she said, just
Speaker 1: like adolescence is between childhood and adulthood, paranormal or other
Speaker 1: is between human and supernatural. Teens are caught between two worlds,
Speaker 1: childhood and adulthood, and in y A they can navigate
Speaker 1: those two worlds and sometimes dualities of other worlds. I
Speaker 1: feel like a lot in YA is often very symbolic
Speaker 1: of or not so symbolic, just hammering home transition, transition.
Speaker 1: You're going through this transitional phase. And just in terms
Speaker 1: of publishing, there were three thousand y A titles published
Speaker 1: then in two thousand nine, as a result of publishers
Speaker 1: starting to see a return on their marketing to teens,
Speaker 1: you have thirty thousand y A titles being published. I
Speaker 1: mean it is big business, especially now too with e books.
Speaker 1: You've had more y A titles than ever before. Well sure,
Speaker 1: because in that same period that you just cited, you
Speaker 1: have the five Harry Potter books. Between two thousand four.
Speaker 1: That's when the five Harry Potter books come out, and
Speaker 1: that's when everybody, like everybody's world exploded. I remember being,
Speaker 1: however old you are in anyway, I remember being like
Speaker 1: a teenager and thinking like, what is going on in
Speaker 1: the universe. It's exploding over this Harry Potter gibberish because
Speaker 1: people were making money. You know what adults love doing,
Speaker 1: It's making money. That's right off of the backs of children.
Speaker 1: But also I had a lot of my friends who
Speaker 1: were obsessed with Harry Potter. But so okay, moving forward
Speaker 1: from from just talking about young adults, In two thousand nine, St.
Speaker 1: Martin's Press launched the new adult genre, featuring characters in
Speaker 1: their late teens in early twenties, working through some of
Speaker 1: those slightly old their young adult issue. This is so millennial.
Speaker 1: When I read this, it's just everything. It's like our
Speaker 1: millennial generation pigeonholed into a genre because new adult covers
Speaker 1: issues of separation and an attachment individual adan and romantic,
Speaker 1: sexual and economic independence. Essentially like we were now maybe
Speaker 1: at the space to where, okay, in the early twentieth
Speaker 1: century we have the establishment of this idea of childhood.
Speaker 1: Then in the nineteen forties and fifties you have the
Speaker 1: establishment of this idea of teenage shood. And now with
Speaker 1: the millennials, it seems like we're now in this era
Speaker 1: of the development of this new adult young adult who
Speaker 1: is also an adult idea, you know, who might be
Speaker 1: living at home maybe not. And now we have literature
Speaker 1: all for us and that's probably not a bad idea
Speaker 1: for publishers bottom lines, especially when you consider of young
Speaker 1: adult books purchased in twelve were bought by adults between
Speaker 1: eighteen and forty four years old. That's coming from a
Speaker 1: market research firm, but another recent Pew survey found that
Speaker 1: people between sixteen and twenty nine are checking out books
Speaker 1: more than anyone else from libraries. So this is a
Speaker 1: group that's like hungry for for literature geared towards them.
Speaker 1: I'm in that group. I totally use my library card
Speaker 1: and I support my public library, even though yes, it
Speaker 1: can be inconvenient to get to at times. But this
Speaker 1: Summer Books episode stands in contrast to last year's episode
Speaker 1: when when we really talked about the issue of uh,
Speaker 1: can you tell a gendered book by its gendered cover?
Speaker 1: Talking about whether or not female authors are taken as
Speaker 1: seriously and marketed via book covers as seriously as male authors,
Speaker 1: and when you transition, and that's more with adult fiction,
Speaker 1: but when you transition now into y A, the conversation
Speaker 1: is more, Ah, there's so many women and they're just
Speaker 1: writing stories for girls. What about men? It's like the
Speaker 1: exact opposite, right, Megan LeWitt Over at The Atlantic looked
Speaker 1: at NPR Books Listener curated one hundred best ever teen
Speaker 1: novels and found that it is dominated women are dominating
Speaker 1: in this list, women like Harper, Lee, Suzanne Collins, J.
Speaker 1: K Rowling, sc Hinton outsiders what what. She found that
Speaker 1: sixty of all two hundred and thirty five titles suggested
Speaker 1: by the readers were written by women. And when it
Speaker 1: comes to the readership that these authors appear to be
Speaker 1: writing for, at least reported on in the New York
Speaker 1: Times in two thousand eleven, it seems like a lot
Speaker 1: of these stories are for girls. Um. There's a quote
Speaker 1: from this article. At the two thousand seven a l
Speaker 1: A conference, a Harper executive said that at least three
Speaker 1: quarters of her target audience were girls, and that they
Speaker 1: wanted to read about mean girls, gossip girls, freenemies, and vampires.
Speaker 1: And in that same article, the writer talked to Michael
Speaker 1: cart who's the past president of the Young Adult Library
Speaker 1: Services Association, and he was arguing that we need more
Speaker 1: books that invite boys to reflect on what kinds of
Speaker 1: men they want to become. We need to It's great
Speaker 1: that we're giving all these girls all these books, but
Speaker 1: we need some more books focusing on boys so that
Speaker 1: they can reflect on their own young developing masculinity. But
Speaker 1: ask for the question of why female authors tend to
Speaker 1: dominate y A. Uh, there's this idea that, especially now,
Speaker 1: you basically have a lot of young female novelists jumping
Speaker 1: right into writing y A and then it's being bought.
Speaker 1: These stories are being bought by female editors and then
Speaker 1: being stocked by female librarians, and then being taught by
Speaker 1: female teachers. So hey, guess what, when you have the
Speaker 1: feminization of certain kinds of industries, you create certain cycles
Speaker 1: like this apparently, And as Megan LeWitt goes on to
Speaker 1: talk about in her piece in The Atlantic, there's also
Speaker 1: maybe the idea that since y A as a genre
Speaker 1: is all about representing worlds of limitless potential of teaching,
Speaker 1: you know, young kids how to make that transition to
Speaker 1: adulthood in a more empowered kind of way, perhaps that
Speaker 1: you know, translates to the publishing world as well, to
Speaker 1: where perhaps y A is a little bit more and
Speaker 1: inured from adult literatures. Gender bias that that often happens
Speaker 1: in terms of male authors like Jonathan Franzen being seen
Speaker 1: as a more serious writer and nothing against Jonathan Franzen,
Speaker 1: big fan. So you know, we were just discussing, um,
Speaker 1: we've been discussing gender and things being dominated by women.
Speaker 1: Do we need more strong boy characters for our male
Speaker 1: readers out there? There's a whole lot of interesting diversity
Speaker 1: issues out there in this young adult field, and we're
Speaker 1: going to get into a lot more of this. And
Speaker 1: we come right back from a quick break. So as
Speaker 1: we mentioned when we were jumping through the history of
Speaker 1: y A in the nineteen seventies, you sort of have
Speaker 1: its spiral into these single problem novels where every novel
Speaker 1: is a new issue, whether you know, parents are getting
Speaker 1: divorced or the team got pregnant, on on and on
Speaker 1: and on. And even though we've moved away from that
Speaker 1: more formulaic nine seventies style, why is still focused today
Speaker 1: on not necessarily just single problem issues, but nonetheless like
Speaker 1: there is a particular focus on Okay, are we going
Speaker 1: to talk what what kind of obstacle is this younger
Speaker 1: character going to get through? And will there be issues
Speaker 1: of you know, LGBT diversity or racial diversity, like what's
Speaker 1: going on with these kids stories? I feel like there's
Speaker 1: more strategic focus on issues rather than just a blanket
Speaker 1: story in y A because a lot of it seems
Speaker 1: to be teaching kids a lesson right and and like,
Speaker 1: you know, like I mentioned earlier in the podcast, a
Speaker 1: lot of kids, particularly younger kids, report that they do
Speaker 1: read books to figure out where they want to take
Speaker 1: their lives. Not only do they want to let their
Speaker 1: imagination run free, but they also sort of want to
Speaker 1: figure out, like where do I fit? And it can
Speaker 1: be hard for kids who are different than what is
Speaker 1: the normal presentation to find their place when they're not
Speaker 1: even written about the normal presentation being like a you know,
Speaker 1: cis gender straight, white, male or female protagonist. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so there's been a lot of attention paid of late
Speaker 1: to diversity representations in y A lit. And uh, this
Speaker 1: data we're about to toss out at you is coming
Speaker 1: from Published year Is Weekly and some analysis from Ellen O,
Speaker 1: a y A author who is writing for a racialitious
Speaker 1: And as of March two thousand, fourteen, of the one
Speaker 1: three young adult titles on the publisher's weekly list, twenty
Speaker 1: three count as diverse. So just of the total are
Speaker 1: really diverse novels, and twelve of those three titles involve
Speaker 1: main characters of color. Seven of the main characters are
Speaker 1: LGBT and about seven are disabled. Yeah, and speaking specifically
Speaker 1: about characters of color, Young adult author Sharon Flake, writing
Speaker 1: in the New York Times Room for Debate section, called
Speaker 1: for more non white protagonists, and her reasoning was that
Speaker 1: when African American characters speak, it gives not just black
Speaker 1: youth permission to speak and see the value of who
Speaker 1: they are, but others as well, Like, how important is
Speaker 1: it when kids are young and they're developing, and they're
Speaker 1: learning about the world through literature through the eyes of
Speaker 1: these characters, How important it is to let them see
Speaker 1: the world through someone else's eyes if they're learning about
Speaker 1: other people or in the case of these characters of color,
Speaker 1: who seemed to be largely missing from these narratives, it's
Speaker 1: so important for these kids to see themselves reflected in
Speaker 1: the pages exactly. I mean, I think you know. I
Speaker 1: mentioned my love for Ramona Quimby earlier. Part of that
Speaker 1: deep connection was the fact that she, like me, was
Speaker 1: a younger sister with brown hair, kind of a tomboy.
Speaker 1: Her father smoked, and she didn't like it. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was down to the tea, I felt like I
Speaker 1: was reading about someone who could be my twin. Well
Speaker 1: and and speaking though of protagonists of color, Victoria law
Speaker 1: Over at Bitch did an entire blog series called Girls
Speaker 1: of Color in Dystopia, looking closely at the representation of
Speaker 1: girls of color in forty y a books, and she
Speaker 1: found that only fourteen had grows of color as prominent characters,
Speaker 1: four had girls of color as sidelined or very minor characters,
Speaker 1: and twenty two of them had no identifiable girls of
Speaker 1: color in them at all. Right, she actually highlights short
Speaker 1: story anthologies diverse energies and after nineteen stories of apocalypse
Speaker 1: and dystopia, and she's she was writing also about how
Speaker 1: you know? She pulled some of these book ideas from
Speaker 1: various places around the internet, but she also used her
Speaker 1: daughter as someone to suggest titles for her to read,
Speaker 1: kind of driving home that idea too, that Hey, you know,
Speaker 1: our daughters are watching or our sons are watching, we
Speaker 1: need to provide them with characters they can really relate to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and similar to last year's book episode on can
Speaker 1: You Judge a Book by Its gendered cover? Why, author
Speaker 1: Ellen oh Over at Racial Isious was calling for more
Speaker 1: diversity in why A covers instead of the go to
Speaker 1: pretty white girl on the cover, because and she likens
Speaker 1: it to a need for diversity and fashion saying to
Speaker 1: say that only pretty white girls can sell y A
Speaker 1: books is not a business model that publishers should approve of,
Speaker 1: and that's not true. We need to look no further
Speaker 1: than the gender neutral and iconic covers for the Hunger
Speaker 1: Games and Twilight series to see the truth. And even
Speaker 1: though you know the Hunger Games and Twilight series are
Speaker 1: starring you know, pretty white girls, it's a good point
Speaker 1: that it's not those faces that we're sending those books
Speaker 1: flying off the shelves. And and speaking of representation as well,
Speaker 1: it was also notable that The Fault in Our Stars,
Speaker 1: which stars a team with a disability, has been the
Speaker 1: top selling title for two thousand twelve and two thousand
Speaker 1: thirteen in the genre. Right and correct me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: considering I have not read it or seen a movie,
Speaker 1: but I mean it's it's really emotional and very emotional, right,
Speaker 1: And and one point that people make about these young
Speaker 1: adult novels is that they their prose is so clear,
Speaker 1: and they tend to use emotion as a way to
Speaker 1: tell these transformational stories that that well young people or
Speaker 1: adults can really relate to. UM And speaking of relating
Speaker 1: to characters, do you like that transition? Thank you? UM.
Speaker 1: We also need to talk about, obviously LGBT characters in
Speaker 1: young adult fiction. UM and Melinda Low. Young adult author
Speaker 1: Melinda Low, was talking about this very topic. She pointed
Speaker 1: out that two thousand three was a watershed year for
Speaker 1: LGBT characters in y A because that year we saw
Speaker 1: the publication of David Levithan's Boy Meets Boy, Julianne Peter's
Speaker 1: Keeping You a Secret, Brent Hardinger's Geography Club, and Alex
Speaker 1: Sanchez's Rainbow High. And just two years later in two
Speaker 1: thousand five, we saw twenty five LGBT young adult novels published.
Speaker 1: But Melinda Low does point out that a majority of
Speaker 1: these titles are about sis gender gay guys, which is
Speaker 1: kind of fascinating. That's usually a gay male protagonist, and
Speaker 1: they're almost always in a contemporary genre. There's little intersectionality
Speaker 1: going on where you might have uh, disabled lesbian leading
Speaker 1: the way or you know, a gay protagonist in space,
Speaker 1: or you know, there's not much not much, Uh, there's
Speaker 1: very little cross sectioning happening, So similar to what ellen
Speaker 1: O said about, you know, presenting young adult covers with
Speaker 1: only young girls, young white girls on the cover, and
Speaker 1: how there's this perception that that's all that will get
Speaker 1: these books to sell. Low points out that there is
Speaker 1: a persistent belief among a lot of agents and publishers
Speaker 1: that LGBT main characters don't sell, that anybody who is
Speaker 1: different from the very structured norm will not attract a
Speaker 1: wide enough audience. But the gay characters in Cassandra Claire's
Speaker 1: Mortal Instruments series, we're so popular that they spawned a
Speaker 1: New York Times best sell e book series called The
Speaker 1: bin Chronicles. And then there's also the Pretty Little Liar series,
Speaker 1: which has been wildly successful and yes, turned into that
Speaker 1: show on the CW, which has a bisexual main character
Speaker 1: and sometimes heard bisexuality is explored in that. So it's
Speaker 1: a bad argument that hey, LGBT doesn't sell, Yeah, it does.
Speaker 1: Let them write that. Yeah. And part of that whole
Speaker 1: thing about telling authors that your gay character won't sell
Speaker 1: very well is there's also this ugly effort to get
Speaker 1: writers to straighten their gay characters that they've written and
Speaker 1: there are even authors out there who talk about, Yeah,
Speaker 1: my editor went in and made these changes without even
Speaker 1: consulting me. Made this character, whether it's one of the
Speaker 1: main characters or whether it's sort of a side character,
Speaker 1: made this person straight without even asking me. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: at the risk of being blacklisted by agents and publishers.
Speaker 1: Not too long ago, Rachel Minija Brown, author of All
Speaker 1: the Fishes Come Home to Roost, and Sherwood Smith, author
Speaker 1: of Crown Duel and a lot of other y books,
Speaker 1: wrote about wrote a blog post about how an agent
Speaker 1: offered to sign them only if they straightened a gay
Speaker 1: character in a book that they co wrote, and they
Speaker 1: talked about how anecdotally this happens pretty frequently, and they
Speaker 1: didn't out the agent who brought this up, but they
Speaker 1: said that they hear about this a lot from other
Speaker 1: authors who don't want to speak up about this, because
Speaker 1: if you start going around telling secrets about what agents
Speaker 1: are telling you, what conditions they're laying out, then you know,
Speaker 1: the publishing industry might might shut you down. And they
Speaker 1: did underscore and stress the fact that a lot of
Speaker 1: this has to do with money. They said, you know,
Speaker 1: we're not trying to make a commentary on anyone's personal
Speaker 1: beliefs or lifestyles or anything as far as the agents
Speaker 1: themselves go, because in their personal lives, maybe maybe they're gay,
Speaker 1: or maybe they are totally supportive of gay rights. But
Speaker 1: the fact remains that they are an agent of a
Speaker 1: larger company which is trying to make money. And if
Speaker 1: that part line for that company is that gay characters
Speaker 1: don't sell, the agents have to tow that line. But
Speaker 1: nonetheless you do have authors who are persisting and writing
Speaker 1: multiple lgbt y A titles, such as Alex Sanchez, Ellen Hopkins,
Speaker 1: and Ellen Whitlinger. And so I have a feeling the
Speaker 1: more authors continue to write these books, the more they sell,
Speaker 1: the more that old line of thinking within publishing houses
Speaker 1: will hopefully erode. And I mean, race and sexuality are
Speaker 1: are just two aspects of issues, life issues, societal issues
Speaker 1: that get figured out through reading these books. Gender roles themselves,
Speaker 1: whether you're gay or straight, black or white, are also
Speaker 1: like a huge portion of what these books are about.
Speaker 1: Just figuring where figuring out where you stand. Yeah, one
Speaker 1: quote that jumped out to me from Melinda Lowe is
Speaker 1: that a lot of the discourse on why fiction, especially
Speaker 1: in this era of Twilight has been about gender, particularly
Speaker 1: whether why a fiction provides good role models for girls
Speaker 1: and boys. And I mean it makes sense that a
Speaker 1: lot of these gender role issues are inherently tied up
Speaker 1: in y A because they're taking place, yet again in
Speaker 1: with characters going through this transitional period of you know,
Speaker 1: moving from being a teenager or a child into being
Speaker 1: a woman or a man whole woman, and what does
Speaker 1: that mean? What does that mean in terms of you know,
Speaker 1: your agency, how how you interact with people, what you
Speaker 1: what your ambitions are, right, And I mean speaking about
Speaker 1: agency and Twilight, I mean a lot of people's argument
Speaker 1: about those books is that Bella is sort of a
Speaker 1: shell of a character who lives for men, or these
Speaker 1: two men in particular, and that you know, she's not
Speaker 1: living for herself and her own purposes, and that she's
Speaker 1: not a good role model. But it is that issue
Speaker 1: of having good role models that young adult author Steve
Speaker 1: bresen Off was tackling when he said that we need
Speaker 1: to see more characters that we've mind compelling, be they
Speaker 1: boys or girls, not because there's a shortage, but because
Speaker 1: that's what realistic fiction is, and we love realistic fiction
Speaker 1: well and it does seem too that speaking of gender roles,
Speaker 1: feminism has a pretty good place in why fiction. I
Speaker 1: think if you talk to a lot of women our age,
Speaker 1: they cite Judy Bloom and are you there, God, It's Me,
Speaker 1: Margaret and Forever as being these books that sort of
Speaker 1: lit those early fires of thinking about their female identities
Speaker 1: and how they relate to the world in that way.
Speaker 1: And Kelly Jensen, who's a librarian who has a rights
Speaker 1: for fantastic blog stacked was said quote, and oh, how
Speaker 1: the young adult world embraces feminism with wide open arms.
Speaker 1: And I wonder though, too, side note if this is
Speaker 1: related to the fact that this is an area of
Speaker 1: the publishing world where you simply have more female voices
Speaker 1: and more female representations, so maybe it is more open
Speaker 1: to these kinds of themes. But she cited some contemporary
Speaker 1: examples such as My Big Fat Manifesto by Susan Vote,
Speaker 1: which is about this girl who is very overweight, but
Speaker 1: she's her high school's advice columnists and she's like totally
Speaker 1: cool with her own by. She loves her shape, she
Speaker 1: loves the skin that she is in, and it's actually
Speaker 1: her boyfriend who is also overweight and ends up deciding
Speaker 1: that he wants to you know, go through some physical
Speaker 1: transformation and lose some weight, and she supports him in
Speaker 1: that it's not the typical thing of well, you know,
Speaker 1: she's going to go through her own transformation and lose
Speaker 1: a bunch of weight and then become prom queen and
Speaker 1: everyone lives happily ever after. Yeah, this character and this
Speaker 1: book gets to love herself. She gets to love herself,
Speaker 1: unlike so many other heroines of similar books that that
Speaker 1: are out there, but she gets to love herself, and
Speaker 1: she gets to support her boyfriend in pursuing what will
Speaker 1: make him happy for himself, making those choices for his body.
Speaker 1: And speaking of which she also named checks Megan McCafferty's
Speaker 1: Bumped series, which is essentially dystopia meets reproductive rights. It
Speaker 1: takes place in this era when girls are essentially sold
Speaker 1: off to be breeders, and so it goes into all,
Speaker 1: I mean, you can imagine all the different you know,
Speaker 1: related themes over autonomy of over one's body and agency
Speaker 1: and again, yes, reproductive rights. But um, I really enjoyed
Speaker 1: reading about reading about the perspective on characters in these
Speaker 1: books that focus on body issues, because you know it's
Speaker 1: not I don't know. I don't know that I've ever
Speaker 1: read a young adult novel that focused on like a
Speaker 1: weight lost journey or someone who won the one her
Speaker 1: dream man or got a spot on the cheerleading squad
Speaker 1: after losing a bunch of weight. I know that it's
Speaker 1: something that we covered in our movie Makeover episode, but
Speaker 1: over it stacked. Kelly Jensen again points out that there's
Speaker 1: all of these really problematic weight loss and just weight
Speaker 1: centric tropes that tend to be focused on in young
Speaker 1: adult novels. Like I said earlier that character in My
Speaker 1: Big Fat Manifesto got to love herself. She was written
Speaker 1: as someone who loved herself, whereas a lot of times
Speaker 1: in young adult novels, characters who are overweight are portrayed
Speaker 1: as people who they could lose weight if they wanted to,
Speaker 1: but maybe they just can't get up the energy or
Speaker 1: the desire to, or they have a lack of support
Speaker 1: from their family, or that they're constantly plagued by fat
Speaker 1: related fears, like their entire life is revolving around the
Speaker 1: fear that they're going to break a chair. They're not
Speaker 1: allowed to just be characters who exist and who are
Speaker 1: also overweight. Yeah, and so she she highlights those being
Speaker 1: some problematic tropes that often pop up in y novels
Speaker 1: and important to highlight that because this is the age,
Speaker 1: as we were talking about in our body shaming epidemic episode,
Speaker 1: where I mean, these are the formative years for how
Speaker 1: we perceive our own bodies, So definitely important to talk
Speaker 1: about body issues in as healthy way as possible and
Speaker 1: over At School Library Journal, Minas Dar highlights some books
Speaker 1: that do that really well, such as I Am j
Speaker 1: by Crisp Beam, that doesn't look so much at weight
Speaker 1: issues but rather um tackles transgender realization. Um. There's also
Speaker 1: Skinny by Donna Cooner that is sort of an anti
Speaker 1: fairy tale about a girl who gets gastric bypass surgery
Speaker 1: and initially think, oh no, we're starting to pedal in
Speaker 1: some tropes here, but the weight loss ends up having
Speaker 1: unintended negative results as as the story progresses. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: Jensen writes, I mean talking about those tropes regarding weight loss,
Speaker 1: she talks about how a lot of these books might
Speaker 1: feature a character who loses weight and as a result,
Speaker 1: just just like we see in movies all the time,
Speaker 1: is rewarded with the boyfriend with the prom, queen recognition
Speaker 1: or whatever. And Jensen writes that, you know, it's important
Speaker 1: to know for our young girls that losing weight doesn't
Speaker 1: automatically earn you all these things, you know, popularity, boyfriends,
Speaker 1: all the stuff. That it's important to love yourself and
Speaker 1: be strong and who you are and earn those things
Speaker 1: through being yourself rather than simply fitting into a certain
Speaker 1: sized dress. Well, and the fact that there is that
Speaker 1: focused on the you know, communicating body positivity, representation, adventure,
Speaker 1: overcoming obstacles that continue to run throughout Y A fiction.
Speaker 1: It's so surprised that the appeal lasts beyond a younger leadership.
Speaker 1: I mean, we could go on and on and on
Speaker 1: about the different kinds of issues that Why It tends
Speaker 1: to tackle. But to wrap up this episode, let's talk
Speaker 1: about the the adult appeal of why A. Why do
Speaker 1: we keep reading these books and wanting to talk about
Speaker 1: these books? I feel like, if you get in a
Speaker 1: room with women in their twenties and just say the
Speaker 1: two words Judy Bloom, there you go. You're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking for the next hour. Yeah, it's funny how passionate
Speaker 1: so many adults feel about these genres of books, whether
Speaker 1: they read them in their childhood and are revisiting them
Speaker 1: now or whether they're reading them for the first time.
Speaker 1: But they also a lot of these writers, a lot
Speaker 1: of these readers will talk about how it's not uncommon
Speaker 1: to be totally criticized and made fun of by your friends.
Speaker 1: But Scholastic actually started an I read y a campaign
Speaker 1: to promote it for all ages, saying like, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: it's okay to be a grown up and really love
Speaker 1: the way these stories are told. Yeah. And Melinda Lowe,
Speaker 1: whom we've started a number of times now, whose author
Speaker 1: also a y author, started a hashtag why adults read
Speaker 1: why a on Twitter, and some of the responses she
Speaker 1: received included, I enjoyed the immediacy of the stories in
Speaker 1: the sense of being at the beginning of the path
Speaker 1: of who you'll become. And I love the intensity of
Speaker 1: the first time experiences, experimentation and growth that we're told
Speaker 1: to stop doing as adults. Right and agent Meredith Barnes
Speaker 1: was discussing this very same topic, and she says that
Speaker 1: every decision feels life changing, and every choice in these
Speaker 1: books can seem life or death. The emotions are no
Speaker 1: more or less valid than what one might experience at thirty,
Speaker 1: but it's the first time and thus very powerful. And
Speaker 1: who was it who also pointed out that if a
Speaker 1: young character is on the precipice of should I do
Speaker 1: drugs or whatever the case, maybe there's like almost like
Speaker 1: a loss of innocence at stake, whereas if an adult
Speaker 1: does it, it's more like, oh, well, that adult is
Speaker 1: just making an adult choice. And in The New York Times,
Speaker 1: Patrician McCormick, who's an author, was quoted as saying that basically,
Speaker 1: also what attracts grown ups to young adult fiction is
Speaker 1: that young adult authors are taking risks with narrative structure, voice,
Speaker 1: and social commentary that you don't see is often in
Speaker 1: adult fiction. And there's something I don't want to use
Speaker 1: the word here, but there's something like very clear and
Speaker 1: almost emotional about these young adult novels and the way
Speaker 1: that they're written that maybe you don't see in a
Speaker 1: bunch of adult books that are trying to be that
Speaker 1: are trying to be epic. Yeah I won't name names,
Speaker 1: but you know the books that are more like dramatic
Speaker 1: and overwrought for drama's sake. Yeah, I flew through the
Speaker 1: first Hunger Games novel because not not because I'm an
Speaker 1: amazing speed reader, but just because the dialogue in the action,
Speaker 1: like everything is so clear cut. You can literally lose
Speaker 1: yourself in these books and sort of gobble them up
Speaker 1: very quickly, which can be a nice moment of escape
Speaker 1: from our day to day hectic adult lives. I know,
Speaker 1: maybe I need to now go read a bunch of
Speaker 1: young adult novels because I I've been reading a lot
Speaker 1: of nonfiction regarding like how our brains work. I feel
Speaker 1: like I need maybe a bit of a h escape,
Speaker 1: a bit of a mental clarity escape. Oh and I
Speaker 1: feel like y A is perfect for summer reading because
Speaker 1: you just want if you just want a little bit
Speaker 1: of it doesn't necessarily have to be light fiction. I mean,
Speaker 1: they talk about really tough stuff sometimes, but it can
Speaker 1: that tough stuff can sometimes be easier to wade through
Speaker 1: in a y A format. And I'll tell you my
Speaker 1: summer reading project this year, Caroline and listeners. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be honest with you. I've never read Judy Bloom. I
Speaker 1: was not allowed to read Judy Bloom as a child
Speaker 1: because my mother thought that she was too scandalous. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's true. So I want to go back and read
Speaker 1: for the first time. Are you there, God, it's me Margaret.
Speaker 1: I have never read Judy Bloom either. We gotta do
Speaker 1: it for the sake of the fact that we're doing
Speaker 1: this episode, and then maybe we can have our own
Speaker 1: book club on the internet. Oh, an internet book club?
Speaker 1: Well I think with that, should we turn it over
Speaker 1: to our reading listeners? Yeah, let us know what kind
Speaker 1: of why A you love? What are some of your
Speaker 1: favorite titles, what are some of your favorite series? What
Speaker 1: is it about why A that has such a lasting appeal?
Speaker 1: Or are you people like Time editor Joel Stein, who
Speaker 1: in that New York Times room for debate about why
Speaker 1: was the one person saying, no, adults should not read
Speaker 1: these books because they're for kids. What a negative? Nancy
Speaker 1: go Away read some Thomas Pension come on, grow Up,
Speaker 1: which I mean, I understand that, but why is also fantastic. Um,
Speaker 1: So email us your why A thoughts mom stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com and you can find all
Speaker 1: of the links to all the sources that we're talking
Speaker 1: about if you want to look at any of these
Speaker 1: publishing sources. Were also going to have a giant list
Speaker 1: of why a recommendations for you over at stuff mom
Speaker 1: Never told you dot com, So be sure to head
Speaker 1: over there and check that out. And we got a
Speaker 1: couple of letters to share with you right now. I
Speaker 1: have a letter here from Cheryl that's related to our
Speaker 1: Military Wives episode. And in that episode, you know, we
Speaker 1: talked about how uh spouses being deployed and being gone
Speaker 1: for long periods of time, how that must relate to
Speaker 1: other professions to that have uh, you know, long times away.
Speaker 1: Basically anyway, Cheryl wrote that, um, I went into it
Speaker 1: very interested as I have a close friend who is
Speaker 1: a military wife with a deployed husband and two children
Speaker 1: under three. To make it through the deployment, she has
Speaker 1: moved cross country to stay with her folks who lived
Speaker 1: two doors down from me. I wanted to see how
Speaker 1: her experiences reflected your endings and found them to be
Speaker 1: quite similar. So thank you for bringing awareness to the
Speaker 1: tough times on the home front for these families. The
Speaker 1: podcast did get me to thinking about what may surprise folks,
Speaker 1: is a strangely related topic doctors, wives and clearly husbands too.
Speaker 1: But you get the point. My friend and I find
Speaker 1: welcome support in our shared experiences and feelings related to
Speaker 1: the stresses impacts on our children in general lifestyles created
Speaker 1: by our husband's professions. If ever there was a stereotype,
Speaker 1: it would be the golf playing doctor and his wife
Speaker 1: the well dressed tennis player. Oh, how inaccurate and lovely
Speaker 1: sounding that is. My husband and I are eight years
Speaker 1: into his ten years of training. When we finish, he
Speaker 1: will be a neonatologist. This road is incredibly misunderstood by
Speaker 1: anyone outside the field, starting with our own well intending
Speaker 1: families and friends. The stress, massive work hours, regular twenty
Speaker 1: four to thirty hour workships, and monetary and emotional strain
Speaker 1: all play significantly into the dynamics of the work and
Speaker 1: home life. It is a no frills, stressful life much
Speaker 1: of the time, similar to that of our wonderful military families.
Speaker 1: Doctor's wives at least have the benefit of seeing their
Speaker 1: husband's most days, even if only for a few minutes.
Speaker 1: As part of our coping, I take our todler to
Speaker 1: see my husband at the hospital for dinner on Friday,
Speaker 1: so they at least don't get too many days without
Speaker 1: seeing each other. And Cheryl says, please don't get the
Speaker 1: wrong impression. I am in no way trying to diminish
Speaker 1: the incredible sacrifice made by those in the military, nor
Speaker 1: trying to gain sympathy for doctor's wives, only looking to
Speaker 1: offer the real insight behind this stereotype. So thanks so much, Cheryl,
Speaker 1: and I've got to let her here from Jenny about
Speaker 1: our episode on Bronies, and she writes, I'm the mother
Speaker 1: of a two year old girl who is a huge
Speaker 1: My Little Pony fan, and my husband and I like
Speaker 1: the show quite a bit as well. It's well written,
Speaker 1: the artist attractive, and unlike of kids cartoons, it doesn't
Speaker 1: make us want to shoot ourselves in the head. When
Speaker 1: the little one asked to see the same episode yet again,
Speaker 1: I think it's awful the way young boys and some
Speaker 1: earnest young men are bullied over him enjoying this show.
Speaker 1: That said, in many ways, I am annoyed at the
Speaker 1: Roney's subculture and some of the ways that it behaves
Speaker 1: as an entity. They behave in a very entitled manner,
Speaker 1: often getting upset when the show dares to cater to
Speaker 1: its intended audience instead of them, and they buy up
Speaker 1: all the merchandise before kids can get to them. But
Speaker 1: there's one thing that is worst of all. They create
Speaker 1: pony porn and don't tag it. Little kids who want
Speaker 1: to find pictures of their favorite characters will see awful
Speaker 1: things if they search for them on Google images or
Speaker 1: being even if the safe search is on. They basically
Speaker 1: make fandom an unsafe place for the target audience for
Speaker 1: this show, children, and that is unforgivable. So she also
Speaker 1: goes on to say though, that the ponies are rad
Speaker 1: and that she really enjoys, you know, letting her daughter
Speaker 1: watch this show. She says she not only learns about love, friendship,
Speaker 1: and caring, but also about strength and virtue and how
Speaker 1: there are many ways to be a girl and they
Speaker 1: don't all look the same. And that's not only okay,
Speaker 1: it's awesome, and I'm happy that it's not just little
Speaker 1: girls but also little boys and young men who are
Speaker 1: learning this lesson as well, but clearly one lesson they
Speaker 1: need to learn too. If it's happening, tag your pony
Speaker 1: porn for the children's sake, Lord, tag your pony porn.
Speaker 1: And with that, we invite you to write us mom
Speaker 1: and stuff at how stuff works dot com. No, we're
Speaker 1: not implying that all brownies are making pony porn, just
Speaker 1: for the ones that do tag it please. You can
Speaker 1: also find all of our social media links, podcast blogs,
Speaker 1: and videos at stuff mom Never Told You dot com
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics, does
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com