From the The Wall Street Journal:
Darkness Too Visible: Contemporary fiction for teens is rife with explicit abuse, violence and depravity. Why is this considered a good idea?
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052702303657404576357622592697038-lMyQjAxMTAxMDAwNTEwNDUyWj.html
(And many thanks to Stef Kramer, who sent this on to me. You can check out her blog here.)
I'm sure you can guess my position on the matter--but I'd like to know yours.
10 comments:
Many children live with darkness and depravity every day. Our local hospital puts one silver windmill on the front lawn for every child abused in our county in that year. Every year there are hundreds. We took in a foreign exchange student for a few months until she started smoking in the house and followed that up by cutting herself. Then told us she'd been molested by a cousin for years. My childhood only comes up in my nightmares, but I have plenty of scars that suggest there's a reason for the blank spaces.
Pretending that all children live in a rosy happy world and these books (movies, video games) are their only examples of horror and degradation is close-minded and ... well, ridiculous. For the children who experience horror, these books are proof that they're not alone and they give credence to the other books -- the happy family books -- as something that can be real and reached for. Otherwise it's only tv; only make believe like the happy fairy tales they tell themselves to get through the day but know are not true and will never be true.
For children who live in the happy rosy world, there's a chance that they'll read these books and understand that not everyone does; that there are many versions of life, and not everyone gets the same starting point. Maybe not, but if the parents stay involved and talk to their children there's not a book out there that can really break them, but there are plenty that will let them see things through someone else's point of view.
I believe teens are smarter than the WSJ gives them credit for and they'll read what works for them and what they need. They'll push boundaries. They figure out what they like and what they don't. But, most importantly, they'll READ. And through that reading, they'll broaden their horizons.
I actually did a post featuring my students and their reading materials on Book Swarm. Teens are amazing, the YA genre is finally almost as amazing as they are, and WSJ just needs to acknowledge it.
As a seventeen-year-old, I took personal offense at that article.
Naysaying an entire genre? Really? Okay, if you can't find anything lighthearted in the YA section, Ms. Gurdon, you need them bifocals re-checked. -_- I could walk into any Borders and pull a stack of veritably sunny-side-up literature. Sure, I might have to poke around for a while to find it. Why? Because I've found the 'dark' stuff ten times more impactful, as have many, which is why it's front and center.
True factz time: I'm a relatively vanilla, white-bread sort of girl. I don't have any dark history. Things have pretty much gone my way. So I read darker literature to understand people who haven't been as lucky as I have. It lends me appreciation for my life and empathy for the circumstances of others.
Honestly, though, there are so many logical fallacies in that article that I'm disinclined to take it seriously. We read Lord of the Flies my freshman year, for God's sake. And we read All Quiet on the Western Front sophomore year. Is the violence in those novels just more okay because they were written more than twenty years ago?
Oh, wait: "Pathologies that went undescribed in print 40 years ago, that were still only sparingly outlined a generation ago, are now spelled out in stomach-clenching detail." Thanks for clearing that up, Ms. Gurdon. Is that why Piggy's death scene is forever burned into my mind?
Or how about that scene in The Chocolate War that reads: "As he turned to take the ball, a dam burst against the side of his head and a hand grenade shattered his stomach. Engulfed by nausea, he pitched toward the grass. His mouth encountered gravel, and he spat frantically, afraid that some of his teeth had been knocked out."
Ah, Madam Gurdy, feel free to try scouring that out with your cleansing perspective. Or, well, burning it out. With your unjustified flames of hatred for an ENTIRE GENRE.
Eek, I'm going to stop before I get too rude toward someone who will never see this comment... *sigh* i should just do a blog post or something with the rest of the world
Wrote a blog post about my thoughts on this. ;) I'm just amazed at the solidarity of support and outpouring from the YA twitter community. It's so...heartwarming! Like a Disney movie when you were young or something.
Insert comment from parent. I suspected that it was dangerous for a generation removed to pass judgement on current YA selections - especially when one is perhaps reading book sleeves and reviewing cover art. But I was (forgive me) smiling at the vigor of Cloth Dragon's well-written comments. I do feel saddened by the darkness of the world, but parents can't hide their children from that forever as we'd like to - certainly it comes from a position of love.
After I read the Hunger Games and recommended it to my 12 year old in hopes she'd understand the context, we had fabulous dialogue. And isn't that the point of veritable literature?
Yes, we parents need to give our youth more credit.
Just when I'm about to go off on a tangent about this ridiculous WSJ article, I read the comment from 17-year-old Riley Redgate.
This is why I write YA and this is why I love the teen audience. Well said, Riley!
I daresay I'm about to go up in Internet flames, but this article says everything I've been wanting to say for a long time, and more.
Let me say this: there is no such thing as true freedom of expression. There is only expression tolerated by mass consensus; and when the opinion of the majority swings, so do the boundaries of what is tolerated.
The fact that we can now defend violence, cruelty, coarseness and viciousness in all its forms as a necessary component of literature proves one truth: somewhere along the way, it did change us. We no longer have the same perceptions.
I do not hold that as a virtue.
--L.C. Blackwell
Anonymous - we can both go up in flames. I feel the same as you and I write YA. The dark themes in modern literature are now the norm instead of the exception.
I don't know what store the lady was shopping at the EVERYTHING was dark and depraved. There's lots of light, happy YA.
Years ago, I read a study that said, "Left to their own devices, children will choose a reasonably healthy diet." I feel the same way about literature. Teens are not going to seek out depravity for the sake of depravity. Those who need these books not to feel alone will find them. Those who need them to help a friend will find them. Those who need them to come to understand a little more of the world will find them. And those who don't need them, won't read them.
People need to stop thinking YA's a genre. It's an audience. The adult audience has a variety of genres to choose from. Some thrillers, horrors, sci-fi, even general fiction, are too dark for some adults and they choose not to read them. Why do some adults feel that teens are such nimwits that they can't make the same choices?
Ah, I only posted as Anonymous accidently 'cause Blogger did it to me. I am cheerfully signing my name to this.
--L.C. Blackwell
(Lucy)
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