Young Adult Literature: From Romance to Realism

by Michael Cart

  It is hard not to think that growing up in a violence-ridden world—the Oklahoma City bombing, the Columbine shootings, 9/11, international terrorism, the Iraq War, the war in Afghanistan, and so on—and imagined but powerfully visualized (and sometimes glamorized) violence in movies, on television, on the Internet, and in video games (Grand Theft Auto, anyone?) has some impact, as well. According to the University of Michigan Health System, “Literally thousands of studies since the 1950s have asked whether there is a link between exposure to media violence and violent behavior. All but eighteen have answered ‘yes.’”7

  Accordingly, the exponential growth of a media presence in adolescent lives may give one pause. In his fascinating recent book Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men, the sociologist Michael Kimmel (2008, 145) writes, “Today’s young people—from little kids to adults in their late twenties and early thirties—represent the most technologically sophisticated and media savvy generation in our history. The average American home has three TVs, two VCRs, three radios, two tape players, two CD players, more than one video game console and more than one computer. American kids 8 to 18 spend about 7 hours a day interacting with some form of electronic media; the average 13-to-18-year-old spends two hours a day just playing video games.”

  Kimmel—who teaches at State University of New York, Stony Brook—chillingly continues, “The dominant emotion in all these forms of entertainment is anger. From violent computer games to extreme sports, from racist and misogynistic radio show content to furious rap and heavy metal music, from the X-rated to the Xbox, the amount of rage and sensory violence to which guys have become accustomed is overwhelming. It doesn’t even occur to them that all this media consumption might be extreme” (149). Extreme and extremely desensitizing and ultimately dehumanizing, perhaps?

  The American Academy of Pediatrics agrees, pointing out that “extensive research evidence indicates that media violence can contribute to aggressive behavior, desensitization to violence, nightmares, and fear of being harmed.”8

  As we have seen, young people have good reason to fear being harmed, and it doesn’t help that, as Kimmel notes, “The most avid consumers of this new media are young men 16 to 26. It’s the demographic group most prized by advertisers” (145), who, needless to say, cheerfully stoke the fires of that young male avidity.

  A Literature of Risk

  Does it seem counterintuitive to argue that we need more—not less—literature that addresses these same issues honestly and realistically? In the wake of the tsunami of violence inundating today’s young adults, do we really need books that embrace violence, too? I believe we do.

  After all, the great gift literature can give its readers that new—and old—media can’t is the experience of empathy and sympathy. Books can take their readers into the interior lives of characters in ways that television and video can’t. They not only can show what is happening to characters but also can powerfully convey how what is happening feels. Interactive games and media can, doubtless, improve hand-to-eye coordination. But books can improve heart-to-eye coordination and even can create it when—as increasingly seems the case—it is altogether absent.

  The shocking absence of empathy in today’s adolescent lives is nowhere more powerfully evidenced than in the epidemic of bullying that is plaguing America’s schools, playgrounds, parks, and neighborhoods.

  Bullying

  Bullying is hardly new, but the newly minted attention it has been given increased dramatically in the wake of the Columbine High School shootings.

  The perception created by media coverage of the tragedy was that the two teenage boys who killed one of their teachers and twelve of their classmates were seeking revenge for having been bullied. A decade later, thanks to the painstaking research of the Denver journalist Dave Cullen for his book Columbine (Twelve, 2009), we know that wasn’t true, but it certainly could have been.

  As Kimmel (2008, 57) reports, “For the past five years I’ve conducted a research study of all the cases of random school shootings in the United States. One factor seems to stand out: Nearly all the boys who committed these tragic acts have stories of being constantly bullied, beaten up and gay baited.” Not, Kimmel adds, because they were necessarily gay, but because “they were different from the other boys”—or girls, as bullying is no respecter of gender. Indeed, according to the CDC an estimated 30 percent of all kids between sixth and tenth grade (i.e., more than 5.7 million) report having been involved in bullying.9

  “Bullying takes on different forms in male and female youth,” according to the National Youth Violence Prevention Resource Center (NYVPRC), which was created by the federal government in the wake of Columbine to serve as a single point of access to information about youth violence.10 According to the NYVPRC’s informative fact sheet “Bullying Facts and Statistics,” “While both male and female youth say that others bully them by making fun of the way they look or talk, males are more likely to report being hit, slapped, or pushed. Female youth are more likely than males to report being the targets of rumors and sexual comments.”11 As for the bullies themselves, the NYVPRC tellingly notes, “Bullies have a strong need to dominate others and usually have little empathy for their targets.”

  If any good thing came out of Columbine, it was the elevation of attention given to this epidemic problem and the very rapid emergence of a subgenre of young adult literature that continues to explore the many aspects of this issue with insight and empathy. Arguably the first book to emerge in this category was Todd Strasser’s chilling documentary novel Give a Boy a Gun (Simon & Schuster, 2000). Strasser charts the growing disaffection of two teenage boys, Gary and Brenden, who first dream of taking revenge on the people who have bullied them (principally members of the school’s football team) and then transform that dream into reality. In my starred Booklist review of this important title, I compared it to the work of the late John dos Passos, for Strasser, like dos Passos, spices his narrative with a contrapuntal collection of quotations, facts, and statistics about real-life school and gun violence. He concludes his book with appended lists of shootings and other incidents of school violence that occurred while he was writing Give a Boy.

  A number of other novels dealing with school violence have appeared in the decade since Strasser’s; among them are Ron Koertge’s verse novel The Brimstone Journals (Candlewick, 2001); Nancy Garden’s Endgame (Houghton Mifflin, 2006); Diane Tullson’s Lockdown, a novel from Canada (Orca, 2008); C. J. Watson’s Quad (Razorbill, 2007); and Jennifer Brown’s Hate List (Little, Brown, 2009). At least two excellent crossover titles have also appeared: Jim Shepard’s Project X (Knopf, 2004) and Jodi Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes (Atria, 2007).

  Not all violent responses to bullying are directed at the bullies; sometimes the target is the victim him- or herself. One of the most common ways teen girls punish themselves for being different is by cutting. Shelley Stoehr’s 1991 novel Crosses is the first YA novel to examine this growing phenomenon, which has since become a fixture in teen fiction. Another gravely misguided strategy for coping with bullying is suicide, a topic that was taboo in YA literature for many years (for fear of creating a copycat effect among young readers). This has recently begun to change, since the enormous success of Jay Asher’s 2007 novel Thirteen Reasons Why (Razorbill), a book in which a teenage girl named Hannah kills herself, leaving a package of cassette tapes articulating her reasons. Laurie Halse Anderson also addresses this issue in Twisted, her novel in which a teen boy contemplates killing himself in response to intolerable bullying.

  Fortunately, not all bullying results in apocalyptic violence. Arguably the best-known book on how the targets of bullying can find a creative way to respond is James Howe’s The Misfits (Atheneum, 2001), the story of four middle school students who are misfits and, accordingly, the targets of painful bullying. Instead of getting even, the four resolve to change their school’s climate of abuse by running for class office on a no-name-calling platform. Clearly, Howe’s nov
el touched a nerve; its huge popularity has inspired national No Name Calling Week, which middle and elementary schools observe all across the country.

  That bullying is a universal experience was demonstrated by the U.S. publication of Tullson’s Lockdown from Canada and the Australian Palestinian author Randa Abedel-Fattah’s novel Does My Head Look Big in This? This story of a teenage girl, Amah, who decides to begin wearing a hijab to her prep school in Sydney, is an eye-opening examination of universal considerations of faith and intolerance.

  The newest kind of bullying also has international ramifications thanks to the ubiquity of the Internet. I’m referring here, of course, to cyberbullying, the posting of innuendo, put-downs, gossip, lies, and—perhaps worst of all—compromising photos online.

  “Cyberbullying is the fastest-growing form of bullying happening around the world,” according to C. J. Bott (2008, 120), a retired English teacher and author of two books about the subject: The Bully in the Book and in the Classroom and More Bullies in More Books (Scarecrow, 2004 and 2009, respectively). One of the attractions of this technique is that it allows the bully both anonymity and the ability to inflict pain without being forced to see its effects, which “also seems to incite a deeper level of meanness” (Harmon 2004, A1). Perhaps worst of all, there is no escaping this type of bullying; it spreads virally and follows the victim everywhere. Cyberbullies can be both boys and girls, but the latter tend to predominate. A few recent books about this invidious phenomenon are Laura Ruby’s Good Girls (HarperCollins, 2006), Shana Norris’s Something to Blog About (Amulet/Abrams, 2008), and Laurie Halse Anderson’s Twisted (Viking, 2007).

  Perhaps because of these books, a new anti-bullying technique has begun gaining favor. In an April 5, 2009, front-page article in the New York Times, the reporter Winnie Hu wrote, “The emphasis on empathy here and in schools nationwide is the latest front in a decade-long campaign against bullying and violence.” According to Hu (2009, A1), “The Character Education Partnership, a nonprofit group in Washington, said 18 states—including New York, Florida, Illinois, Nebraska, and California—require programs to foster core values such as empathy, respect, responsibility, and integrity.”

  Not all violence is related to bullying, of course. On September 11, 2001—scarcely two years after Columbine—the attack on Manhattan’s World Trade Center brought the specter of international terrorism and the threat of violent death to the forefront of American teens’ consciousness. Within a year, a dozen or more books—virtually all of them nonfiction—had appeared with the goal of helping young readers of all ages cope with this new fear factor in their lives. Though short fiction was included in 911: The Book of Help, the anthology that Marc Aronson, Marianna Carus, and I coedited (Marcato/ Cricket, 2002), full-length fiction about this terrible event has been slower to surface. Joyce Maynard’s crossover novel The Usual Rules (St. Martin’s) appeared in 2003 and Francine Prose’s YA title Bullyville (HarperCollins) followed in 2007. Finally, in 2009, David Levithan’s Love Is the Higher Law (Knopf, 2009) appeared. In an eloquent letter to the reader, Levithan explained his reasons for taking us back to that terrible event: “As time goes by, it’s really easy to remember 9/11 and the days afterward as a time of tragedy, fear, grief, and loss. Less easy to remember—and even harder to convey—is that it was amazing not just for the depth of that loss, but also for the heights of humanity that occurred. The kindness. The feeling of community. The deepening of love and friendship” (Levithan 2009, 1).

  This, it seems to me, is the most compelling argument one can offer for writing fiction about even the most unpleasant realities of teens’ lives, the kinds of realities we have been confronting in this chapter. For life, even at its darkest, can hold the promise of hope and positive change—especially when we read about it with open minds and hearts, with intellectual attention and emotional empathy. I would be remiss if I ended this chapter without acknowledging three authors whose work gives us that opportunity and experience.

  Three Exemplary Authors

  Walter Dean Myers

  Over the course of his long career (his first book for young readers, Fast Sam, Cool Clyde, and Stuff was published in 1975), Myers has built a reputation as one of a handful of the most important young adult writers in the history of the genre. He has done this by trusting his growing legions of readers with the difficult truth about the real world in which they must live their lives. Poverty, violence, drugs, guns—none is stranger to his young adult fiction.

  In his Margaret A. Edwards acceptance speech, Myers (2008, 99) said, “There are always children that need to be rescued from some obscure hell, to be brought into the light of recognition so that we can no longer avoid looking at their suffering.” “What I can do,” he continued, “is help make all our children and all our young adults visible again. I can help begin the process of peeling away labels they have been burdened with, that diminish their humanity.”

  This is what he does to such good effect in his novel Monster, but a similar commitment to humanity, to the humane, is central to all of Myers’s work, whether it is written for children or for young adults. A prolific writer (he’s published nearly one hundred books), Myers has worked for all ages and in a variety of different forms, ranging from picture books to chapter books to nonfiction and from poetry to memoir to hard-edged young adult fiction. In the process he has become one of our most honored writers for youths; he is, for example, the only author to have received both the Margaret A. Edwards Award and the Michael L. Printz Award; he is a five-time recipient of the Coretta Scott King Award and a four-time recipient of a King Honor; he has twice received a Newbery Honor and has twice been a National Book Award finalist.

  It’s worth noting, too, that he was one of the first to give faces to young soldiers fighting in two American wars, those in Vietnam (Fallen Angels) and Iraq (Sunrise in Fallujah) and in that process invited his readers to examine not only their own personal values but also those of the nation in which they live.

  “If we do not write about all our children,” Myers (2008, 101) has said, “write about them with hard truths and a harder compassion, then we have, in a very significant way, failed our own futures.” Reflecting on his career as a writer, on the future, and on his legacy, Myers once wrote, “I would like to be remembered as giving something back to the world” (Gallo 1990, 149). There is absolutely no question that he will be.

  Chris Crutcher

  Chris Crutcher, a Margaret A. Edwards Award–winning author, has been writing intelligent and heartfelt fiction for young adults since 1983 (Running Loose). His dozen or so novels are distinguished by their authentic and artful depiction of the fact that—as one of his characters memorably puts it—“Human beings are connected by the ghastly as well as the glorious” (Chinese Handcuffs). Because Crutcher has been fearless in depicting the ghastly aspect, those who feel young adults can’t be trusted with the truth have often challenged and censored his work. Crutcher begs to differ, and each of his novels is an eloquent argument for the imperative importance of honest, candid books in helping young readers navigate that perilous passage known as adolescence.

  “If, as an author, I can make an emotional connection with my reader, I have already started to help him or her heal,” Crutcher writes. “I have never met a depressed person, or an anxious person, or a fearful person who was not encouraged by the knowledge that others feel the same way they do” (Davis 1997, 314).

  In making this point, Crutcher writes with the authority of one who has worked as a teacher, school director, and child and family therapist. His youthful protagonists are routinely challenged by physical, emotional, and family problems, among them abuse, suicide, and anger that can erupt in violence (Crutcher’s novels and Kimmel’s nonfiction Guyland make wonderfully complementary reading!). Crutcher’s work is also distinguished by his inclusion of not always admirable but always fully realized adult characters. In light of what we have discovered about the importance of caring adults in adolescent li
ves, it is particularly noteworthy that in virtually every one of Crucher’s novels, an adult mentor figure is present.

  Crutcher’s work is not flawless; he has a tendency to overload his work with thematic issues, and his treatment of them is sometimes didactic but never perfunctory and never less than completely honest. And in the integrity of their treatment of the pain that is endemic to teenage life, they are all invitations to empathy. As his biographer and fellow novelist Terry Davis (1997, 313) has said, “He believes that stories have the power to heal and . . . he knows what a great need there is for healing.”

  Adam Rapp

  A successful playwright like Paul Zindel before him, Adam Rapp began writing for young adults in the 1990s; his first novel, Missing the Piano, was published in 1994 and helped usher in the new golden age of YA literature. In the half dozen novels that have appeared since, Rapp has written some of the most harrowing—and haunting—young adult novels in the history of the field. The protagonists of his unsparingly realistic novels—Blacky Brown (Little Chicago), Steve Nugent (Under the Wolf, Under the Dog), Custis (33 Snowfish), Jamie (Punkzilla), and others—live lives in extremis. Victimized, incarcerated, bullied, sexually abused, mentally ill—they all struggle to survive the worst a seemingly sociopathic, or perhaps sadistic, world can throw at them. If these sound like the worst of the problem novels of the 1970s, know now—right now—that they are not. Though the circumstances they reveal are often ugly, so ugly the reader may want to look away, the books themselves are beautiful in their compassion and caring and—thanks to his gifts as a dramatist—lyrical in the unconventional, unforgettable voices Rapp creates for his characters.