Young Adult Literature: From Romance to Realism

by Michael Cart

  The perpetrator need not be a father, however; he may also be an uncle (Uncle Vampire) or an older brother, as in Carolyn Coman’s Bee and Jackie (V. C. Andrews’s lurid and histrionic Flowers in the Attic, which features a similar “forbidden” relationship, was published as an adult book but has attracted generations of young adult readers).

  Not all of these cases are so clear cut, however. Meg Rosoff’s Printz Award–winning novel How I Live Now features a physical relationship between cousins, and not a relationship that is forced on the girl protagonist, but one she enters willingly, having fallen in love with her male cousin. Though Rosoff delicately and sensitively handles the relationship, some adult readers were outraged, and others—who weren’t—pointed out that such relationships are perfectly legal in many states.

  Most YA novels that have featured incest portray a girl as the victim, a reflection of real-world circumstance. However, boys are not immune from such victimization, as Stephen Chbosky dramatizes in his extraordinary novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower (MTV/Pocket, 1999). His emotionally disturbed, fifteen-year-old protagonist, Charlie, is revealed to have been victimized by a favorite aunt, whom he movingly forgives near the book’s end. Alex Sanchez’s later novel Bait features a boy who has been abused by his stepfather.

  Regardless of the relative involved, sexual violence of all sorts—assault, rape, incest—typically strikes close to home. According to the 2007 National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), “approximately two-thirds of victims were attacked by a non-stranger (generally an acquaintance or family member)” (www.rainn.org).

  Sadly, sexual assault remains one of the least reported of crimes, well below the rates for robbery or aggravated assault. This suggests that many of the statistics may underreport the incidence of such violence. Even without allowing for that factor, the numbers are alarming. The Department of Justice reports an estimated 248,300 sexual assaults against victims twelve and older in 2007.4 Unfortunately, the Justice Department doesn’t offer demographic subcategories, so we don’t know how many of the twelve and older are teenagers. Other earlier studies, however, suggest that some 15 percent of victims are younger than twelve; 29 percent, twelve to seventeen; and 80 percent, younger than thirty. The highest-risk years are twelve to thirty-four, and girls ages sixteen to nineteen are four times more likely than the general population to be victims. Seven percent of girls in grades 5–8 and 12 percent of girls in grades 9–12 report being sexually abused, whereas 3 percent of boys in grades 5–8 and 5 percent of boys in grades 9–12 report being victims.

  As in the case with incest, few books deal with the sexual abuse of boys, and those that do are often not altogether successful. One of the first to do so was Catherine Atkins’s 1999 novel When Jeff Comes Home (Putnam), the story of a fifteen-year-old boy who is kidnapped by a stranger. Held captive for two and a half years, the boy is routinely forced to have sex with his kidnapper, a man named Ray, who also photographs the boy naked. When Ray rather improbably returns Jeff to his home and the circumstances of the boy’s captivity become public, most people believe the boy is gay (he isn’t) and subject him to horrible verbal and emotional abuse, which only heightens Jeff’s already virulent feelings of self-hatred. The book too often strays into the melodramatic and never clarifies Ray’s sexual identity, leaving the reader with the impression that he is gay and that, as one character puts it, “These faggots that prey on our kids, they should be strung up, electrocuted, tortured.”

  A second book is Katherine Jeffrie Johnson’s Target (Roaring Brook, 2003), in which a sixteen-year-old boy is violently (and graphically) raped by two men, an experience that leaves him so badly traumatized he is virtually catatonic. The motives of his attackers are never clearly delineated, though the author does make the point that most such acts are not sexually motivated but are exercises in power and domination. Nevertheless, the boy, Grady—like Jeff—is left self-hating and agonizingly questioning his own sexual identity (he wonders why he didn’t fight back, a question that plagues Jeff, too). Further muddying the waters are Grady’s flashback memories of being abused as a child by the man next door.

  Given the incendiary nature of the offenses committed in these books, it does seem that ambiguities need to be very carefully handled, lest they perpetuate stereotypical thinking, and the authors need to be equally careful to ground their material in clinically sound research and to avoid any temptations to melodramatic or even gothic treatment of situation and characterization.

  There is, however, no ambiguity at all about the fact that, “although it involves forced sex, rape is not about sex or passion. Rape has nothing to do with love. Rape is an act of aggression and violence.”5 An excellent novel that offers a dramatic example of this is Jaira Placide’s Fresh Girl, in which opposition soldiers in Haiti rape the female protagonist, Mardi, during a political coup.

  Nevertheless, one understands why teens may be confused about this subject, as rape and other sexual violence too often take place in the context of a presumed romantic relationship. Indeed, according to the CDC, “1 in 4 adolescents reports being a victim of verbal, physical, emotional, or sexual abuse from a dating partner each year.”6

  The CDC explains, “Dating violence is a type of intimate partner violence. It occurs between two people in a close relationship. There are three common types of dating violence: physical (when a partner is pinched, hit, shoved, or kicked), emotional (name calling, teasing, threats, bullying, etc.), and sexual (forcing a partner to engage in a sex act when he or she does not or cannot consent).” According to the CDC, one in four adolescents in 2007 reported verbal, physical, emotional, or sexual abuse from a dating partner each year.

  Compounding the problem, Stanford University reports, is the fact that “controlling and abusive relationships can be very difficult situations to deal with, usually because by the time a person realizes that they are in (such a relationship), it has already gotten to the point where it is extremely difficult to break free (physically, emotionally, psychologically, etc.) and seek help.”7

  Unfortunately, when seeking help or reporting incidents of violence, 86 percent of female high school students in one study said they would “confide in a friend,” and only 7 percent said they “would talk to police” (American Bar Association 2006, 3). Why the reluctance to go to the authorities? Because the consequences of going to authorities can sometimes be dire, a reality that has never been better dramatized than in Laurie Halse Anderson’s Printz Honor Award novel Speak, about which I have written earlier. Nevertheless, it’s important to note that when Anderson’s protagonist, incoming high school freshman Melinda, calls 911 to report that she has been raped at an end-of-summer party, she winds up a virtual outcast, because her assailant was one of the most popular boys in school. Melinda is finally vindicated when the boy attempts to assault her again and is discovered in the act.

  As with Melinda, the point of view offered in books about rape is typically that of the victim; a notable exception is Chris Lynch’s 2005 Inexcusable (Atheneum/Seo). In this gritty National Book Award finalist, the narrator is a teenage boy who has date-raped the girl on whom he has a crush. He professes his innocence to readers, but as he tells them more about his life it becomes increasingly obvious that he is self-delusional and that his view of his actions and himself is far different from reality. One of the more interesting aspects of this novel is the boy’s depiction (and understanding) of his relationship with his heavy-drinking father, a single parent.

  Speaking of parents, the survey mentioned earlier does not indicate how many teen respondents would actually confide in a parent, but in another study 83 percent of tenth graders surveyed said they would sooner turn to a friend than to a teacher, counselor, parent, or other caring adult (ABA 2006).

  Perhaps it’s no wonder, then, that in a 2004 survey, 81 percent of parents said they “either believe teen dating violence is not an issue or admit they don’t know if it’s an issue” (ABA 2006, 3).

  This
might be because, like Melinda’s parents, they simply don’t recognize the symptoms of abuse or, like Caitlin’s parents in Sarah Dessen’s Dreamland—another superb novel about this subject—they are distracted: Caitlin’s “perfect” older sister has run away with her boyfriend. In the wake of this trauma, Caitlin’s life begins to unravel as she experiments with drugs and begins dating wealthy Rogerson Briscoe, forming a relationship that quickly turns violently abusive. Or it might be because the parent, him- or herself, is abusive, as in the case of Alex Flinn’s first novel Breathing Underwater (HarperCollins, 2001). In this one, protagonist Nick’s father’s pattern of abusive behavior has influenced the boy’s own understanding of how to behave in a relationship. Accordingly, he soon becomes an abuser of his girlfriend, Caitlin. Fortunately, a court-mandated anger management class will help disabuse him of his unhealthy ideas and habits.

  A different—and unspeakably worse—example of parental abuse is depicted in Lori Aurelia Williams’s When Kambia Elaine Flew in from Neptune (Simon & Schuster, 2000), a book in which a twelve-year-old girl’s mother has prostituted her for money. (In Adam Rapp’s 33 Snowfish, thirteen-year-old Custis has also been prostituted, not by a parent but by “the man who owns me,” as the boy heartbreakingly puts it).

  These are all deeply disquieting stories, but as I have attempted to show with my lengthy survey of statistical evidence, they do represent the actual life circumstances of an alarming number of adolescents. And perhaps, one hopes, making their stories available will foster understanding and promote positive change. As before, I’ve focused on empathy-inducing fictional treatments, but there is also a growing body of nonfiction that provides material to foster intellectual understanding of the problem, as well. In some cases, this nonfiction gives voices and faces to those who have been victims. An excellent example is Carolyn Lehman’s Strong at the Heart: How It Feels to Heal from Sexual Abuse (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005), a book that gathers the personal stories of eleven young men and women who are survivors of such abuse.

  How teens themselves view the sex act is subject—like everything else in their dynamic lives—to never-ending change. Sometimes, when the media are involved, this takes on a frustratingly chicken-or-egg aspect. Consider the case of oral sex, an activity that for years remained little discussed and seldom studied. No wonder most of Oprah Winfrey’s viewers were shocked to hear her announce on a 2002 edition of her talk show that “there’s an oral sex epidemic” (Flanagan 2006). A year later, Oprah revisited the issue, this time devoting an entire program to the question, “Do you know what your teen is really doing?” (Daum 2006). Apparently, a whole lot of them were engaged in giving or receiving oral sex. Or were they?

  A year after Oprah’s second pronouncement on the subject, a New York Times Magazine cover story titled “Whatever Happened to Teen Romance?” stirred the pot of still-simmering discussion. The contributing writer Benoit Denizet-Lewis (2004, 32) reported that “oral sex is common by eighth or ninth grade” and “hooking up is more common than dating.” He continued, “To a generation raised on MTV, AIDS, Britney Spears, Internet porn, Monica Lewinsky and ‘Sex and the City,’ oral sex is definitely not sex (it’s just oral) and hooking up [getting together for the express purpose of having sexual activity] is definitely not a big deal” (33). “The trend toward ‘hooking up’ and ‘friends with benefits’ [basically friends you hook up with regularly] has trickled down from campuses into high schools and junior highs” (32).

  Were these new phenomena real, or were they simply anecdotes that sensational media overstatement might actually turn into trends? These questions were answered a year later in a 2005 study from the National Center for Health Statistics, which revealed—according to the government’s “most comprehensive survey of American sexual practices”—that more than half of America’s fifteen- to nineteen-year-olds reported having had oral sex. This is slightly more than the number who reported having had actual intercourse (55 percent of boys and 54 percent of girls reported having either given or received oral sex, whereas 49 percent of boys and 53 percent of girls reported having experienced intercourse) (Lewin 2005a, A11).

  Again, one wonders if this had been happening all along, or if Oprah and the New York Times pronouncements turned it into a self-fulfilling prophecy? We’ll probably never know, but we do know that Bethany Buck, editorial director for Simon & Schuster’s teen imprint Simon Pulse, was watching Oprah’s 2003 program—and recognized book possibilities in the topic (see Lewin 2005a, E6; Flanagan 2006). She contacted the author Paul Ruditis, and together the two came up with the idea and characters for a trade paperback original titled Rainbow Party, which—in due course—set off a firestorm of controversy.

  The plot of this latter-day problem novel involves a sexually active tenth-grade girl named Gin who decides to hold a rainbow party, which—readers soon learn—is a party at which girls, each one wearing a different color lipstick, perform fellatio on each of the boys present. By party’s end, the boys all have rainbow-colored penises.

  Published as a trade paperback original in 2005, the book was one of the rare few that the major chain bookstores refused to carry, thanks to prepublication controversy. As Tamar Lewin (2005b, E1) wrote, “While ‘Rainbow Party’ by Paul Ruditis has received a less-than-enthusiastic reception from booksellers, it has won plenty of attention from bloggers and conservative columnists and prompted lots of talk among teenagers, parents and school officials.” Lewin (2005b, E1) quotes Ruditis as telling her, “We knew it would be controversial. But everyone involved felt it was an issue worth exploring in a fictional setting. And I don’t think anyone who reads the book could come out wanting to have a rainbow party.”

  In fact, the party never happens. Though a dozen of the school’s most popular teens agree to attend, second thoughts soon begin to set in, and by book’s end, only two kids show up—both of them boys who have already been revealed to be something less than models of morality. And even they are out of luck, because Gin’s father comes home unexpectedly early and nips his daughter’s plans in the bud.

  Though the book’s premise is certainly provocative, its execution is pedestrian and predictable, ultimately more cautionary than crass. Ruditis is at pains, for example, to make several didactic points about the risks of sexual behavior and the importance of sex education. He does this by creating a popular health-issues teacher, Ms. Barrett, whom a nervous administration has ordered to teach an abstinence-only curriculum. As a result, she is unable to share essential information about sexually transmitted diseases with her students. And, wouldn’t you know it, more than three dozen sophomores contract oral gonorrhea as a consequence. Not surprisingly—and to her credit—the teacher resigns in protest.

  The information she might have shared, had those abstinence-only strictures not constrained her, could have included some alarming statistics from the CDC: (1) After decreasing annually since 1999, gonorrhea infection rates among adolescents ages fifteen to nineteen increased 2 percent from 2004 to 2005 and then increased an additional 6 percent from 2005 to 2006; (2) similarly, the number of HIV/AIDS cases diagnosed among fifteen- to seventeen-year-olds increased by 34 percent in 2006; and (3) birthrates among fifteen- to nineteen-year-olds also increased in 2006 for the first time since 1991 and then increased again in 2007; the rate of increase from 2005 to 2007 was 4 percent.8 Clearly, unprotected sexual activity remains a part of too many adolescent lives.

  At the risk of redundancy, I will say that statistics alone are informative, essential, and—in the cases we’ve been discussing—perhaps even life saving. Most kids, however, find them boring (I know I did!); worse, they may suspect they’re overstated to scare them if not straight then celibate.

  Accordingly, we really do need more unapologetically candid and well-crafted fiction about these issues. And it is a very positive thing, I think, that since the turn of the twenty-first century, young adult literature has truly come of age in its willingness to address some of the darker aspe
cts of the human experience with honesty. A measure of how far the literature has come since the problem novels of the 1970s is Elizabeth Scott’s Living Dead Girl (Simon Pulse, 2008), the horrifying and harrowing story of the abduction of ten-year-old Alice by a pedophile who—for the next five years—batters her physically, starves her, and abuses her sexually on what seems to be a daily basis. As a result, Alice has become what she herself calls “a living dead girl.” Her emaciated and battered body stubbornly continues to live though her spirit, her psyche, and her ability to feel or empathize have all been dead for a very, very long time. At fifteen, Alice knows that she is too old to satisfy pedophile Ray’s hungers much longer, and she is resigned to the fate of the first “Alice,” her predecessor whom Ray murdered when that girl turned fifteen. And, sure enough, the day comes when Ray orders Alice to find her replacement, in exchange promising that she can then continue living with him and his new “little girl.”

  There is worse to come, much worse as it happens. What saves this extremely difficult book from lapsing into melodrama or genre horror fiction is, first, the numbly affectless—but pitch-perfect—voice that Stone has created for Alice to use in telling the reader her own story. In a sense, it recalls the voice of Brock Cole’s Linda, who lets “the facts speak for themselves” in recounting her own tortured story (The Facts Speak for Themselves, Front Street, 1997). Second, Stone is brilliant at creating a sense of verisimilitude. I find it hard to imagine a reader who would seriously doubt the reality of Alice’s circumstances or the viability of the characters the author has created to populate her increasingly bleak setting. And third, she allows her story’s logic to drive it to its inevitable conclusion. There is no possibility of redemption for either Ray or Alice, and so there is no false sense of optimism or hope layered on the inevitable endings of their respective lives.