The Voice of Identity:
Young Adult Literature in 2007
The recent surge in young adult literature has prompted the question, “What is young adult literature?” Young adult literature goes far beyond Harry Potter and Gossip Girls. It even goes beyond novels such as Speak and Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes. Young adult literature goes so far that it reaches off the page—it reaches its audience.
One of the most fascinating aspects of young adult literature is its ability to speak to a vast amount of people. From adults to youth, young adult literature demonstrates a critical point of any individual’s growth. Comedy, tragedy, horror, romance, or fantasy, young adult novels carry an underlying connection throughout—the search for identity.
As pointed out by peers on LIFT 2008, young adult literature is believed to be disguised as a metaphor illustrating a greater message of conformity. But I believe it goes beyond today’s youth looking to fit in. In fact, today’s youth seems to stray away from the once desired conformity in search for individuality, and the search is more intense and aggressive than years before.
Adolescent issues that generations before may have never given a voice to have become louder. Young adult literature relays the contemporary world’s search for identity. It traces the adventures of characters through the use of everyday or exceptional struggles. The subcategories within this genre are increasingly focused on society’s impact on the individuals and the complexities that make people different, and at once the same. Often times identity is formed through overcoming an injustice such as racism, sexism, abuse, and other personal tragedies. Other times, identity comes about through self-discovery including issues of body image, homosexuality, and most often, religion.
In Karen Cushman’s The Loud Silence of Francine Green, finding self for the main character involved her loss of naivety from the influence of a skeptical friend. Her personal struggle paralleled the anxiousness of the 1950’s when widespread fear of losing the American identity to communism was prevalent. This personal strife is one that all young adults have to deal with, the loss of innocence for the gain of knowledge.
Like many other young adult novels, In the Name of God by Paula Jolin and Converting Kate by Beckie Weinheimer interweave religion and personal growth. They show that during adolescence, it tends to be the prime time to test and question one’s previous or conditioned beliefs. Weinheimer’s Converting Kate follows a religiously-conformed Kate through the personal tragedy of her non-religious father’s death. It is through the ensuing events that Kate begins to resent her upbringing and ultimately question her faith. Weinheimer examines issues like innocence and guilt through very realistic settings.
Taboo subjects are an integral component of young adult literature and represent present day mindset. Religion, sexuality, abuse, and other once-unmentionable subjects are discussed openly. It seems today’s adolescents prefer literature that is open-minded and realistic. This does not mean young adults do not enjoy fantasy, but it does mean a sugarcoated ending is no longer ideal. Instead, today’s youth wants to see a realistic happy or sad ending. This change in society’s perspective illustrates the veracity that problems arise, and people overcome the struggles, but others will arise again. This seemingly-bleak mentality represents the cyclical quality of life, and the end result of it is to show that if nothing else, the taboo issues will help shape the individual identities.
The allure of young adult literature is its ability to relate to all people. Whether or not the reader has gone through any of the mentioned issues is not the point. The personal nature of reading novels where characters struggle to find themselves forces the reader to join the character on his/her quest. The reader has no choice but to examine his/her own feelings towards the character’s dilemmas. Essentially, each struggle results in a better understanding of the individual, regardless if it a character in a book or the reader.
There is a plethora of young adult literature today and each novel demonstrates the need for individuals to discover his/her own identity through different paths. Novels such as Echo by Kate Morgenroth, Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult and many, many others illustrates the idea that even with diversity in plots and characters, young adult literature unites its readers with the goal of searching for one’s identity. This genre teaches everyone, adults and children, about the new generation of youth and how their mentality has changed, and perhaps will continue to change.
The recent surge in young adult literature has prompted the question, “What is young adult literature?” Young adult literature goes far beyond Harry Potter and Gossip Girls. It even goes beyond novels such as Speak and Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes. Young adult literature goes so far that it reaches off the page—it reaches its audience.
One of the most fascinating aspects of young adult literature is its ability to speak to a vast amount of people. From adults to youth, young adult literature demonstrates a critical point of any individual’s growth. Comedy, tragedy, horror, romance, or fantasy, young adult novels carry an underlying connection throughout—the search for identity.
As pointed out by peers on LIFT 2008, young adult literature is believed to be disguised as a metaphor illustrating a greater message of conformity. But I believe it goes beyond today’s youth looking to fit in. In fact, today’s youth seems to stray away from the once desired conformity in search for individuality, and the search is more intense and aggressive than years before.
Adolescent issues that generations before may have never given a voice to have become louder. Young adult literature relays the contemporary world’s search for identity. It traces the adventures of characters through the use of everyday or exceptional struggles. The subcategories within this genre are increasingly focused on society’s impact on the individuals and the complexities that make people different, and at once the same. Often times identity is formed through overcoming an injustice such as racism, sexism, abuse, and other personal tragedies. Other times, identity comes about through self-discovery including issues of body image, homosexuality, and most often, religion.
In Karen Cushman’s The Loud Silence of Francine Green, finding self for the main character involved her loss of naivety from the influence of a skeptical friend. Her personal struggle paralleled the anxiousness of the 1950’s when widespread fear of losing the American identity to communism was prevalent. This personal strife is one that all young adults have to deal with, the loss of innocence for the gain of knowledge.
Like many other young adult novels, In the Name of God by Paula Jolin and Converting Kate by Beckie Weinheimer interweave religion and personal growth. They show that during adolescence, it tends to be the prime time to test and question one’s previous or conditioned beliefs. Weinheimer’s Converting Kate follows a religiously-conformed Kate through the personal tragedy of her non-religious father’s death. It is through the ensuing events that Kate begins to resent her upbringing and ultimately question her faith. Weinheimer examines issues like innocence and guilt through very realistic settings.
Taboo subjects are an integral component of young adult literature and represent present day mindset. Religion, sexuality, abuse, and other once-unmentionable subjects are discussed openly. It seems today’s adolescents prefer literature that is open-minded and realistic. This does not mean young adults do not enjoy fantasy, but it does mean a sugarcoated ending is no longer ideal. Instead, today’s youth wants to see a realistic happy or sad ending. This change in society’s perspective illustrates the veracity that problems arise, and people overcome the struggles, but others will arise again. This seemingly-bleak mentality represents the cyclical quality of life, and the end result of it is to show that if nothing else, the taboo issues will help shape the individual identities.
The allure of young adult literature is its ability to relate to all people. Whether or not the reader has gone through any of the mentioned issues is not the point. The personal nature of reading novels where characters struggle to find themselves forces the reader to join the character on his/her quest. The reader has no choice but to examine his/her own feelings towards the character’s dilemmas. Essentially, each struggle results in a better understanding of the individual, regardless if it a character in a book or the reader.
There is a plethora of young adult literature today and each novel demonstrates the need for individuals to discover his/her own identity through different paths. Novels such as Echo by Kate Morgenroth, Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult and many, many others illustrates the idea that even with diversity in plots and characters, young adult literature unites its readers with the goal of searching for one’s identity. This genre teaches everyone, adults and children, about the new generation of youth and how their mentality has changed, and perhaps will continue to change.
1 comment:
Hi Shazia! Thank you for this critical essay posting.
The idea you are exploring here--that YAL may be increasingly popular among readers of all kinds because it focuses on "identity issues" --is incredibly striking to me. The notion that YAL focuses on identity issues is, as I think you know, not new; for many years now, psychologists have characterized adolescence as a life-stage where people construct their adult identities (albeit in first draft form), and most scholars and critics of YAL have followed suit, arguing that YAL represents this struggle to shape a coherent and authentic emerging adult identity. Indeed, when you go out into student teaching, I think you will find that many high school units and curriculums take advantage of the "identity" theme regardless of whether or not they make use of contemporary YAL.
But what is striking about your notion is that there is an intersection taking place between the historic focus on identity in YAL and the contemporary world. I find this idea quite stimulating. I agree with you--"identity politics" is more important than ever before, and thanks to various developments on the Internet and elsewhere in our society, many people feel that adults are now extending their stage of identity development much longer than in previous years. Journaling is now a standard practice in schools, and we see the influence of this in online blogs and various other "tell all" memoirs by various celebrities; voters in elections seem to value the life stories of politicians as much as or perhaps even more than their stances on various issues. Given the current fascination with identity politics (what some critics term "naval gazing") its not surprising, then, that more and more people are reading young adult literature (it is a clearly growing segment of the book market) and more and more "adult" authors are turning to this genre to explore various ideas and themes.
In any case, I think you do a nice job of getting this rather original idea out there--and I really like the way you link to other critical essays on this website. Thanks for sharing!
TP
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