The real story behind the war over YA novels

secondlina:

agentotter:

chelseyesque:

erinburr:

curliestofcrowns:

angst-inmypants:

note-a-bear:

What’s really motivating the cultural panic over The Hunger Games and The Fault in Our Stars?

y’all should probably spend some time reading this

Oh my god this was supposed to be about books but it’s actually about my relationship with my parents I was unprepared for these feels

yep yep yep this

“The hot insistence on labeling YA as “trashy” and not fit for adult reading isn’t just about a visceral hatred of genre fiction. It’s also a form of denial from older adults who don’t want to engage with the issues faced by Millennials. If the validity of experiences underlying the desire to read YA can be eliminated, then older adults can feel less responsible for what they did to the generations that followed them”

Read the whole thing. Seriously.

I hadn’t even thought about it this way, but I think I just had my whole worldview reframed. Terrific article.

Working in a bookstore, I get at LEAST one parent per day that calls YA comics or novels trash. And ALWAYS in front of their disappointed kid/teenager/tween who was really looking forward to reading that book. And EVERY TIME it takes a shitload of willpower (because customer service) for me to tell them to FUCK OFF.

Once, I was giving a class in a school about manga, and this one kid, her mom threw out all the manga she had bought, with her summer job money, (and it was good series too) simply because she thought her daughter was wasting too much time reading them. You know, instead of discussing the issue that maybe she didn’t do her chores or whatnot? Just fucking toss the books. Yeah.

The hatred on books because they are for teens or for girls shows off the lack of understanding that a group has for another (adults to kids, boys to girls, etc).

YA stories matter because they allow their readers to deal with uncertainty and disappointment, it allows them to enjoy themselves, it allows them to look up to a character that didn’t start up a special, but discovered they could be special if they took into their own hands to become great.

Coming of age stories now happen in books for pre-teens, teens, tweets, and even 50 years olds (after all, the midlife crisis is coming to terms with a change). Because society has strong expectations of everyone at every turn of age now. 

BOOKS FUCKING MATTER. The internet and the people who write on it matter. It all matters.

I’m writing YA stories until I die. 

And I will never tell my readers they don’t matter.