The venerable (stodgy) Wall Street Journal has published an opinion piece on one of my favorite subjects: young adult (YA) literature. Meghan Cox Gurdon, who, based on her writing here, apparently used to work in youth ministry at a megachurch, warns us what's to come with her purple-prose title: Darkness Too Visible. Let's not forget the deck: "Contemporary fiction for teens is rife with explicit abuse, violence and depravity. Why is this considered a good idea?" To quote Mumford & Sons, "darkness is a harsh term don't you think?"
Mrs. Gurdon (WSJ used the attribution first, so suck it) doesn't think darkness is too harsh. In fact, she's appalled at the cast of freaks and carnies in contemporary YA fiction. While I will agree that I'm weary past telling of seeing vampires, werewolves, zombies, and pedophile priests in the YA section (give it a second...), I'm weary for a different reason. Much of that schlock is derivative nonsense. It represents some talentless hack jumping on the monster bandwagon trying to make money, as if Jerry Jenkins were now writing YA. Wait...um...never mind. Let's start with what she just gets plain, stupid wrong.
As it happens, 40 years ago, no one had to contend with young-adult literature because there was no such thing. There was simply literature, some of it accessible to young readers and some not.
She is confusing her taxonomies here. There may not have been a publishing niche called YA literature, but it's certain The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew qualified as YA literature. The Hardy Boys first appeared in the 1920s; Ms. Drew in 1930. That's slightly more than 40 years ago. Some of my book nerd friends may know of more examples, but those two just seemed obvious. However, by mentioning those two series, I seem to be helping Mrs. Gurdon make her case. The young detectives may have solved murders and mysteries, but they were all-American wholesome as were the books—so much so that the Hardy Boys books had to be tweaked in successive generations to remove racial slurs. No cutters, slashers, masturbators, monsters, or profanity here.
Fear not, fans of YA fiction. Mrs. Gurdon has a perfectly good reason to suggest restraint in this realm of words. Ready?
If you think it matters what is inside a young person's mind, surely it is of consequence what he reads. This is an old dialectic—purity vs. despoliation, virtue vs. smut—but for families with teenagers, it is also everlastingly new.
This is something we can all agree with, I think. I teach college. Of course I care what's in a young person's mind. And I agree it's of consequence what she reads. Really, Mrs. Gurdon, the occasional generic "she" would be nice. This is an old dialectic, and I used to contend with it in my church days when parents insisted their kids shouldn't be allowed to watch R-rated movies, or when the parent of the high school junior asked me (I was a HS teacher then.) to give her daughter an alternative book choice besides the "pornographic" Brave New World, or, most annoyingly, when as a singles pastor the church insisted I not use R-rated movies at an event for singles. There really is no age limit for keeping garbage out, Mrs. Gurdon, not if you're committed to filtering information as a means of "saving" us from ourselves. That was the phrase I was accosted with when a senior pastor and recommending a movie that had profanity and nudity in it: garbage in/garbage out. Sigh.
Mrs. Gurdon is concerned that there is too much reality going on in these novels, and the children are not ready for this non-age appropriate material. Perhaps she's never met a real 13-year old boy. Or, perhaps she's never met a 12-year old girl who does cut. The point of including plot lines and characters about sexual abuse and cutting and "depravity" is that this is the world kids actually inhabit. I suppose it was nice back in the halcyon days of 40 years ago to pretend there was no sexual abuse, no masturbation, no sexual slavery, no girls who loathed themselves so utterly that they carved designs in their flesh, no boys raped by priests or Boy Scout leaders, no people who were really gay, no racism, no segregation...you get the point. Only in America, a land so deluded by our own mythologies, can we believe that children can't handle the topic of sexual abuse or violence. I'm sure young women in Moldova, Sudan, and Thailand are fascinated by that perspective, as well as young men in Sierra Leone, Uganda, and Bosnia.
One of the primary goals of literature is to introduce people to the real world, the world that is so much bigger, scarier, and more beautiful than the one they see through their narrow lens. The task is to help us shed our provincialism, to empathize with the "others" among us, to identify with the victim of abuse and violence, to make us broad-minded, generous, well-read, and clear-eyed. When a columnist describes the stupendously original and brilliant series The Hunger Games as "hyper-violent" but fails to commend it for its sheer, stupid brilliance, amazing heroine, political criticism, and inspired storytelling, the columnist's agenda is showing. When the same columnist takes Sherman fuckin' Alexie to task for his witheringly honest and tearfully funny memoir The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, she has failed to see the forest amidst all those profane trees.
Mrs. Gurdon is going to win this debate in the parenting world; she has won it on countless occasions. Parenting is at least partly a fear-based endeavor. When Gurdon speaks of allowing publishers to bulldoze misery into our children's lives, she is singing a dishonest song that parents will relish. Why shouldn't their kids live in a bubble for as long as possible? Kids are innocent, right? Such utter bullshit. Another myth, that of the pristine innocence of teens (really? teens?), informs yet another debate. Teens are borderline sociopaths minus much of the violence. One need only spend a few weeks in an American middle school or high school to experience how pristinely evil these innocent children can be: slandering, gossiping, bullying, violence, sexual assault, homophobia, the beat goes on, until something clicks and they realize there is a world outside their own needs. If literature can help, write more shockingly graphic novels, and someone find Mrs. Gurdon a job in youth ministry at a small, fundamentalist church.
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