Discussion: Age Appropriation, Mature Content and YA

*Disclaimer: In no way do I mean to offend anybody by this post. Nor am I suggesting that you not read the titles I have mentioned in this post. Also, these are my views only, and do not represent the views of my lovely co-bloggers. It is just a discussion on a topic which I think is important.* 

As I'm sure I've mentioned a million times, I work in bookstore in the UK. And, more often than not, I have parents asking me for recommendations for their children. However, after one particular conversation with a mother, I've been reconsidering what is considered age appropriate and if YA/Teen Fiction has a responsibility to create content which is suitable for that particular audience, or that comes with guidelines and age recommendations. 

In the UK, it's said that 1 in 10 children aged 5-16 suffers from a diagnosable mental health disorder. That's 3 in every class.  It's also said that "between 1 in every 12 and 1 in 15 children and young people deliberately self-harm and "there has been a big increase in the number of young people being admitted to hospital because of self harm. Over the last ten years this figure has increased by 68%." 

I wanted to share those figures with you because what this particular customer said to me was shocking, and therefore made me think about the content that, as a store and throughout the blogging world, we promote. By no means am I suggesting sensitive topics should not be talked about, because that is not a reflection of the teenage experience. I'm saying that should not be idealised or romanticised.

The book in question was Gayle Forman's I Was Here - her latest release about "eighteen-year-old Cody Reynolds in the months following her best friend's shocking suicide" - a topic that has surged in the numbers of publication this year alone. And as my customer handed me the book for her to pay, she reconsidered and decided to read the blurb before she bought her 13 year old daughter the book. After reading it, she turned to me and said: "I don't understand this. It seems to be popular for them to be reading about death, self harm and suicide. She's too young." 

When I first started reading YA it was through a campaign called YA Saves. A project, and for some a reading challenge, to read YA that deals with trauma or 'teenage experiences' in retaliation to an article stating that YA was trivial to prove that YA could have a profound affect on a persons life. Which is, yes, a phenomenal thing. But, it would be misleading to ignore that books can do wonderful things but also terrible things and that, while going through puberty, high school and general confusing times, you can be impressionable. 

In no way am I suggesting that YA should be censored, because it shouldn't. The great thing about YA is the flexibility to talk about any matter of thing with sensitivity and exploration. There is nothing I love more than LGBT YA and I believe that could help somebody truly become at ease with themselves through hearing of somebody else's experience. What I wouldn't want is self harming, suicide, eating disorders and the like to be normalised as part of teenage culture because it is predominant in popular culture and what they are exposed to. Although nothing to do with YA or Literature, it is the main problem I have with websites such as Tumblr. Sites promoting things such as "ProAnna" or self-harm and even depression almost reflect peer pressure in the way it can be romanticised. And if the content is constant online and deemed as popular and the "in thing" in popular culture, whether that be film, tv games or books, it creates an issue. 

YA authors need to stay true to their story, characters and the experience they are sharing. But I also believe they have a responsibility to the reader, more importantly when talking of a YA and Teen Audience, to show true and raw experiences, but not to romanticise negative experiences and ways of dealing with them. If you're going to write about emotional/physical trauma, we need to be talking about offering support systems to give out the help that is needed, or publishers need to be talking about age recommendations.  Often when I read I don't tend to consider how different readers may read the same book. I don't think of how I at different parts of my life - either ages or going through rough times - would read a certain book, but I think the conversation needs to start. Because for the same reason I wouldn't want to sell a fourteen year old girl a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey, I also wouldn't want to sell her a copy of a book where suicide/self-harm/eating disorders or staying in an abusive relationships is the deemed the resolution or the desirable thing to do. YA is a genre which is fantastic for being life-affirming, special and unique, but I do believe there needs to be a conversation on age appropriation and mature content. 

Discussion: The Challenges of Reviewing Through a Feminist Lens

Today, instead of a review, I want to talk about something that's been in my mind a lot lately. As we've begun to really settle into this blog, I've also begun to think about how I want to review the books that I do on this blog. This particular dilemma came to me when I was writing my review for Nil. In that review, I talked about how the author, Lynne Matson, did a great job with on-the-surface diversity, and then I also said that I wished for more--maybe some characters with disabilities or something. And it got me thinking about how I've been reviewing on this blog and how I want to analyze the books we review here.

At the very basic level, I'm always going to be talking about the female characters, regardless. That's how this blog came about after all. I know I'll always talk about female representation and how the females in a book are written as compared to the males. Along the same vein, I'll be talking about complex characters, gender roles and stereotypes, diverse representation (are females being treated as humans, or are they all roughly the same?), slut shaming, etc. At the very basic level, that's what we started this blog with, and I know it's what brings this blog together.

But as we've noted, feminism is about more than how the characters are written and how they may be treated differently because of their gender. It also includes us seeing more diversity of characters as a whole. We don't just want females to be treated as humans, we also want people of other marginalized groups to be treated as humans in the books we read. We want to see all types of people represented in books.

I will almost always comment on what a book does well in terms of diversity--mental illness, disabilities, race/ethnicity, LGBTQIA, experiences, etc. But at point do we ask for more? At what point do we say the book has done a great job? Is it bad to keep asking for more of a book/author, even if a book already does much better than most of what's out there? Is there a point at which a lot is too much?

This was my problem when reviewing Nil. There was already a lot of diversity and there was a good gender balance, with each character having equal treatment in that they're all real and human and have flaws. But I wanted more. Certainly, I don't think asking for the central characters to be more PoC rather than the PoC being secondary characters is too much too ask. But is it right for me to say that I was hoping for disabilities to be represented, even if it's just asthma? Should I be happy that the author tried to do something great in terms of diversity already? Because I don't hold all books to that same standard (expecting there to be some disabled characters), so is it fair for me to add that for that book/review?

And sometimes, I can't tell what's realistic. Is it realistic that most people in the midwest are white? Probably. Certainly there are non-white people living there, but can I fault a book that takes place there for lacking racial/ethnic diversity? My school has a great program for students with mental disabilities and learning disabilities, but I don't hang out with them. Should I ask for authors to represent such people more if they're not a huge part of everyone's lives? (Of course, if the character or someone close to the character is, I would hope it's well represented in the book.) Is it reasonable to ask for a little bit of everything or is that too overwhelming? How can we represent everything, as we can find in our actual lives, without overwhelming the books? I know disabled people, people with mental illnesses, people with anxiety, people of different/multiple races/ethnicities, LGBTQIA people, etc, but I find that often, when authors try to have all of these in a book, it becomes too much and perhaps even begins to cause other problems.

I don't want my reviews to be inconsistent, but I can't help but wonder if that's the only way to review books here. Each book should always be taken on a case-by-case basis, but again, I have the issue to not being sure what to do about a book such as Nil. There are books that certainly manage to address multiple areas that I like to look for, such as Lies We Tell Ourselves, but what about the rest?

It's these questions that have become challenges for me when I'm reviewing. I don't think there is one particular answer. I don't think there is a right way to do this. I hope that I've explained my dilemma/challenge well enough for you all to understand my conflicting thoughts.

What do you think? (And for my co-bloggers, I'd love to hear your thoughts!)

PS. Apologies for not posting last week! I had a dance competition the weekend before, so I didn't get a chance to write something.