You know, YA fiction has a lot of real strengths. Even though, as its name suggests, it's supposed to cater to the young adult variety of people, it really crosses age, class, and culture--as all good literature should. Narrators often have the kinds of fun, quirky voices that all but the most cynical assholes enjoy reading; the plots are fast-paced, but the characters and situations therein are also very human; usually, the writing itself is clever and just downright fun.
Yes, there are lots of reasons to love YA lit. The fantastic abundance of stereotypes (especially in realistic fiction) is not one of them. Even though this is somewhat of a ubiquitous issue with YA, we're going to zoom in on that subcategory of stories that deal with life in high school, because sometimes this really drives me bonkers.
One thing that's always startled me about YA is the treatment high school gets. Sometimes it seems like that dynamics between differing social classes or cliques were trucked in straight out of a satire or a parody. Before I Fall, by Lauren Oliver, was a pretty enjoyable book by every standard--but holy jumping Jesus, the people! I swear to God, it seemed like every character got shipped in from Mean Girls (which, if you haven't seen already, you should watch right now).
I know there are fissures in every social environment. There are ravines and gaps and lines in the sand that none of us dare to traverse. I also think it's fair to say that, as far as high school life goes, deigning to speak even a single word to an underclassman as a senior is not one of these taboos.
So, to finally get to the point, here's the crux of the problem: in my experience, high schools in YA are nothing like real high schools. And if you're going for realistic fiction, that's a bit of an issue. Sure, I can suspend my disbelief. In fact, I'm happy to. I really, genuinely want your story to sweep me away into a land of great social drama so I can gasp and laugh over things I hope to God never happen to me.
Therefore, I'll read it. I won't whine and rant and rave until the novel is done with, cover to cover. Looking back on it though, there will be too much of my face and far too little of my palm.
I know there are shitty social situations that people get into. I know bullying exists. I know that are girls who are both popular and are bitches. There are nerds who people don't want to talk to. But there's no need to exaggerate these kinds of thing to such a degree and jam it all into one high school under high heat and pressure--usually, that kind of thing results in a situation getting a little unbelievable for me.
Maybe I just went to a very accepting and normal high school so my perspective remains uncontaminated by the social pathogens of popularity and nerdiness. As it seems to me, though, popular people don't hate nerds on principle. Jocks don't regularly pound the cheese out those nerds. Those nerds don't bandage their bleeding wounds with photocopied pages of Neurophysiology Explained and pray that Stephen Hawking grants their wish for a letterman's jacket.
Okay, I'm getting just slightly hyperbolic here. But my point stands. There are plenty of standout tropes in YA lit--the perfect guy/girl, the child of prophecy, the girl who looks like a twelve-year-old but attracts sexy, brooding guys and also becomes a gunslinging Bruce Lee within the span of two weeks. (Oh, sorry, that last one is just Divergent.)
Anyway, none of these things bother me as much as the flogging that teenagers receive when they're depicted in high school. Really, it doesn't do justice to the maturity and intelligence many teenagers exhibit. Yeah, there are exceptions--there are always exceptions. But if you fill a fictional school with nothing but nerd-pounders, rich bitches, and football stars, with no one but the narrator (maybe) as a normal human being, it definitely does show. If you want a real story, you need real people to inhabit it, and that means more than a principled hatred of other social subsets.
I'm not asking for much here, people. All I want is for you to consider whether you character is, you know, a character, rather than just an archetype or an easy way out, before you plug him/her into the story.
And yes, I admit that archetypes can be good at times. Please, though, use them lightly. They're the sprinkles on the cake, not the frosting, and life in high school is muchmuchmuch more complex than the richly intellectual Us vs Them attitude of, say, Family Feud.
Off and out.
Taylor Webb
I've heard most people say what you say. That the way high school is portrayed in movies and books and television shows are nothing like their high schools actually were.
ReplyDeleteMe, on the other hand, I grew up in the type of high school that makes it to YA books and movies. And I wish I hadn't been in that high school. I was also the nerdy/shy stereotypical girl in the books and movies. I never really realized it until I grew up, but I always related to YA stuff when I was a teen so well because I literally got beaten up and mocked in very similar fashions to the way it happens on tv/movies/books. I was often able to point out ways a girl was picked on in those things and talk about how I'd had a similar or identical experience with bullying. The popular girls I went to school with were all blond and rich and dating football players. The only thing that WASN'T stereotypical was that just because a girl was a cheerleader didn't mean she was automatically popular, although a lot of them were in my school.
There were a few popular girls who weren't mean and just ignored me. But to tell you the truth, most of them were cruel.
I've gotten beaten up many times. I was chased before by a girl who threw my backpack and me down a hill for no reason other than for her entertainment. I got anxiety problems because I got mocked for everything I did. If I stared at a girl a second too long, she'd say I was a lesbian and that I was nasty for wanting to sleep with her. If I stared at no one, people would say I wasn't looking at them because I was scared. They literally mocked everything I did. I couldn't leave my lunch places, I had to carry it with me everywhere because they'd shake up my sodas, put weird stuff in my food, on top of the food that they normally threw at me at lunch. I could give you so many stories.
So those YA stories always spoke to me so deeply. The girls in them were SPECIAL and it meant maybe I was SPECIAL, too, even though I got bullied every single day at school. I'm not delusional. I don't think I have super powers or anything, but I'm thankful for those portrayals because without them, I would have had no escape or hope for my future.
Ironically, though, I've written one young adult novel that I'm not sure will ever see the publishing world, but it contained no bullying in the school I wrote about. But I literally don't understand what people mean when they talk about high schools where people weren't bullied all the time and popular people weren't mean. I had never heard of that until I was an adult speaking with other adults. I thought most people's high school experiences were the same as mine.
Hmm, that's very interesting. Firstly because my experience (as you've probably gathered by the post) was the polar opposite. Secondly, because it never ceases to surprise me how downright nasty people can be to other people for no good reason.
ReplyDeleteAs such, it shouldn't surprise me that places like this exist. I mean, I already know one guy from Alabama who was basically cut off from most of his friends after he came out as being gay, but I guess i justified it in my mind with him coming from a small town in the Bible Belt. I've tried not to generalize his experience, probably partly because I don't want that sort of meanheartedness to be the norm. It's idealistic and maybe a little bit dumb, but I've always assumed most people have a pretty average high school life, left unfraught with the kind of truculent behavior you see depicted in many YA novels. Just the standard, callow, love-and-war style problems.
It shouldn't surprise me, but it does. Thanks a lot for your comment, E.B. It's great to get other perspectives.
Taylor Webb