YA Lit Shaming

Yeah, I’m almost 50 years old, and I’m male, and I’ve read The Fault in our Stars. You got a problem with that?

Every year brings a new literary controversy. A couple years ago, Elizabeth Gilbert and Phillip Roth disagreed about whether writing was “torture” or “f**king great.” Last year, Danielle Steel got angry when a male acquaintance asked her: “Are you still writing?” And a couple weeks ago, Ruth Graham (a writer I’d never heard of) claimed that adults should be embarrassed if they were seen reading young adult (or YA) literature.

It’s only controversial because numerous literary news outlets reported her statement. If nobody had reported it, then nobody would have cared. This feels like a manufactured controversy because literary sites/blogs have such little actual literary news to report (another celebrity is writing either a memoir or a children’s book, an upcoming book has released its cover, and James Patterson has a new book coming out soon). The only reason I’m writing about this is because a couple weeks ago I wrote about books that I was embarrassed to read in public. YA literature didn’t make the list.

I’ve heard of slut shaming before (and I’m completely against it). But I’d never heard of YA Lit shaming, and some critics are upset with Graham for attaching a negative word like “embarrassing” to YA books. Ruth Graham later backtracked in an NPR interview, saying that she meant YA literature was like a “guilty pleasure.” She shouldn’t have backtracked, especially since her backtracking isn’t consistent with her original opinion. I understood what she meant the first time (I think), and I believe some of her critics are overreacting.

Maybe “embarrassed” was the wrong word to use, but everybody uses the wrong word sometime. Unfortunately, Ruth Graham wrote this article for Slate, so she’s being held to a high standard of word usage, and she should be. In her original piece, she wrote about YA lit as if it were beneath her. YA fiction is not meant for adults, so we shouldn’t treat it like it’s for adults. There might be a few exceptions, but really, it’s not for us. I’m probably more familiar than most adults with YA fiction, but that’s because I have two daughters who read a lot, so I want to see what’s out there.

The Fault in our Stars is an exception. Even though it’s much better than most YA lit, I still felt detached from it, and I had to read it in short (or small?) doses. I appreciated the literary references, even though I didn’t understand all of them at first (though I pretended to with the people I know). But I didn’t have any problem reading it in public, though I was told a couple teen girls looked at me strangely. And I’m not embarrassed that I read it. It’s not beneath me. But a lot of current YA lit might be.

Despite The Fault in Our Stars and a few other high quality YA books, a lot of recent YA literature (at least the stuff that I’ve read/sampled) seems to be poorly written, and a lot of the authors write as if they don’t even know any teenagers. For example, when I read the first (20 pages of the first) Theodore Boone book by John Grisham, I wondered if Grisham has actually talked to young adults in the last 20 years.

Maybe 5-10 years ago, there was less YA lit, but it was higher quality. Now it’s being churned out so quickly that it would make James Patterson’s head spin, except he’s in on the action too with his own sets of YA series. A friend of my family claims that Patterson’s co-authors are doing a decent job with Patterson’s YA books, but I’m not going to find out for myself. I’d be embarrassed.

I’m a judgmental person, but I judge myself far more harshly than I judge others… except for James Patterson. I’m pretty hard on James Patterson, and he deserves it, but he doesn’t care. Since I’m judgmental, I’m the type of person who should be outraged by what Ruth Graham said.  But I can’t get myself worked up over over Ruth Graham’s opinion.

This is a problem with today’s discourse; people get offended and outraged too quickly. Ruth Graham doesn’t need to get insulted for her opinion, as some commenters on other websites/blogs have done.  I don’t even think her point is that controversial.

If people want to be outraged at an author, get mad at James Patterson. He put his name on 13 books last year. To me, an author’s actions (pretending to write 13 books in one year) is more offensive (wrong word) than having an opinion about YA literature. Consequently, I’m not a fan of YA lit shaming, but James Patterson shaming? I’m all for it!

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Whenever I write “Ruth Graham,” I accidentally keep writing “Ruth Gordon” first, and then I have to go back and change it. I had a crush on Ruth Gordon when I was a teenager.

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But enough about me! Would you be embarrassed to be seen reading YA literature in public? Should Ruth Gord… Ruth Graham be shamed for suggesting that adults be embarrassed if they read YA books in public? Are most YA books any more poorly written than most of any other genre out there? Is most YA lit beneath us adults? Should I be shamed for suggesting that most YA books are poorly written? Should I be shamed for not crying while reading The Fault in our Stars?