Beth Neff's Blog - Posts Tagged "identification"
Who Do YOU Identify With?
To identify with: to associate or affiliate (oneself) closely with a person or group as in Most young readers of The Catcher in the Rye will readily identify (or identify themselves) with Holden Caulfield.
Online Free Dictionary.
You’ve heard it a hundred times, young adult literature assessed by the opportunity the book provides for teenagers to ‘identify’ with the characters. My question is: why is this so important and what do we hope to achieve by it? More importantly, is ‘identification’ really the goal and, if not, what is?
Identity is a complicated issue. We have a tendency to simplify it (how surprising!,) to imagine that it can be broken down to a particular characteristic, to a set of experiences. If a person identifies as female or gay or Latino or underprivileged, we go on to imagine that this one characteristic is a defining aspect of that person’s ‘identity.’ Even if we could agree (and we can’t) that it makes sense for a person to have just one important aspect of his or her identity, can we then extrapolate that this same person is likely to identify most strongly with others who also fall into the category? Can dark-skinned people only identify with other dark-skinned people? Jews with Jews? Adolescents with other adolescents?
Certainly when we are dealing with whole categories of people that have been ignored or minimized by literature, it is only natural to celebrate opportunities for that identifying characteristic to move to center stage, for characters who exhibit such features to win a place as actors in narrative, for their particular experiences to receive notable attention. At the same time, I think it’s dangerous to assume that anyone, maybe especially young adults, should be encouraged to believe that, in order to ‘identify’ with a character or a story, that the characters must look exactly like them or have experiences which echo their own. That is the opposite of empathy.
Let’s look at international literature for a moment. There has been a well-deserved blossoming of stories from other countries populating library and bookstore shelves lately. We now – finally – have rather wide access to novels in which the main characters are from India or Iraq or Thailand, where we are exposed to the unique (to us) experiences of young people raised in Islamic families or growing up on central African cattle ranches. One reason these books are so important is that they allow our world to expand, provide insight into traditions and cultures and lifestyles that differ from our own. They allow us, in essence, to broaden the definition of ‘identification,’ to allow for the very real and critical understanding that empathy absolutely must transcend existing boundaries, must go beyond the groups we presently belong to and that have a tendency to solidify our moral ground, if it is to have positive impact on the world.
Don’t we, then, in some ways limit the reach of empathy if we make our goal association or affiliation with those we already know are like us? And don’t we also patronize to our most vulnerable and non-white, non-heterosexual, non-middle class, non-male readers if we suggest that their process of identification is best achieved through characters and narratives that mirror most closely their own experience? Isn’t this saying that the entire body of literature, that which, by this definition, fails to provide identifying opportunities, is ‘not for them?’
It’s insulting, to say the least, truly dangerous if taken to its fullest extremes. Obviously, literature must contain a wide diversity of characters. Gaps must be filled, attention must be paid to a broad range of identities, focus must be on voices that often go unheard. There is nothing wrong with identification but it doesn’t quite go far enough. If we truly want to utilize the identification process as a path toward empathy (which I certainly think we do,) then we can’t behave as if the best or even a good way to achieve that is for people to read mostly about themselves, even for those people who don’t fit into the dominant group (again, white, privileged, straight, northern.)
I realize that there are already plenty of books out there about the ‘dominants’ and it makes sense to try to expand the selection. I did that myself with Getting Somewhere. But even though I’m extremely glad to provide a literary outlet for teens who may be questioning gender identity or those who have found themselves on the wrong side of the law, I also hope that teens who do not fall into either of these categories will be able to empathize with my characters and their experiences.
Identification, in and of itself, cannot be the primary goal for young adult literature. If it is, if we don’t focus on empathy instead, we not only patronize to young people but also lose an enormous opportunity. I would rather that we encourage kids – all kids – to read about every kind of person in every kind of circumstance. Let’s try to move beyond prejudice, even that which is often self-imposed, and ask not if characters share our experiences but if we are capable of imagining sharing theirs.
Online Free Dictionary.
You’ve heard it a hundred times, young adult literature assessed by the opportunity the book provides for teenagers to ‘identify’ with the characters. My question is: why is this so important and what do we hope to achieve by it? More importantly, is ‘identification’ really the goal and, if not, what is?
Identity is a complicated issue. We have a tendency to simplify it (how surprising!,) to imagine that it can be broken down to a particular characteristic, to a set of experiences. If a person identifies as female or gay or Latino or underprivileged, we go on to imagine that this one characteristic is a defining aspect of that person’s ‘identity.’ Even if we could agree (and we can’t) that it makes sense for a person to have just one important aspect of his or her identity, can we then extrapolate that this same person is likely to identify most strongly with others who also fall into the category? Can dark-skinned people only identify with other dark-skinned people? Jews with Jews? Adolescents with other adolescents?
Certainly when we are dealing with whole categories of people that have been ignored or minimized by literature, it is only natural to celebrate opportunities for that identifying characteristic to move to center stage, for characters who exhibit such features to win a place as actors in narrative, for their particular experiences to receive notable attention. At the same time, I think it’s dangerous to assume that anyone, maybe especially young adults, should be encouraged to believe that, in order to ‘identify’ with a character or a story, that the characters must look exactly like them or have experiences which echo their own. That is the opposite of empathy.
Let’s look at international literature for a moment. There has been a well-deserved blossoming of stories from other countries populating library and bookstore shelves lately. We now – finally – have rather wide access to novels in which the main characters are from India or Iraq or Thailand, where we are exposed to the unique (to us) experiences of young people raised in Islamic families or growing up on central African cattle ranches. One reason these books are so important is that they allow our world to expand, provide insight into traditions and cultures and lifestyles that differ from our own. They allow us, in essence, to broaden the definition of ‘identification,’ to allow for the very real and critical understanding that empathy absolutely must transcend existing boundaries, must go beyond the groups we presently belong to and that have a tendency to solidify our moral ground, if it is to have positive impact on the world.
Don’t we, then, in some ways limit the reach of empathy if we make our goal association or affiliation with those we already know are like us? And don’t we also patronize to our most vulnerable and non-white, non-heterosexual, non-middle class, non-male readers if we suggest that their process of identification is best achieved through characters and narratives that mirror most closely their own experience? Isn’t this saying that the entire body of literature, that which, by this definition, fails to provide identifying opportunities, is ‘not for them?’
It’s insulting, to say the least, truly dangerous if taken to its fullest extremes. Obviously, literature must contain a wide diversity of characters. Gaps must be filled, attention must be paid to a broad range of identities, focus must be on voices that often go unheard. There is nothing wrong with identification but it doesn’t quite go far enough. If we truly want to utilize the identification process as a path toward empathy (which I certainly think we do,) then we can’t behave as if the best or even a good way to achieve that is for people to read mostly about themselves, even for those people who don’t fit into the dominant group (again, white, privileged, straight, northern.)
I realize that there are already plenty of books out there about the ‘dominants’ and it makes sense to try to expand the selection. I did that myself with Getting Somewhere. But even though I’m extremely glad to provide a literary outlet for teens who may be questioning gender identity or those who have found themselves on the wrong side of the law, I also hope that teens who do not fall into either of these categories will be able to empathize with my characters and their experiences.
Identification, in and of itself, cannot be the primary goal for young adult literature. If it is, if we don’t focus on empathy instead, we not only patronize to young people but also lose an enormous opportunity. I would rather that we encourage kids – all kids – to read about every kind of person in every kind of circumstance. Let’s try to move beyond prejudice, even that which is often self-imposed, and ask not if characters share our experiences but if we are capable of imagining sharing theirs.
