Deep Thoughts on the State of YA

    The other day, there was a minor Twitter backlash over this
article in a college newspaper in which the author complained in rather harsh
fashion about some YA books she read that she felt were formulaic crap, and a
few people rose up to say “hey, all YA isn’t like that, be quiet.” Other people
replied with, “You should not criticize those books so harshly.” (I haven’t
read the books in question, so I can’t say whether the criticism was fair,though it certainly was harsh.)

                There
has also been some discussion among authors on the internet about how it’s not
a good idea to say anything negative about a fellow author’s work.  I know that many, though certainly not all book
bloggers operate under the same “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say
anything at all” framework.

                So here’s
what I have to say about this. 

                Of
course there is a lot of formulaic crap in YA fiction.  There’s a lot of formulaic crap in every
genre.  Even literary fiction!  (Though Orson Scott Card is a truly loathsome
individual, his observation that a lot of literary fiction consists of stories
about young men who are having difficulty writing is a pretty devastating and
accurate critique.)  We don’t do our
genre any favors when we reflexively defend any criticism of it.  Right now YA fiction is lousy with dystopias
and love triangles, and a lot of this is because authors and editors are
chasing trends, not because they have a passion to tell that particular
story.  So when people say, “hey! This
sucks!” we should not tell them to be quiet; we should thank them for being
passionate about our art.

                Some of
the best books out there right now are YA books.  At the same time, the shelves are groaning
with crap—cynical, paint-by-numbers crap that insults the readership.  “It’s just YA! They’ll buy anything!  Throw in a shabbily-constructed dystopia and
give the girl two hot boys she can’t choose between.  It’s gold!”

                I think
it’s not only okay to say that crap is crap; it’s important.  Because the cynical will continue shoveling
crap our way unless we call it what it is. 
And if we’re positive about everything all the time, our positivity
loses any credibility.   This is tough because
most authors, at least the ones that I’ve met, are nice people, and also it
hurts when your work is criticized.  But
you learn from criticism; and if we want passionate advocacy when people like
our books (which I do!  Tell your friends
about Enter the Bluebird, willya?), we have to expect passionate criticism when
they don’t.  If art—any art, really
matters to you, you’re going to be passionate about both the things that you
like and the things that you hate.

                I guess
I’d like it if the YA community took a more positive view of itself.  We are strong enough and good enough that we
can call out the crap merchants without damning everyone else, and we can
recognize when something sucks and demand better.  We don’t have to ooh and ah every time a
non-YA writer thinks they can crank out a YA book because how hard could it be.  We don’t always have to be lovey-dovey and
supportive because not everybody’s work deserves that support. We can recognize
that writing YA well takes talent and work and that not everybody has the
talent or is willing to put in the work. 
And we can recognize that chasing a buck is almost always a great way to
produce some really shitty art.