Earlier this week, I posted my review of Swati Avasthi’s Chasing Shadows and today she’s here with a really fantastic post about friendship in adolescence and in YA lit.
the relationships formed in the books we read are endless. That high
school romances and friendships survive the transition to college, to
the working world, to whatever paths the characters take after high
school is over.
I love sentence structure, can get passionate about the
ill-semi-colon and swear that CMS is the One Format to Rule them All.
In high school, I wouldn’t have claimed my identity so fearlessly
– I didn’t know who I was; I was a bit of a floater (I lettered 5
times and was the editor of the literary magazine – I couldn’t be
placed neatly into a box). But I never skipped classes, rarely
turned in late work, put my hand up and participated – the works.
broke down and told me that she’d been raped. As she was crying I
skipped my next class – a suspendable offense in my school — and
we talked all through it until she felt better for that day. When I
ran into the teacher whose class I’d skipped, I made no excuses. I
was unapologetic, remorseless but honest – a friend needed my help
and yes, I’d do it again if I needed to. He wanted details. But I
wouldn’t cave because I knew one thing about myself: I was a good
friend.
who I was as a person, who I wanted to be growing up, and who I was
as a girlfriend, I knew that one truth. I came of age as a friend.
More than boyfriends, more than atheletics, more than even writing,
the thing I was sure of was my friendships.
romances) are underdone in YA. I don’t feel like I need a whole lot
of evidence to prove that – there’s a whole section for
paranormal romance in Barnes and Noble and nothing equivalent for
friendships. And often when friendships are portrayed in YA, they
are portrayed like I had thought of them as a teen – endless,
important, fixed. I was loyal to a fault.
complicated than that, especially when you are young, especially when
you are in transition, which most teens are. Only one of my friends
from high school (and not the one I skipped class for) is still my
friend. College changes everything. It changes who you are and
sometimes, your friends change too and sometimes they don’t.
Sometimes, they get left behind.
about three friends who are inseparable. Fast, strong, freerunners,
Corey, Holly and Savitri are one unit. When Corey is shot and
killed, Holly and Savitri have to remake themselves in the shadow of
a gunman, and in so doing, their friendship starts to fracture.
Holly wants to go after the killer and Savitri, who had wanted to go
away for college, no longer knows how to save Holly as she comes
unglued. How far do you go for your friends? At what point is being
a good friend about walking away?
because of something we can lose the people we are and the friends we
have.
still a very close friend of mine. But it didn’t happen easily.
And there were times when I thought our friendship wouldn’t make
the transitions it needed to as we went to college, got married, and
had our own children. To keep a friendship, we have to let go of
some of it – to let it change as we do, to let it evolve, and wax
and wane sometimes.
children is a sin. My job is to tell the truth as I understand it
and the truth for me about friendships is that sometimes they don’t
survive. And when they do, it is through letting them grow and
change. It is not without struggles in which we define who we are as
friends: what actions and beliefs we value most in ourselves and
others. It’s not without conflict and drama, because this is about
coming of age and self discovery, which can have casualties. In
other words, it is the stuff of fiction. History is written by the
victors; fiction is written by those who struggle.