Staking Our Claim in the Science Fiction Universe: Guest Post by Alexandra Duncan

March 31, 2015 |

Today, Alexandra Duncan is taking part in the series to talk about females in science fiction and why it is we belong in it.

Alexandra Duncan is an author and librarian. Her YA sci-fi novel Salvage (2014) was a 2014 Andre Norton Award nominee and a 2015 Amelia Bloomer Project selection. Its companion novel, Sound, is forthcoming in September 2015. Her short fiction has appeared in several Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy anthologies and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. She lives with her husband and two monstrous, furry cats in the mountains of Western North Carolina.

When you think of “girly” books, chances are, you’re not thinking about science fiction. Sci-fi, along with horror and other “weird” fiction, has long been male territory, where women are the exception. I learned this lesson over and over again as a teenager searching for sci-fi written by or starring women. Not that I didn’t get any pleasure from Robert Heinlein’s “boys” novels, for example, or gain insight about issues like poverty (Citizen of the Galaxy) or self-determination (Farmer in the Sky), but there was a special kind of excitement in finding a sci-fi novel with a female protagonist. After all, even Ursula Le Guin, who inspired me and whose books I loved dearly, often wrote about men.

The big boom in young adult literature came right after I graduated from college. Suddenly, here were all the books I had been desperate to read as a teenager, when my YA reading choices were limited to Sweet Valley High (too fluffy and formulaic), John Knowles’s A Separate Peace (good, but about rich boys courting tragedy at boarding school), and I Know What You Did Last Summer (the best of the bunch). Now I could read about kick-ass young women with magical powers and girls doing everything I had dreamed of as a teen. But the sci-fi pickings were still fairly slim. I loved fantasy, too, and now there was plenty of it, but where were the spaceships? Where were the girls surviving on hostile planets, like Rod Walker in Heinlein’s Tunnel in the Sky?

I had come across Anne McCaffrey’s Crystal Singer, about a young woman sent to a planet to help mine crystals by singing, at a used book store in high school. I wanted so desperately to finish reading the trilogy, but my small-town public library didn’t have the other two books, and the internet hadn’t quite caught on in rural North Carolina at that point, so I couldn’t track them down. Every time I went to a used book store for the next five years, I checked for the rest of the Crystal Singer series, with no luck. I’m sure there were other sci-fi books by and about women out there, but they were so few and far between, the chances of them making their way into my orbit were slim to none. Like many girls and women, I was making do with glimmers of what could be, like the scene in Return of the Jedi where Leia disguises herself as a bounty hunter and tries to rescue Han (before she ends up chained and in a bikini).

Enter The Hunger Games. I was working at a book store at the time and managed to snag an ARC before the first book came out. I read the whole thing in one sitting, incredibly moved and energized. I felt like Molly Grue in Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn when she comes across the title character for the very first time and bursts into tears, shouting, “Where have you been?” Where had books like this been when I was a teenager? Why had it waited to show up until I was at an age where I was “supposed” to be reading adult books? But like Molly Grue, what was ultimately important to me was that it was here now. I didn’t know it yet, but The Hunger Games was about to usher in a tidal wave of dystopian fiction. It was going to lead all of its fellows out of the sea.

Some people don’t think of dystopian fiction, which women are writing in staggering numbers, as part of science fiction. I have to disagree. When you have genetically modified monsters running around a reconstructed post-apocalyptic North America with advanced technology and striking class divisions, you’ve got sci-fi. Others refer to dystopian novels dismissively as “soft” science fiction, as if books that deal with bio-ethical or sociological issues are not “real” science fiction. “Real” sci-fi is “hard” sci-fi, and it belongs to men.

Of course, this is a fallacy, too. Women have staked out territory in all areas of sci-fi in recent years. Beth Revis’s Across the Universe trilogy has made major inroads in introducing female YA readers to harder science fiction. Marissa Meyer has given us a cyborg Cinderella in her Lunar Chronicles series. Lauren DeStefano has deftly intertwined genetics and feminist issues in her Chemical Gardens trilogy. And the international writing team of Amie Kaufmann and Meagan Spooner has shown us through their Starbound series that all kinds of girls are welcome in the science fiction universe, both kick-ass soldiers and those whose appreciation of a nice ball gown doesn’t change the fact that they are whip-smart survivors.

The fundamental trouble here, though, is the false dichotomy set up between hard and soft science fiction. Why do we think we can’t have our space ships and explosions together with our explorations of the ethics of cloning or ruminations on the ways alien cultures might view sexuality differently from our own? Why do some people think of “soft” sci-fi as somehow lesser? Many women, myself included, write soft science fiction because sociological issues like cultural bias, discrimination, and abuse materially affect our lives. Authors like Nnedi Okorafor, who writes both YA and adult novels, Mary E. Pearson, and Alaya Dawn Johnson deftly bring social issues into focus under a science-fictional lens, and the result is dazzling.

In actuality, science fiction is the perfect arena for exploring sociological issues, because the genre has long taken on hot topics and attempted to reframe them in a way that might help us view our own world differently. We can take a fresh look at race, class, or terrorism without the baggage we have when reading the news, then return to those real-world issues with a fresher, deeper understanding. Women like the ones I’ve mentioned have proved they are not afraid to do this. In fact, they excel at this, one of the most fundamental values underpinning science fiction writing.

Women carving out a space for themselves in science fiction is changing the face of the genre, and changing it for the better. It is broadening and deepening the conversations we have in science fiction. If we keep reading and writing, who knows what brave new worlds we’ll discover next?

***

Salvage is available now. The companion, Sound, will be available September 22.

What About Intersectionality and Female Friendships in YA?: Guest Post by Brandy Colbert

March 30, 2015 |

To kick off the second week of “About the Girls” guest posts, Brandy Colbert is here to talk about friendship in YA. More specifically, she’s here to talk about how important it is to see diverse, intersectional friendships in YA between and among girls.

Brandy Colbert is the author of Pointe, which was named a best book of 2014 by Publishers Weekly, BuzzFeed, Book Riot, the Chicago Public Library, and the Los Angeles Public Library. Her second novel, Little & Lion, is forthcoming from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. She lives and writes in Los Angeles, and you can find her on Tumblr, Twitter, and brandycolbert.com.

When I was in first grade, I was part of a trio of friends that included two girls we’ll call S and K. They were both small and white and blond, and K was born with two fingers on one of her hands. We’d all hold hands as we walked around the school and playground, as little kids do, but I remember the first time I noticed K’s hand. I went home that day and asked my parents about it. At the time, she was one of the first people I’d ever met with a physical disability, and especially who happened to be my age. Without missing a beat, they calmly informed me that K’s hand didn’t define her, that we’re all different in some way, and to never believe I’m better than (or not as good as) anyone else because of those differences.

That talk has stuck with me nearly thirty years later, and it was incredibly timely in my childhood. The next year our family moved across town where as a second-grader, I was one of only a handful of black kids in my entire elementary school. I grew up in a town that was predominantly white and only 3 percent black, but the school I’d attended with K and S was quite racially diverse, all things considered. Suddenly I knew what it was like to be the one who was “different.”

I lost track of K over the years, but I’ve always wondered if she dealt with similar issues I had growing up: Namely, always having to explain myself. For me, it was: Why does your hair look/feel/stick out like that? Can you actually get sunburned? Would I be able to see it if you blushed? And then there were the not-so-subtle looks (and sometimes pointed questions) during the slavery discussions in history class. And let’s not forget the girl who, at my part-time job, pulled me aside to ask if both of my parents were black…and only admitted she broached the topic because of the way I speak after I prompted her.

Despite how exhausting and demoralizing it can be to not only have to explain your differences and feel like the spokesperson for black America before the age of ten, part of me appreciates those questions, looking back. Plenty were mean-spirited, meant only to remind me of how I’d never truly fit in among my peers. But some were thoughtful; some people truly wanted to learn, and if I could help them understand why and how a person different than them might go through a separate set of challenges and experiences in their lives, it was worth my time and effort.

Because of where I grew up, the majority of my friends were white until I moved away from southwest Missouri. Which meant these conversations took place anywhere and any time, but most often with my white female friends. I spent the most time with them, after all—at the dance studio after school and on weekends, at sleepovers, on the dance team in high school, talking on the phone for hours upon hours. I still have several white women friends as an adult, and I was surprised I didn’t know the term intersectional feminism until embarrassingly recently. I can’t remember where I first heard it, but social media came into play. I knew that I didn’t always feel like the feminism my white friends talked about and promoted was totally inclusive, but to hear there was an actual term for it felt so validating. What I’d been thinking and going through all these years wasn’t in my head.

The concept of intersectional feminism has been around and discussed for many decades, but law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, a black woman, is credited as being the first person to coin the term in 1989, which is loosely defined as recognizing that women experience different layers of oppression, including race, class, gender, ethnicity, and ability.

So, in other words, the reasons my white female friends didn’t seem to quite get what I was going through was because most of their experiences were colored through the experience of being a white woman. Full stop. Race and ethnicity weren’t an issue for them, and typically class and ability weren’t, either.

I remember sitting in my therapist’s office in Chicago several years ago when she asked, “How do you define yourself?” I looked at her, confused, and she said, “If someone asked you to define all the things you are, what would you say and in what order?” It didn’t take long for me to reply: “Black. Woman. Writer.” To me, I am all of those equally, but I know society doesn’t always see or treat me that way.

My childhood friends and I were avid readers, trading paperbacks and poring over the Scholastic catalog together. Now, even in 2015, children’s publishing has a diversity problem. But this was back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and so nearly 100 percent of the books I read were about white, straight, able-bodied kids. I didn’t think to question it; I yearned to read about kids who looked like me, but if I hadn’t read the books that were out there, I wouldn’t have read anything at all. I started writing fiction when I was seven years old, and even my own books at the time featured exclusively white characters because I just assumed people didn’t publish contemporary books about black kids.

One thing I’d like to see more of in children’s literature—particularly young adult fiction—is friendships between girls from different backgrounds. I want to see white, middle-class girls who have friends other than other white, middle-class girls. I want books where marginalized people aren’t presented as token best friends or love interests, but rather fully fleshed-out characters with their own stories and hopes and desires. I want to see books that show microaggressions and how those can build up and eat away at a person over time, how telling someone “It’s just a joke” isn’t helpful when those “jokes” are thrown at them day in and day out. I want to see characters who are black and Latina and Native American and Asian and biracial and white have friends with disabilities, and lesbian and bisexual and transgender friends. I want to see different combinations of those friendships and I’d especially like to see books where girls fit into more than one of these categories themselves.

I want to see these girls supporting and understanding each other’s differences—or listening and trying to understand if they don’t already. Because while I may have felt the time and effort of explaining myself to people in the past was worth it, all that explaining is exhausting the older you get. You still feel like the spokesperson for your group, even if you know you’re relaying a singular experience. And besides that, as an adult, you wonder why other adults aren’t seeking out other sources to educate themselves. Books are a wonderful way into different lives and worlds, so I can’t stress enough how much we need to see more novels published that focus on marginalized characters.

But while I was thinking of this magical wish list, it occurred to me that perhaps I missed an opportunity to delve into intersectional feminism in my own book.

In Pointe, the protagonist, Theo, is black American and grows up in a place not unlike my own hometown, in that it is suburban and almost entirely white. She’s known Ruthie, one of her oldest and closest friends at her dance studio, since they were toddlers, and they are both on the professional ballet track, ready to audition for summer intensives. Throughout the book, Theo and Ruthie speak honestly about their lives, but looking back, I wonder if their friendship could have been even more realistic if I’d included a conversation about the struggles of black ballet dancers. Theo herself acknowledges how difficult the journey could be for her, what with the lack of black dancers in the professional ballet world. And on some level, she is aware that Ruthie likely stands a greater chance of success than her—even though they are equally talented—simply based on her skin color. Would the book have been improved with a scene where they acknowledged these differences? I don’t know. Writers are always thinking, and I don’t believe we’re necessarily ready to write about what we’re currently pondering. But I’d like to think I’ll be more conscious of portraying certain experiences from here on out, and work to include even more examples that are authentic to my main characters’ worlds.

Naturally this whole topic got me thinking about what’s already out there in YA fiction in terms of portraying female best friends with different backgrounds. Not surprisingly, I came up short in what I’ve read that fits the bill. Although, how I loved the friendship in Sarah McCarry’s gorgeous novel Dirty Wings, between Maia, who’s Vietnamese and adopted by a white family, and her best friend, Cass, who is white. In Nina LaCour’s Everything Leads to You, Emi, the protagonist, is a lesbian; I can’t recall if the sexuality of her best friend, Charlotte, was ever mentioned, and don’t want to assume that she is straight because of that. But this novel was one of the first that I’d read with a lesbian protagonist in which her sexuality was not an issue, yet we still saw Emi’s romantic struggles with girls, and the easy way she was able to confide in Charlotte.

One of the most wonderfully diverse books I’ve read in some time is Maurene Goo’s Since You Asked…, whose main character, Holly, is of Korean-American descent, and whose best girl friends, Elizabeth and Carrie, are Persian and white. Not only was it so refreshing to read about how they celebrate and share in the varying aspects of their cultures, but Goo managed to effortlessly encapsulate the racially and ethnically blended lives of Southern California teens.

I’m very much looking forward to Under a Painted Sky by Stacey Lee, which was just released in March and features a Chinese girl and a black girl making their way West on the Oregon Trail. And when I asked my lovely host Kelly for more books I might have missed, she suggested Swati Avasthi’s Chasing Shadows and Hannah Moskowitz’s Not Otherwise Specified—neither of which I’ve yet read, but both have been on my radar.

The truth is, it’s really damn hard to be a girl in this world, and I’m grateful for the ones who’ve taken the time to understand me, who listen when I speak about challenges they may never face. I’m thankful to have met someone so early in life, my old friend K, who helped me recognize the struggles someone different from me is dealing with. I’m here for girls of all kind, and I hope young adult fiction starts to reflect more of that idea in the future.

Do you have more suggestions for books that fit my wish list? Leave them in the comments or tweet me @brandycolbert!

***

Pointe is available now.

Abortion, Girls, Choice, and Agency: Guest Post by Tess Sharpe

March 27, 2015 |

Today’s guest post comes from author Tess Sharpe and it takes a keen look at the messages and insights YA books that explore abortion offer. Where it’s been said abortion is the last taboo of YA fiction, perhaps that’s not really the case. Rather, there’s still a lot of room for exploration.

Born in a backwoods cabin to a pair of punk rockers, Tess Sharpe grew up in rural northern California. She is the author of FAR FROM YOU and SOMEWHERE BETWEEN RIGHT AND WRONG (out Fall 2016). She lives, writes, and bakes near the Oregon border.

When I was a little girl, my father volunteered as an escort at our local abortion clinic. “Escort” is the nice way of saying “bodyguard” or “human shield.” They lead the women into the clinic, putting their bodies between the women and the protestors, just in case. But they can’t block out the garish signs, the accusations of baby killer and whore or the God loves yous. They can’t hide the women from the protestors—who might be friends, family members, neighbors, or fellow church members.

In the ’90s (and now), my conservative small town was one of the few places you could get an abortion, and escorting—like working or volunteering there—was (and still is) dangerous work. One day, there was a knock at our door, and one of the protestors was standing there on our porch, wanting to “invite” my father and our family to church. The message was clear: we know where you live.

There was reason to fear: By the time I was a teenager, the clinic had been firebombed five times, and has been destroyed, totally flattened, twice.

When I was in college, the fear got personal: My only sister now ran that clinic, and would do so for a decade. I once asked her to carry pepper spray. She just shrugged and said pepper spray wasn’t going to help her against a bomb or bullets.

Fighting for reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy runs in the veins of all the women in my family. Which is why, when Kelly asked me to write a post for Women’s History Month, I latched onto the idea of exploring YA’s abortion narratives. I put out a call for titles and talked with several clinic workers who have heard thousands of women’s stories to learn what they consider the most important factors in an abortion narrative. Armed with this knowledge, I was ready to read and identify any themes or patterns I found—as well as enjoy a bunch of great books.

Not a lot of YA books mention abortion, and even fewer feature characters who choose to have an abortion or point-of-view characters having an abortion. I compiled a list of around 20 titles, and got my hands on about 15 of them to read.

After my talk with the clinic workers, I identified three important factors:

Economics: How the books address the financial burden of abortion—from the cost of the actual procedure (around $500, on average) to the many associated costs of actually getting to a clinic—often not an easy feat, especially if you’re a girl or woman living in the U.S., where many states have recently closed down and severely restricted clinic operations under the false pretext of “making them more safe.”

Because most teenagers aren’t working full-time and aren’t mothers already, I removed the job factor as well as the childcare factor from my analysis. But in reality, with the draconian laws that have been passed, especially in the last few years, many women must travel hundreds of miles, take days off work (often risking their job), and sleep in their car if they can’t afford a motel—if they have a car—all of this just to get a legal medical procedure. Many of these women are already mothers, so child-care is yet another crucial factor.

Accessibility: How accessible is the abortion? Does the character need to travel? Does she need to hide what she’s doing from authority figures? Does she need help to get to the clinic/location where the abortion takes place? Who transports her to and from the abortion provider?

Support: Who is helping the character getting the abortion? Her boyfriend? Her best friend? Parents? Aunt? (Aunts, it turns out, are kind of big in abortion books. When I discussed this with the clinic workers, they agreed. Often, teen girls will be accompanied by their aunts, best friends, or older sisters).

What kind of support is being offered? Positive or reluctant? Parental? Monetary? Emotional?

Overwhelmingly, the books I read did not address the economics of abortion at all: The cost is never mentioned in most, and isn’t a genuine problem in most that do bring it up. For example, in GINGERBREAD, Cyd reconnects with her estranged father to get the money to pay for her abortion, unwilling to tell her mother about it. He’s an affluent man who is easily able to afford it.

Accessibility is also not deeply discussed or even touched upon in most of the books. In most contemporary YA abortion narratives, it’s assumed that there’s an abortion clinic in town. I did not come across any books that included an actual scene in a clinic, though, through poetry and a few flashbacks, we see hints in AND WE STAY. Emily, the main character, also does travel to Boston with her parents to stay at her aunt’s to get the abortion there, but there are no scenes of the procedure itself—only before and after.

IN TROUBLE is the exception when it comes to accessibility. It goes deeply into the subject of abortion access, and that’s because it’s set pre–Roe vs. Wade, in the world of back alley abortions. Here, accessibility is discussed constantly because abortion was still illegal at that time. There is talk of women throwing themselves downstairs (something the character tries in desperation) and of downing 7-Up and vodka in a bid to miscarry. There is talk of neighbors who “know someone” who can help a girl “in trouble.” It examines in depth the coded language women had to use with doctors who were willing to risk their licenses to perform abortions. It also describes pregnant women who fake mental illness, hoping to be deemed unfit so that the hospital is forced to give them an abortion.

Support is an interesting aspect of YA abortion narratives. Almost always, the teenagers tell one or both of their parents, often quite soon after finding out the pregnancy. Interestingly, I found several books featuring divorced parents in which the teen confesses to one parent—who decides not to inform the co-parent.

Most of the books have a “confession” scene in which the parents are told about the pregnancy. Almost always, the parents react with initial anger but then accept the situation, moving straight to support. Even in AND WE STAY, where Emily’s parents come off as cold in many ways, they immediately get to work on fixing the “problem.”

In these books, parental awareness of the pregnancy ties directly into the lack of consideration regarding the economics of abortion as well as problems with transportation: If the parents know, it’s assumed they’re paying for it (and providing transport to the clinic), so the cost is never mentioned.

The difficulties that many girls and women face in reality are rarely addressed in the fictional world of YA abortion narratives. Lying to one’s parents, going without support, finding the money, finding the transportation, and finding the time (many states have waiting periods, and often clinics only perform abortions on one day of the week).

With the exception of a few, most of the books that have a character getting an abortion feature white, privileged, “good girls”—affluent girls who were virgins and are going to college… girls who aren’t “that kind of girl.” This pattern avoids the stigma and myth of the “slut who uses abortion as birth control” perpetuated by the anti-choice movement, as well as the lit community’s own problem with judging girl characters much more harshly than boys.

Interested to see how readers perceive characters who had abortions, I read through many positive and negative reviews of the books. Over and over, in both positive and negative comments, the boys who had impregnated the girls were called “sweet” and their pain and heartbreak over the girl’s choice was lauded and focused on. The girls, however, were judged as “cold” and “selfish” and “bitches” for acting, like, well, young women in an incredibly difficult situation. I must admit, it pained me to see these judgments about fictional characters, mostly because I know that much worse is assumed about real girls making the same choice.

The most prevalent theme I found in most of the books was this: Abortion ruins romantic relationships and leaves you alone. While it’s true that many young couples facing an unplanned pregnancy break up, many others stay together. In I KNOW IT’S OVER, which is fascinating in its exploration of male privilege by way of an abortion narrative, we’re treated to the possible new romance of the boy narrator at the end of the book. This is a boy who is so steeped in his male privilege that he repeatedly reveals his ex-girlfriend’s pregnancy to his friends without her permission. Despite some really questionable treatment of his ex-girlfriend, he gets a potential new romance and keeps his ex-girlfriend as a friend. She, however, does not find a new romance. At the end of the book, she is alone, existing in the periphery of his bright and now unburdened future.

Many feelings come up before, during and after an abortion. But relief is an emotion that is not explored very deeply in the YA abortion narrative. Grief, loneliness, and romantic isolation of girls specifically seems to be the prescription. And although terminating an unplanned pregnancy can be isolating, when there are so few abortion narratives to draw from and even fewer with a point-of-view character who undergoes the procedure, the repeated message of isolation and romantic brokenness can be limiting—especially when 11% of women in the U.S. who get abortions are teenagers, and 21% of all pregnancies in the country end in abortion.

IN TROUBLE is the only book I read that features another woman sharing her own abortion story with the character who is considering an abortion. It’s a beautiful moment of bonding, and I found myself wishing more of these books had more scenes like this to offset the message of isolation that many perpetuate.

The girls and women who get abortions are our sisters, our daughters, our friends, our mothers, our readers. It is the stigma of abortion that prevents us from sharing these stories with our fellow women and the world, and it is that same stigma that might make us cautious, as writers, to approach the subject in ways that diverge from the acceptable abortion narrative: the good, unpromiscuous girl whose birth control failed or whose boyfriend convinced her that just this one time without a condom would be OK. This girl usually tells one or both of parents about her pregnancy. She agonizes over her decision. She has a bright future that must be saved through abortion. That kind of abortion is acceptable. It makes sense. She won’t make that mistake again. She learns. She’ll be better at being a good girl in the future.

But a girl who never even tried to use birth control? Who wasn’t in love or a virgin? Who doesn’t tell her parents? Who slept around? Who might not know who the father is? Who doesn’t agonize over her choice? Who doesn’t have a bright future? Who has to wait until the last minute because she doesn’t have the money? Who hitches a ride to the abortion clinic because she has no other option? Who is getting her second, her third, her fourth abortion? Her story remains largely untold—it isn’t acceptable. This girl, she makes bad decisions. She might not learn a lesson. Her story may be complicated, but it deserves to be told just as widely and boldly.

YA titles considered in this piece:

THE TRUTH ABOUT ALICE by Jennifer Mathieu

GINGERBREAD by Rachel Cohn

UNWIND by Neal Shusterman

MY LIFE AS A RHOMBUS by Varian Johnson

GABI A GIRL IN PIECES by Isabel Quintero

EVERY LITTLE THING IN THE WORLD by Nina de Gramont

WHISPER OF DEATH by Christopher Pike

THINGS I CAN’T FORGET by Miranda Kenneally

TENDER MORSELS by Margo Lanagan

LIKE SISTERS ON THE HOMEFRONT by Rita Williams-Garcia

IN TROUBLE by Ellen Levine

LOVE AND HAIGHT by Susan Carlton

BORROWED LIGHT by Anna Feinberg

NEWES FROM THE DEAD by Mary Hooper

SMALL TOWN SINNERS by Melissa Walker

AND WE STAY by Jenny Hubbard

I KNOW IT’S NOT OVER by C. K. Kelly Martin

***

Far From You is available now.

On Being a Feminist YA Author and Daring to Write “Unlikable”: Guest Post by Amy Reed

March 26, 2015 |

Today’s guest post for the “About the Girls” series comes to us from Amy Reed. She’s talking about writing those “unlikable” girls and why she does it.

Amy Reed is the author of the gritty, contemporary YA novels BEAUTIFUL, CLEAN, CRAZY, OVER YOU, and DAMAGED. Her new book, INVINCIBLE, the first in a two-book series, releases April 28th. Find out more at www.amyreedfiction.com.

Something I see a lot in reviews of YA fiction (including my own books) is the complaint that a main character isn’t “likeable.” A book can be written beautifully and have a compelling plot, but if the protagonist isn’t likeable, it’s as if the rest of the book’s great qualities don’t matter. It’s as if the book isn’t worthy of being read if the main character doesn’t meet a certain list of qualities that a perfect girl should have. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen this complaint in a review of an adult literary novel written by a man. In fact, some of the most celebrated books in the straight white male literary cannon—Infinite Jest, A Confederacy of Dunces, The Catcher in the Rye, anything by Jonathan Franzen– are full of main characters who are detestable. Lolita is about a pedophile. Crime and Punishment is about a murderer. No one says these books suck because the main character is unlikeable. These books, these characters, are judged by a different set of criteria.

So who are these girls we’re supposed to be writing? Are they girls we think our readers would want to be friends with? Are they girls we think boys want to date? I think about some of the best-selling YA books I’ve read over the years, and there is definitely a standard “type” in many of them. These girls are white and of average height. They are thin, but not too thin. They are smart, but not too smart. They are a little bit shy, but not disastrously so. They are mostly nice, and when they are not nice, they feel bad about it. They make mistakes, but recognize them quickly. They want to be good. They fall deeply and madly in love with a boy, and that love defines them. The conflicts in their lives tend to be external rather than resulting from their own character flaws. Theirs are the stories of good girls fighting against a world that wants to corrupt good girls.

But what about the rest of us? I imagine myself as a teenager and reading these characters. I imagine myself throwing these books across the room. Not because they are not good books, but because I did not see myself in their pages. I was not the good girl they described. I was a girl who did bad things and did not always feel bad about them. I was a girl who struggled with addiction and mental illness. I starved myself skinny and I ate myself borderline obese. I loved both boys and girls, but my relationships were rarely about love. My friendships were deep and passionate and far more meaningful than any romance. I was a leader, a loner, and sometimes a follower. I was a mean girl and I was bullied. I was too smart and too entitled. I was a bitch and I was a victim. I was obnoxious and righteous, and I was pathologically shy and insecure. I was a million different kinds of girls. And they were all valid.

These are the girls I know. These are the girls I write. They are sometimes unlikable, but they are always worthy of love. They are worthy of having their stories told.

I am a feminist YA author. I want a feminist YA. I want a YA where all girls see themselves represented, where all girls see hope and truth, struggle and redemption. I want them to find home inside the pages. I want them to find both escape and gritty reality. I want them to see their mistakes being made, their feelings being felt, and their problems being resolved. I want them to know it is okay that they exist. I want them to know their existence is worthy of being written about.

If we are to have a feminist YA, we must write about all the girls, not just the ones that are “likeable”. Because “likeable” is just another way of prescribing a right way to be a girl. Because girls and women are complicated and deep and layered and messy and infinitely fascinating. Because if male characters are allowed to be those things and still be worthy of reading, so should female characters. Because I don’t want to read just one kind of woman. Because I don’t want to be one kind of woman. Because if we do not give our female characters the right to be all kinds of women, how do we expect our readers to know they have that right, too?

***

Invincible will be available April 28.

Why Friendship Books Are Essential: Guest Post by Stacey Lee

March 25, 2015 |

Today’s guest post comes from debut YA author Stacey Lee. She’s talking about the importance of friendship books and why girls need these stories, be they about girl-to-girl friendships or not.

Stacey Lee is a fourth generation Chinese-American whose people came to California during the heydays of the cowboys. She believes she still has a bit of cowboy dust in her soul. A native of southern California, she graduated from UCLA then got her law degree at UC Davis King Hall. After practicing law in the Silicon Valley for several years, she finally took up the pen because she wanted the perks of being able to nap during the day, and it was easier than moving to Spain. She plays classical piano, wrangles children, and writes YA fiction.

UNDER A PAINTED SKY is her debut book.

Tastes change. At two years old, my daughter couldn’t get enough of Everyone Poops, but by age three, she had discarded that one for The Holes In Your Nose. After sticking her fingers up her nose got old, she moved to If You Give a Mouse a Cookie (which might explain her insatiable need for cookies), and so on and so forth.

Somewhere along the way, she’s become a tween, and now she can’t get enough of friendship stories. But even as she evolves into wanting the more ‘lovey dovey’ books, I hope the friendship story is one she will never outgrow.

So why are friendship books so important?

First, let’s look at why friendships are so important. Studies show that the strongest predictor of having a fulfilling life is to build healthy relationships with others, especially for women. One landmark study showed that women respond to stress with a cascade of brain chemicals that cause them to befriend other women. Up until then, it was thought that stress provoked a fight or flight response, but that was due to the test subjects historically consisting of men. This ‘befriending’ response buffers stress for women in a way that doesn’t occur in men. Another study found that the more friends women have, the less likely they are to develop physical impairments as they age. Friendships are as essential to women as a good diet and exercise.

1. Friendship stories encourage us to seek out good friendships.

Books that show healthy friendships encourage us to foster these relationships in our lives. How many of us wanted an amazing spider for a best friend after reading Charlotte’s Web? Someone who would save our hides from becoming bacon when the world turned against us? E.B. White created such relatable emotions in her two unlikely characters of Wilbur the pig and Charlotte the spider, it’s not surprising this book is the best selling paperback of all time. The ending still chokes me up.

Another classic series, the Betsy-Tacy-Tib books by Maud Hart Lovelace, centers around three best friends who are constantly getting into trouble for things like throwing mud at each other, and cutting off each other’s hair. When I read them, I longed for a friend I could throw mud at. (Instead, I had sisters, who were almost as fun.) To this day, I still seek out the kind of people I can be silly with, because of those girls.

2. Friendship stories help us to be good friends.

My daughter loves the Gallagher Girl series by Ally Carter, about an elite spy school for teen girls. When I asked her what she likes most about the books, it wasn’t the gadgets or the girls’ crazy adventures. Instead, she loves how the girls rely on each other in tough situations, whatever that involves – boys, parents, ancient international terrorist organizations. I felt a moment of pride when she told me, “When I read (these books), they help me be a good friend.”

Returning to Charlotte’s Web, while I wanted a spider for a best friend, more often I imagined that I could be that selfless spider someday. Books help us imagine ourselves at our best, and if we can imagine it, we can achieve it.

3. Books that show unhealthy friendship help us understand others and ourselves.

Alexis Bass’ brilliant novel Love and Other Theories is about a group of girl ‘players’ who follow certain rules to avoid heartbreak. These girls are cruel and catty, and the indignation expressed by Goodreads reviews is a testament to how well the author captured these characters. But the book shows us how easy it is to get caught up in toxic relationships, and the harm that can result. It encourages us to emerge from such relationships, stronger and wiser, and may even help us understand these flawed characters in a redemptive way.

In one of my favorite books, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, Junior’s best friend Rowdy rejects him when Junior switches to an all-white school. But even while Rowdy is beating up on Junior, Alexie somehow makes us care about both of them, showing us the power of best friends to hurt and to heal.

4. Books about friendship give us hope.

One of my favorite adult friendship titles is Waiting to Exhale, by Terry McMillan, about the lives of African American women living in Arizona. Each have their own stories –a woman tries to find Mr. Right, a divorcée rebuilds her life, a mother deals with an empty nest, and a serial dater questions whether she needs a man. What carries these women through their own personal heartbreaks is their friendship with one another.

In writing my debut, UNDER A PAINTED SKY, I wanted to show how essential friendship is to our survival. Samantha, a Chinese violinist, and Annamae, a runaway slave make a perilous escape out of Missouri in 1849. Each has separate missions that will require them to eventually split up, but their unlikely friendship might be the only thing that can save them.

Friendship books assure us that in the midst of life’s worst struggles, as long as we have friends, we can prevail. As the famous Calvin and Hobbes cartoonist Bill Watterson put it, “Things are never quite as scary as when you have a best friend.” I couldn’t agree more.

Friendship books in YA I recommend:

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie

Love and Other Theories, Alexis Bass

Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta

The Orphan Queen, Jodi Meadows

When Reason Breaks, Cindy Rodriguez

We All Looked Up, Tommy Wallach

I Am the Messenger, Markus Zusak

Friendship books in my TBR pile:

Tiny Pretty Things, Sona Charaipotra & Dhonielle Clayton

Mexican White Boy, Matt De La Peña

Becoming Jinn, Lori Goldstein