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How to Relationship — Guest Post by Corey Ann Haydu

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Today’s post comes from Corey Ann Haydu, and it’s about relationships. What are the common relationship narratives we come to expect in YA fiction? Does everything have to be about teens having sex? Corey digs in and questions our expected — and unexpected — beliefs about sexuality in YA fiction, especially as it comes to girls.









Corey Ann Haydu is the author of OCD LOVE STORY and the upcoming novels LIFE BY COMMITTEE and RULES FOR STEALING STARS. She lives in Brooklyn, loves cheese and podcasts, and writes (and eavesdrops) in cafes. 















I am an imperfect feminist and an imperfect reader and if we’re all pretty honest these are the only kinds of feminists and readers there are. Because feminism and reading are both explorations and when we explore we mess up. 

This is a blog post about trying to be a better feminist and a better reader and a person less motivated by the Relationship Narratives that we’ve been told our whole lives and how YA literature does and does not come into play. This is a post about what we’re telling women about marriage and what we’re telling teenagers about sex, and how literature reinforces an Ideal that maybe doesn’t exist.

This is also a blog post about teen sexuality and our discomfort with it, which, because I am an imperfect feminist and an imperfect reader, sometimes includes my discomfort with it.

A few months back I was part of a reading at a Children’s bookstore. The reading was about relationships in YA literature, and our panel of YA authors each read a flirting or kissing scene from our books.

Then something happened.

Wonderful YA author Mindy Raf read a scene from her recent The Symptoms of My Insanity. It was less than a sex scene. It was more than a kissing scene. It was uncomfortable and funny. It was specific and evocative. It was messy and brilliant. It was too much for the children’s bookstore to have over their PA system, an understandable concern. After her reading we were asked that if we were going to read racier scenes, to read them off-mic, since there were children in the store.

This is a reasonable request. It’s a kid’s store, there are little ones, and our books, like a lot of YA books, were not necessarily appropriate for too young an audience. They didn’t kick us out or treat us disrespectfully. But it was a unique experience and there was something bigger at play, too, in my opinion. What was uncomfortable about Mindy’s scene was its break from the YA sexuality narrative.

Relationship narratives are something I’m thinking about a lot lately. Maybe because I’m in my thirties and in a relationship and am wondering what I am Supposed to be Doing. Maybe because I write about girls beginning to navigate relationships in unexpected ways.

I’m thinking a lot about how the things we see and read intersect with what’s expected of us in life. Lucky for 30-something women, we know exactly what the narrative is in literature and other entertainment for adults. We know what is expected of us if we are to follow the narrative presented in popular fiction. Meet, fall in love, get married. There is an implied goal to every relationship. And an endpoint that signifies the story is almost over. Marriage. It’s what the characters are working towards, and what the reader is instructed to root for, and—if we’re to believe stories and the way they’re told have an impact on our psyches—what we then hope for ourselves. We come to learn that a relationship has a shape, one shape, and that we need to be trying to fit into it.

I’d argue YA literature and media often do the same thing with sex.

It’s important to say that there are thousands of YA books that veer from a traditional relationship narrative. YA is growing and vast and a lot of writers are telling new stories and using sexuality in new ways to create new structures.

That said, a lot of stories aren’t doing this, and it’s meaningful to think about what the predominant place of sex in stories for teens is, and why it’s there. Sex is often used as endpoint in YA, in a similar way that marriage is used as an endpoint in adult literature and media. Sometimes it is heralded as a relationship accomplishment, or sometimes it’s the starting point of a more difficult story about the ways sex can go wrong, but it’s a fixed point around which other things revolve.

And maybe most meaningfully, when we’re talking about sex in YA, we’re talking almost exclusively about about intercourse.

YA relationships often have their own specific shape: meet, fall in like, first kiss, fall in love, first time having intercourse.

There is no messy in between.

And when there is, we’re uncomfortable with it.

A relationship in YA often moves to the Next Level with those two points of sexual contact—kissing and sex. Take Dawson’s Creek. This is neither literature nor incredibly current, but it’s a really strong example of the structure I’m talking about, and who doesn’t like a quick discussion of late 90s pop culture?

The characters in Dawson’s Creek have a first kiss, are boyfriend and girlfriend, and then angst about whether or not to have intercourse. As far as we know, they do not hit any other points of sexuality. They go from making out on the couch, fully clothed to sex, with nothing in between. They don’t worry about the other steps one could take, the other paths that occur while teens are figuring out how lust functions. They kiss and they have sex. If two characters wake up in the morning next to each other, naked, they’ve had intercourse. We know this to be true because it has always been true and the shape is ingrained in us.

We don’t even need to see or read about the sex happening. There’s a fade to black (or in the case of Dawson’s Creek, a fade to a snow globe of Los Angeles) and we understand that if a shirt has been removed or a bed is present, intercourse has occurred.

If two adult characters are in love, have slept together and have gotten through 1-5 difficult obstacles, we need them to get married. It is the conclusion to the journey. It is an answer to a question. It is a tangible, solid thing that we can understand very specifically—this means they are committed to each other forever and will have a family. We are comfortable with this story.

It’s problematic for adults. Marriage isn’t a tangible thing.

But sex? Sex is even less tangible. And the journey there is even less defined, in real life. Sex isn’t an answer at all. It isn’t even a prolonged state, the way marriage usually is. If the marriage Relationship Narrative is problematic and insincere and deceptive, the sex Relationship Narrative for teens is downright criminal. It’s a lie.

Here’s the harder thing to say: I’m guilty of this. It’s important for me to acknowledge this. A misconception about identifying as feminist is that you think you have all the answers to gender and sexuality issues. That you Do It Right. For me, for most feminists I think, that’s not the case. I’m the kind of feminist who is still training herself to see things through the right filter. I mess up, often. I play into familiar tropes and struggle to maintain both my own values and good storytelling and market viability. I have trouble even seeing where my own prejudices are, where I’ve fallen into the same traps as everyone else. Where and how and why I’ve given in to a dangerous structure.

I haven’t yet written the hooking up without intercourse stage of teen sexuality into my books. I’ve cut to black on actual sex. I’ve had the kissing and the implied understanding that sex has occurred and that the relationship is stronger because of it, more valid because of it. I’ve avoided letting my characters explore the messiness of sexuality. To be honest, I think I’m not sure how to do it yet. I’m not comfortable with the line between realistic/honest and graphic or too erotic. It’s a fault of mine, and something to check in with constantly. I have not done a good enough job speaking to the truth of teen, female sexuality. But that checking in and owning up is what being feminist is about for me. Checking in on those reflexes and working on them. Analyzing them. Being open to other people’s analysis of them. Hoping I’ll do better, wondering why when I sit down to write, I don’t want to.

What I’m sure of is that it’s dangerous to tell women that the goal of a relationship, the only way for a relationship to be “real” is to get married. And I know that telling a girl that sexuality is only about intercourse is dangerous. I know that letting sex be a stand in for validating a teen relationship is dangerous. I know that I don’t want to see relationships , especially for teen girls, take only one shape, over and over, because reinforcing an idea with such a specific prescription is hard on all of us. And we have enough stories we tell about teen girls and the boxes they’re allowed to sit in. We don’t need any more.

I loved that uncomfortable moment in the bookstore with Mindy reading about body parts and discomfort and not-intercourse. I loved that there was a specificity and awareness of the main character’s body and the chaotic, hilarious, strange, upsetting, turned-on, conflicted feelings going on in her mind. There was a lack of clarity that felt so much truer than the abundance of clarity that I think we feel pressure to write into young adult sex scenes. Mindy’s non-sex scene captured a truer part of adolescence, something that we don’t want to see. That is not appropriate to be played over the PA system in a children’s bookstore. That makes people tense up and shift around and wonder if it’s okay to admit that there’s something aside from making out and fading to black while the characters have their first time.

I forget a lot of scenes people read in their books during these panels. I’m sure we all do. I will never forget Mindy’s. It was shocking not because it was so sexy or racy or graphic. It was shocking because it was real and because it was an under-represented point of view that still doesn’t have a place in the teen Relationship Narrative. 

But like with all things YA, what matters is what the readers need and want and relate to. And although we’re uncomfortable with shifting the narrative, I think the girls aren’t. Even teen Corey, I think, related more to the grey area than anything.

What’s the scene of female sexuality I remember most from my own reading when I was young? Deenie by Judy Blume. A guy attempting to feel her up with her brace on. I believe it was in a hallway. It brought up two feelings for me at the time—the bubbling up of lust and the frantic spiraling of anxiety. The fear and hope. The weird mix of wanting it for myself and being terrified it would someday actually happen in my life.

Re-reading it now, it’s a small, subtle moment. That’s fine. That’s great! Judy Blume did, years ago, what I am struggling to do now. Make clear that there is more to sexuality than only kissing and intercourse in an understandable, simple, clear way that didn’t defy the tone of the book by being “too graphic” (whatever that means). She managed honesty and frankness while maintaining a boundary that she as a writer, and me as a young reader, felt comfortable with. It’s a tiny, masterful moment that makes me want to do better.

We can’t all be Judy Blume. Or really none of us can, but the fact that we all agree she is the queen of navigating sexuality as a teen means there’s probably something to learn there. She didn’t trap us into one notion of what a relationship looked like, and she didn’t tell us sex was a goal that meant a relationship was real or valid or that a happily-ever-after was coming. She didn’t insist there was only the first kiss and the first time with nothing in between. She didn’t seem to have an agenda.

And listen, sex as a teen can make love feel more real, can bring a relationship to the next level. Of course it can! Just as marriage can work out and it can be a valid goal for a 20, 30 40 or whatever-something woman. But examining what literature and media are telling us is vital. And understanding our wants in that context elevates our understanding of ourselves. We have to give teens the chance to evaluate themselves in the same way.

YA literature has a responsibility to make a space for girls to think about sexuality on a broad spectrum. We owe it to girls to give them something we don’t have—more than one ideal Relationship Narrative. Open space where there used to be claustrophobic one-path hallways. A chance to decide for themselves what love looks like, and what sex looks like in all its forms.

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Corey Ann Haydu is the author of OCD Love Story and the forthcoming Life By Committee, available in May. 

The Unlikable Female Protagonist: A Field Guide to Identification in the Wild — Guest Post by Sarah McCarry

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Let’s kick off our series with what will be a very helpful post for those needing a little guidance to work through what many will be talking about over the next couple of weeks. Sarah McCarry is here to offer insight into the unlikable female protagonist.







Sarah McCarry (www.therejectionist.com & @therejectionist) is the author of the novels All Our Pretty Songs and Dirty Wings (summer 2014), and the editor and publisher of Guillotine, a chapbook series dedicated to revolutionary nonfiction.









THE UNLIKABLE FEMALE PROTAGONIST: A FIELD GUIDE TO IDENTIFICATION IN THE WILD

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

Considerable debate has been devoted to the subject of the Unlikable Female Protagonist, a common pest of the natural world. While it is not our intent here to contribute to the extensive literature on her value as an object of study, we hope that by clarifying and outlining her identifying characteristics we may make a valuable and practical addition to the current research being conducted in the field.

HABITAT

The Unlikable Female Protagonist (UFP) is indigenous to a highly diverse spectra of ecosystems, climates, and geographical zones.

RANGE

Global; she may also be found in a variety of uniquely fictive environments, including but not limited to magical kingdoms, future dystopias, re-imagined historical settings, re-told fairytales, Forks, Washington, and a a web of filth, sexual perversions, alcohol, and smoking.

DESCRIPTION

ADULT and JUVENILE specimens of the UFP share a number of common characteristics and behaviors, and it is difficult to distinguish them in their natural habitats. Likewise, isolating the UFP in a group of Likable Female Protagonists may prove an insurmountable task for the casual observer; even researchers with extensive background in the field are frequently stymied when asked to assess physiological and behavioral differences between Likable and Unlikable Female Protagonists. 

Complicating identification further, a Previously Likable Female Protagonist may transition suddenly into a UFP via the application of a traumatic event, such as sexual assault, parental abandonment, death of family member or friend, discovery of previously unknown supernatural power, crushing out on werewolves, puberty, etc. Notably, rather than process her response via culturally acceptable techniques such as quietly journaling alone, attending therapy, dressing nicely, and remaining chipper but not overly perky, the UFP expresses her distress via characteristic behaviors including but not limited to promiscuous sexual activity, drinking alcohol and attending rock concerts, disrespecting her parents, being a bitch, being a whiny, annoying, total bitch, being a conceited bitch, being a heartless bitch, being a shallow, narcissistic bitch, being a hypocritical, coldhearted beeyotch with a stick up her ass, being dirty, attending a diverse high school, being Muslim, living with a disability, being cleverer than Harry Potter, finding a man who is stupid enough to love her, masturbating, being afraid of her emotions, detaching herself from her emotions, and swearing. Yeah she had a bad past, with her absent dad, butthole boyfriend, and an unexpected pregnancy/subsequent abortion, but she is a whiny brat. 

These, of course, are not the sole identifiers of the UFP, and merely existing may serve as trauma enough to effect a transition from Likable to Unlikable. The UFP is also feminist, not feminist enough, is too cheerful, overachieves, has pink hair, and does not criticize her love interest for putting up posters of attractive women on motorcycles. Additionally, the UFP may be precocious, a moron, irresponsible, too glamorous, too fat, too anorexic, too fixated on older men, gay, passive, arrogant, and not feminine enough. She has male friends, is obsessed with sex, is too rich, is too poor, talks too much about racism, and is generally detestable, selfish, and possessed of solely first-world problems. Having cancer is no excuse for her whining, unless she is written by a man. She is overly forgiving, pathetic, a HUGE wussy/complainer, unremarkable, vapid, the kind of girl who feels the need to expose herself to a guy she doesn’t know, overly forceful, and self-righteous. She would give IT up wayyyy too easily. She is, quite simply, an idiot.

While inexperienced researchers may express confusion about the apparently contradictory nature of the UFP’s behaviors, the obvious unifying factor among them is the fact that the UFP is always, as her name suggests, female.

ADDITIONAL NOTES

Female Protagonists may only ever be subdivided into “Likable” and “Unlikable”; for Fully-Developed Human Beings, refer to “Men.”

DISCUSSION AND OBSERVATION TIPS

As noted above, isolating and identifying the UFP in natural environments is a challenging task for the researcher. While she may elect to self-identify by donning goth clothing or applying black eyeliner, it is as likely that she will be visually indistinguishable from her likable counterparts. The UFP is so common, in fact, that naturalists might be better served by devoting their energies to searching out the Likable Female Protagonist instead, a creature so rare and elusive that some researchers suggest she is extinct, or in fact a figment imagined by overly enthusiastic graduate students in the humanities. At any rate, delineating the behaviors of the Likable Female Protagonist, should they be definable, is outside the scope of the present paper.

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Sarah McCarry’s All Our Pretty Songs is available now and Dirty Wings will be available in July. 

Guest Post for the Courtney Summers Read Along

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A few months ago, I heard about Ciara’s Courtney Summers read along. She’d put out a call for guest posts, and I decided it’d be fun to give it a shot.

So today you can head over there and read what I have to say about female characters, about gender, and about how great Summers is at writing girls that we know. Even if you’ve never read any of these books, I think the post speaks to the idea of how we box and label female characters and how our perceptions as readers would change were those females instead written as males.

I’m giving away a set of her books, as well, and the giveaway is open to anyone worldwide who can get shipments from The Book Depository.

Guest Post: Swati Avasthi on Friendship in YA

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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. 



In YA there’s an illusion – that
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 am a self-proclaimed, unabashed geek.
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.
One day, during a free period, a friend
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.
In a time of life when I had no idea
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.
Friendship stories (as compared to
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.
But friendships are much more
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.
CHASING SHADOWS, my second novel, is
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?
It is a novel about how, when we change
because of something we can lose the people we are and the friends we
have.
My best friend from high school is
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.

Jane Resh Thomas says that lying to
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.
***
Swati Avasthi is the author of two YA novels: CHASING SHADOWS which is a Junior library guild selection, and received starred reviews from Publisher’s Weekly and Kirkus, and SPLIT which received the International Reading Association Award, Cybils Award, a silver Parent’s Choice award and made numerous “best of lists” including YALSA, CCBC and Bank Street. 
Swati got her MFA from University of Minnesota and teaches at Hamline University and lives in Minneapolis with her two dogs, two kids and one husband, though he is worth two.

Guest Post: Why The Chocolate War Matters by Angie Manfredi

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Today as part of our Chocolate War read and blog along, we have a guest post from librarian and blogger Angie Manfredi about why this book matters to her and to YA lit more broadly.




Michelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman, two of cinema’s greatest directors, died on the same day. A few weeks later, The New York Times simultaneously published appreciations of their work by two more of cinema’s greatest directors.  Martin Scorsese wrote a piece about Antonioni entitled The Man Who Set Film Free and Woody Allen wrote a piece about Bergman entitled The Man Who Asked Hard Questions.  The cinephile in me fluttered with joy at this but, more than that, the book lover in me saw those two titles and thought instantly of one writer: the young adult author, Robert Cormier.  


To me, no one is a better fit for these two monikers.  Cormier was the man who set young adult literature free and, perhaps more than anything, he was a man who asked hard questions.


In none of his books is this more evident than in the classic The Chocolate War. Published in 1974, it’s sometimes referred to as the first young adult novel, but if I were making judgments about that, I’d give the honor to S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders which appeared in 1967. But there is a real case to be made for The Chocolate War as the beginning of young adult literature as we know it today and it’s not just “this book was different than children’s books because it was still for juvenile readers but it had teen characters and dealt with ‘mature’ topics!”  No, The Chocolate War is the book that asks hard questions simply because it doesn’t claim to have any answers.

I will spare you the standard recap, you probably know it already.  But let’s pretend you don’t: Jerry goes to a private Catholic boy’s school.  Jerry dares disturb the universe and resists the mandate from the ruling clique at his school that he must sell chocolates to fundraise for their cronyism.

You know what happens next, don’t you?

Jerry collects a band of fellow misfits and begins to truly question the power structures inherent not just at his school but in the world.  Jerry and his misfits rise up, against great odds and with much at stake, to expose the injustice.

Of course!

And you know what happens next, don’t you?

Jerry and friends are victorious!  Slowly but surely the rest of the school rallies around them inspired by their courage to also speak out, there’s a empathic adult there to lend insight and support at just the right time (possibly Jerry’s father, who has roused himself from the depression he’s been in for most of the book to really be there and connect with his son) and Jerry who stood up for what he knew what was right … Jerry’s so glad he disturbed the universe.

Ah, wait.

That is, of course, not at all the way The Chocolate War ends.  No, The Chocolate War ends with the status quo safely in place, the adults in the story more than just blindly looking the other way, but actively shielding and defending the teens who have committed criminal acts.  And the bullies?  Their power is not just intact, nay, it has been strengthened by this show of ultimate force. We leave Jerry literally beaten to a pulp, muttering to his single ally that trying to disturb the universe won’t work and, in fact, isn’t worth it.

And it is this ending, completely devoid of even a shred of hope or light, that is the brutal crowning grace of The Chocolate War and, moreover, this is the moment young adult literature is really and truly set free from the constraints and conventions of children’s literature.  Nothing before this moment has achieved the same severing of young adult literature from children’s literature.    Yes, there’s an actual death in The Outsiders, but we leave Pony Boy with a pen in his hand, the hope for words and healing.  There is none of that in The Chocolate War – the powerful stay powerful, corruption runs deeper than we could have guessed, and our hero is hauled out on a stretcher.   

To me, Cormier’s greatest legacy is the clear definition between children’s and young adult literature.  There was no mistaking it – this was not a book for children. It was a book for older readers, those ready to tackle big, hard questions and moral grey areas, readers who didn’t demand or need everything all wrapped up with a big bow.  Yet even with that, it still wasn’t for adults.  No – this was a book just for teens.  All these years later, it still is.  

When Kelly and Liz announced this project, I decided I wanted to participate.  I re-read it for what was about the fifth time in preparation for writing and the one thing that stood out to me was how current, how immediate, it still feels.  Reading about the way adults not only refuse to get involved but often support the bullies?  I couldn’t help but think of places like Steubenville, Ohio. The powerlessness Jerry feels? Cormier builds that tension with an intense, almost claustrophobic mastery – you are entirely wrapped up in this insular and sharply dangerous world.  That’s a reality so many teens still live with. Adult readers may feel unsettled by The Chocolate War but I think teen readers, still, will find much to relate to in it.  

With The Chocolate War, Cormier asked hard questions about morality and justice that young adult literature is still trying to answer.  It’s this reason, after all this time, he’s still the writer that set us free.


***

Angie Manfredi is the Head of Youth Services for Los Alamos County Libraries.  She blogs at www.fatgirlreading.com and tweets incessantly @misskubelik.  Her most recently finished book was Sidekicked by John David Anderson.