The Rise and Fall of YA
Art by Yelizaveta Rogulina
Growing up as a young girl in the 2010’s, one of the most influential parts of pop culture for me personally was the rise of the Young Adult novel. I still remember being 12 years old and wandering into the teenage area of the library, a vastly different world from the children’s section, and finding a whole new array of books that were seemingly made specifically for me. Dystopian, romantic, though oftentimes formulaic, the books I got my hands on as a young teenager massively shaped my childhood and continue to shape my adult life, as I am studying literature at school.
These books, while not all examples of literary genius, had a large impact on many young people. However, the genre may be slowly slipping out of popularity.
The term YA is fairly broad, as it encompasses any book that is aimed for readers aged 12-18. This means fantasy, romance, science fiction, historical fiction, and pretty much any genre in between can be considered a YA novel if it’s written with a teenage audience in mind. The 2000s gave rise to an explosive trend of blockbuster hits based on these books, with some of the most well-known films of the generation originally starting as YA novels. The Fault in Our Stars, Twilight, The Hunger Games, and even Harry Potter are classic examples of teenage-books-turned-films.
However, despite these books generating renown and success, young adult fiction tends to be one of the more looked down upon genres. Especially those books that are geared towards girls.
Sadie Pelliter, a sophomore at Emerson, expressed how girls are frequently put down for liking things that are created specifically for them, a phenomenon that happens not just with books.
“I think young girls are often shamed or led to believe that there is something wrong with relating to YA content. These novels offer an escape from the pressures of being in your most formative years,” she explained. When you’re young, the books you’re reading become a huge part of you, and as Pelletier emphasized, become a part of your formative experience. When you’re then torn down for reading them, it can do real damage, and unlike with music or movies, which aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, it seems as though when girls are torn down for what they’re reading, they may stop reading altogether.
According to Bookseller Magazine, in 2019, YA sales were at the lowest point in eleven years. Critics from The Guardian and The New Yorker have expressed their distaste for the entire genre. Even when they’re becoming these blockbuster hits, or are some of the bestselling books of the year, most of the time Young Adult novels are seen as kids-only content that doesn’t have any literary merit.
Classrooms have always maintained an emphasis on classics, which are all supposed to have this inherent literary merit, but many of the classics schools teach started as young adult novels. Little Women, Catcher in the Rye, and Lord of the Flies are all canonical, young adult fiction, and yet the modern texts, the one kids are relating to and expressing interest in, are written off.
Joy Freeman, also an Emerson sophomore, recalled how she used to spend all her free time reading, her favorite genre being YA romance, but insecurity got in the way. “The books were mostly cheesy, I think there was one called Anna and the French Kiss, but I felt awkward carrying that around school, and eventually I sort of just subconsciously stopped.”
While there are probably a thousand reasons why young girls stop reading for fun at a certain point, such as new social media platforms, a social or romantic life taking its’ place, or just simply losing interest, it does beg the question of why our society continues to normalize girls feeling ashamed for reading something they genuinely enjoy.
But while young girls are feeling pressured not to read fiction aimed towards them, it’s important to note that, according to The Atlantic, only 45 percent of YA’s audience these days is actually young adults. The other 55 percent are adults, largely adult women. This also isn’t good enough for the media, it seems, and adults are then criticized for liking books made for children. The Harry Potter series was wildly popular, but since the books were marketed towards kids, adult covers were made, switching out the cartoons and bright colors for dark shadows and more intense images. Whether out of embarrassment or simply to show the critics that YA only has to “look” adult for it to be taken seriously, many teen fiction books followed this trend of appearing more mature than the content may actually be.
The YA world is one that is confusing and ever-changing, with fewer kids and more adults now consuming the genre. Despite being one of the greatest successes of the publishing industry just a few years ago, it is now considered a dying genre. While it produced classics that cemented themselves into 2010s pop culture, it seems as though the criticism and shame were unfortunately cemented into our minds as well.