While the SF/F genre’s been busy with yet another round of You Wimmens Are All Crazy, There’s No Sexism in Science Fiction, looks like Slate decided to put up an editorial rant about how adults who read YA should be ashamed of themselves. I’ve seen a unilateral reaction of “fuck you” directed at Slate, justifiably so.
I’m not going to link to the article because I’m not going to give it the click traffic; if you really want to read it, io9 does link to it in their excellent rebuttal.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again–any form of “you’re reading the wrong things” snobbery is bullshit and it needs to stop. And in this particular case, people who roll their eyes and assume that YA novels are dumbed-down, simplistic crap just because they’re marketed to teenagers clearly has no actual working familiarity with the best that YA has to offer. It’s also dismissing the mastery that an author can bring to a story, in general. And while I’m not a regular reader of YA, I’m here to tell you: it’s rare that I’m compelled to plow through an entire trilogy as fast as I can cram the words into my head. But the Hunger Games books did that.
Also, two simple words: The Hobbit.
Sure, it’s not marketed as YA, but Tolkien absolutely intended children to be the primary audience for that story. And sure, it’s not nearly as complex and dark as The Lord of the Rings. But Tolkien lavished his love for the language all over that book, and turning up your nose at it just because “oh well, it’s intended for children, and I am a Mature Adult” means you miss out on a masterpiece.
Others have pointed out, too, that YA gets a lot of shit because of more than a little sexism, too. A lot of YA authors are female. A lot of YA readers are female. It’s not a coincidence that “YA is simplistic claptrap for children” goes hand in hand with “women write YA because they can’t write real science fiction”.
At the end of the day, though, it still all boils down to “Hey you, you over there, you are reading the WRONG THINGS, and now I’m going to appoint myself the arbiter of your reading choices”.
I’m tired beyond belief of this. Literature readers sneer at genre readers. Male authors sneer at female authors. Male readers sneer at female readers. SF/F sneers at romance–hell, everybody sneers at romance, and boy howdy am I sick of that in particular. Now we’ve got sneering at people for reading books because of a mistaken idea that “marketed for a young audience” equals “claptrap”.
The other two words I’ve got for that: “fuck you”.
Comments
24 responses to “Oh look, more snobbery about people reading the wrong things”
Yeah, I read that Slate article, and my response was a slow eyeroll and the thought, “Oh, THANK you, Ruth Graham, for telling me yet another way to improve my life and live it on someone else’s terms. I will IMMEDIATELY go out and read Love in the Time of Cholera. While at spinning class. After consuming a healthy lunch of kale and fava beans. And checking with my financial advisor about my 401(k) goals for retirement. Because, you know, ADULT STUFF.” Not.
_Exactly_! Every single time I see this kind of “you’re reading the wrong things” snobbery, I have to wonder, what do these people think they’re going to get as a response?
As well they should. A book, regardless of the audience, should stand on its merit. If a young adult book can not be read by adults and found reasonable or entertaining, then it should be rejected by young adults. Same with tween lit, or child lit.
Anne of Green Gables is a child’s story, and it will be cold day in hell before someone ca get away saying it isn’t a worthy read for an adult! I could cite a hundred more examples of child and tween/teen lit, from my own shelves, that I have read as an adult and have an appreciation as an adult.
Then there’s the entire “no one tells me what I must or must not read, based solely upon my age or gender or race”
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It’s all about the eyeballs. If they can stir up a hornet’s nest and get a few million clicks, who cares if it’s trolling.
WE DO.
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Yeah, and cynical trolling just to pull in the traffic annoys me ALMOST as much as actual honestly meant genre snobbery. Either way, it’s a surefire way to guarantee I’ll never take anything from Slate seriously.
another example of quality literature for children – Charlotte’s Web. EB White was no slouch.
Charlotte’s Web is _gold_. ^_^
radiant gold!
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I haven’t kept up on YA, but frequent re-reading of the Wind and the Willows is vital to me.
I have a whole shelf of kids’ books — and I’ve never had kids.
I always found the tone of wind in the willows to be too melancholy.
Can’t deny that, but I find the incident with the door scraper to be howling funny forever and Piper at the Gates of Dawn still takes my breath away.
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Now me, I’m feeling a sudden urge to go hunt down Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh.
By Graham’s definition, the Lord of the Rings is YA, or the Thomas Covenant Chronicles, the Temeraire series. I wonder if she’s ever read Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson or the Horatio Hornblower series. So many books and authors out there she’s snubbed with the slash of a pen, the stroke of a key. And all those authors, when I read them, they make things right with the world.
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