Learning Literature: YA perspective

In this conversation, Sean Cronin discusses the young adult perspective in literature with a young adult named Maige. Maige explains that the books she reads for school are mostly about older generations and their perspective on young adults. The young adult perspective is not well represented in the classroom. Maige also mentions that popular young adult novels often depict young adults as exceptional and put pressure on real-life young adults to be the best. She believes there should be more stories about realistic young adults and their progression. In terms of representation, Maige feels that characters who don't fit the norm are limited and often have to fit a particular mold. She wishes there were more books like "On the Come Up" in the school curriculum, which explores culture and identity. Overall, Maige believes that the high school curriculum could be updated with more appropriate and interesting books. Alright, and welcome back to Learning Literature with Sean Cronin. Today we'll be discussing the young adult perspective in literature, both how young adults approach literature and how young adults are depicted and how the young adult perspective is represented in literature. And luckily enough for me, I have a young adult with me. Would you like to introduce yourself? Hi, my name is Maige. I am both young and adult. So what would you like to ask me? Okay, so in terms of young adult literature, how do you think young adults are represented in the books you read for class? Do you read a lot of books that involve young adults or are from the perspective of young adults, or do you think that you're underrepresented in terms of what you're actually reading? Well, it's hard to say because I'm currently almost graduating from high school next year. So most of the things I read are about Shakespeare and classics, and it's hard to say what is young adult because all of that is older material from a different generation and their perspective on young adults is different than how it is now, so they have different standards. And it also generally isn't usually about young adults. The very few books I've read that have young adults in them for school, they're fine, but we don't really discuss the young adult perspective in school. It's more about the themes of the book and society as a whole, which is kind of weird considering most of the books that we read are from an older society. And we do discuss that, but a lot of them are outdated, so it's not really discussing the modern young adult perspective. Alright, so your perspective as a young adult is not well represented in the classroom. In the classroom, yes. Alright, and how do you think that young adult perspective is represented in the popular young adult novels of today, say like The Hunger Games or Divergent? I know those are a little bit older than your generation, but how do you think those deal with young adults? Well, I haven't read Divergent, but I have read Hunger Games, and that is a whole different can of worms because that's dystopian literature, and when it comes to dystopian literature, it's not really well represented because it's kind of portrayed as chosen one heroes and you have to have everything figured out. You have to be extremely skilled, which is a problem with modern culture in general of the pushing for people to be exceptional at younger and younger ages. So to just be good at something is no longer good enough. You have to be the best. You have to be like Kenneth Everdeen helping run a revolution, which makes real life young adults feel inadequate. All right, and that's a really interesting perspective because we often think of protagonists to stories as having to be the best. There has to be some reason that they're the protagonist. They have to be the hero, but when you see the protagonists of young adult novels, they're always somehow exceptional. There's Harry Potter, the chosen one. There's Katniss, who is absolutely unequivocally the leader, whereas in other novels and older novels, you can find a lot of protagonists who are not the best, and that's part of their problem. They worry about not being the best. I'm thinking particularly about Death of the Author or, for example, The Great Gatsby. And so I think that's really interesting that you bring that up, that young adults in their literature are depicted as being greater, as striving for more, and that puts kind of an undue pressure on the actual young adults reading it. Yeah, and I have no problem with exceptional young adults in literature, but the problem is that they start out exceptional. You either start out exceptional, or you start your training to be exceptional from a young age, or you're a lost cause and made fun of and are worthless. And I feel like there should be more stories either about young adults who are more realistic to the skill range and how young adults actually are, or you should actually see in the story the progression from being ordinary to working up skills. Come Across is more of a message of you can choose who you want to no matter where you are in life, because even though young adults are always told by older people that you have so many choices and so much time compared to them, it seems like every opportunity has already closed gates because you weren't studying a specific niche field since you were three. All right. Now, also, I wanted to discuss sort of beyond just young adults, sort of international young adults and people of different races and cultures and sexual orientations. Do you think that there is enough representation of young adults of varying backgrounds, or do the young adult protagonists and young adult characters that you read about wind up feeling a little samey? I would say they feel a little bit samey and having to fit a certain mold, and the few times that there are protagonists or even just characters who go outside the mold that have to hit a specific structure, like if there's a black character, it has to be about discrimination and that's what their character is. They're not allowed to explore other things with them as a person, it has to be about that, and that's an important thing to discuss, but characters who fit outside the norm are very limited, and there has to be, and I feel like a lot of authors, too, have this need to feel like they need to make their characters who aren't the norm perfect, otherwise they risk offending someone or having bigotry thrown their way by pointing out any flaws in the character as emblematic of the whole community, so it makes it harder to make more media around people who aren't what is considered normal by today's society because the standards are so much higher. Alright, interesting. I read a book recently called On the Come Up, which is about a young black girl in a fairly comparatively well-off school, and she's expected to quote-unquote act white or at least act in a particular manner that is counter to the culture that her family raised her in and that most of her friends are of, and she wants to be a rapper, and there are negative connotations associated with it, but the book is mostly about her desire for music and her desire to be allowed to be her own culture. How does that book sound to you? That sounds really good. I wish there were more books like that in the school curriculum for high school because I feel like most of the books that I've read that were more along that line were books that I voluntarily picked, like during parts where I was like, oh, you just select your own book and then write a project on it, I had to, because it kind of reminds me of a, I read a book detailing the Little Rock Nine, that case where to end segregation they introduced black students to a previously all-white school and the discrimination they went through, and that was interesting, but I picked that book myself and had to do a project on it, and it wasn't part of the school curriculum, and while I don't feel like all the books are bad in the high school curriculum, there are certainly ones that I enjoy, there are certainly ones that get like boring or repetitive or just plain outdated that could be cut and replaced with something more appropriate for today and more interesting to everyone. Alright, well, it's been excellent to get your perspective. Thank you everyone for listening, and I hope you have a lovely day. Do you have anything else you want to say, Miss? Thank you for having me on. I appreciate having my perspective be heard. Alrighty, lovely. Good night, folks.