A Question to the Universe: Why the Hate Against YA?

23 Jun 2021

It probably wouldn’t be too much of an exaggeration on my part, if I said that the Young Adult or YA category of fiction is a genre that is often underestimated or even outright ridiculed by the general literature community. People criticize or mock young adult fiction so much that it’s almost become a norm. Some don’t even consider the genre as real literature. And others say that we should be ashamed for reading anything in the genre.

“Read whatever you want. But you should feel embarrassed when what you’re reading was written for children.” – (Graham, 2014)

That was a direct quote from an entire article, one of many, that was written to criticize YA. That article and many others like it, brushes one giant stroke on the whole genre, painting every story as immature, poorly written, overdramatic, unrealistic, etc.

It’s as if people now believe that YA fiction is inherently bad, just because it was written for younger audiences, and anything in the genre that is thought of as well written is nothing but an outlier. Personally, I think just because a piece was made specifically for the younger demographic, it does not mean that the story cannot have deep meanings or complicated subjects or issues in them.

As a young adult woman, I’d probably be one of the first people to say that I’m not the smartest or most thoughtful, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to read more serious or heavier subjects. That’s why I think that literary pieces that are written specifically for someone younger, but also have deep meanings and problems should be encouraged, not questioned, and mocked. Sometimes, the messages that the authors of these books want to portray may be written in a way that is more digestible to people who might be younger. The younger generation who read these books get to learn about complicated subjects alongside some fun explosions, relationship drama or magic in the side and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Obviously, I’m not saying that every single book in the genre is amazing and deserving of awards. There are YA works that don’t have very deep meanings to them or don’t bring up very thoughtful problems and questions in the readers’ minds. I’m saying that just like any other genre or category of literature, young adult fiction has equally as many brilliant works as there are terrible ones, and the fact that it’s so easily underestimated and mocked is most likely due to other underlying causes.

While YA has become a category that is read by many more than its main target demographic, it still has a specific demographic; teenagers and young adults, mainly teenage girls. Like many other interests associated with young teenage girls, YA is often mocked and belittled by most general media. This belies a still prevalent underlying problem in today’s society, the derision and mockery of feminine interests.

“Think about all the movies, songs, artists, bands and TV shows people love to ridicule online and you’ll realize that they’re all things that are or used to be popular among teenage girls.” (Alluri, 2020)

Many YA creators and fans have noticed an interesting pattern on many of the harsh criticisms that are often lobbied against works in the genre. Firstly, how eerily identical most of them are, and secondly how they always seem to target most interests traditionally aligned with femininity.

Women, their problems, and their interests have notoriously been derided throughout our history, the literary world is no different. Romance and YA, the two literary categories most known to be dominated by the female demographic, are also both the most ridiculed and the most looked down upon category of literature. Frivolous, unnecessary, trashy, superficial these are the adjectives regularly attached to books that are written about the female narrative, they’re also coincidentally adjectives most often attached to most of anything aligned with femininity.

In the year we’re living in today, isn’t it time that we realize the influence that years and years of male-dominated society has on us? The fact that most people still would proudly mock feminine interests, immediately underestimating it, roll their eyes at it, is in and of itself a sign that something has to change.

Editor: Nadia Salsabila & Ahmad Fikri Adzhani

References:

Shanti Adiwijaya