A few weeks ago, explaining myself in the blog post “Why I read YA”, I brought up several reasons why YA literature appeals to me. Shamelessly, I am in the 30-something demographic of adults who read books marketed towards teenagers. It is one of those quirks of my personality that probably explains my career choices: middle school ELA teacher, high school English teacher, teen librarian, and now corporate librarian at Scholastic. I’m like Mary Martin channeling Peter Pan – I won’t grow up.
“If it means I must prepare to shoulder burdens with a worried air, I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up… not me!”
But seriously, for me, reading children’s literature is akin to sipping from the fountain of youth. The past decade has flown by for me in a blur of (Free and AJ era) 106 & Park, Mean Girls references, and comic book movies; I have also been reading a lot of YA, tempered by a foundation in English and African & African American Studies coursework from Dartmouth. In my “Carib-liography” post I mention taking a course on the West Indian short story at the University of the West Indies. That course was a turning point for me, as a ‘scholar’, because prior to it I had completely bought into the cannon – and the idea that the western novel is the end all be all of great literature. Our professor was discussing this in reference to short stories and the oral tradition, but he opened up Pandora’s box for me in terms of making judgment calls as to what is or isn’t quality. I started to think about all kinds of different forms of expression in English. Nowadays I can find value in almost everything and I can see where something is a response to the cannon, whether the author intended it as such or not.
For example, I love hip hop. I find freestyling particularly impressive, because you have to have a good vocabulary and a knack for figurative language in order to excel at this form of extemporaneous speaking; if it is a good battle, then the two lyricists are listening to one another, breaking down and analyzing each other’s statements. Historically, rappers are in line with the African American toast tradition, where there is boasting and the exaggeration of accomplishments. In particular, Fabolous is one of my favorite contemporary rappers. Is it because he intentionally ‘misspells’ his name? Perhaps! English words had all kinds of different spellings before it became more standardized with the advance of the printing press. Perhaps my appreciation of Fabolous isn't highbrow, but as an English teacher I can get a lot of mileage out of lyrics like this:
So, getting back to YA, reader response theory tells us that “the meaning is created by readers as they bring the text to bear upon their own experience, and their own histories to bear upon the text” (Probst 1994). You bring your personal experiences, context, and everything that you have read before to whatever you read and/or experience. This is why as adults we can appreciate animated movies, cartoons, graphic novels, picture books, and young adult literature. This is why I can teach poetic devices and figurative language using rap lyrics before I get to Shakespeare. Call me postmodern, I will readily accept the label. I would argue that if you are an adult who is reading, and you are reading a book, then you are reading an adult book.
If you would like to read more about how YA literature embraces postmodernism, check out this 2002 paper by Stephanie Yearwood in the ALAN review – “Popular Postmodernism for Young Adult Readers: Walk Two Moons, Holes, and Monster”.
