[GUEST POST] Stina Leicht on The Prevalence of Dark YA Fiction
Stina Leicht‘s debut novel Of Blood and Honey, a historical Fantasy with an Irish Crime edge set in 1970s Northern Ireland, was released by Night Shade books in February 2011. She also has a flash fiction piece in Ann and Jeff VanderMeer’s surreal anthology Last Drink Bird Head.
During the last panic over the dark trends in YA fiction, a few questions cropped up over and over: “Why are our kids are so attracted to dark literature? Why do they seem to think the older generation are out to get them? Or is this attitude merely being projected onto them?” I believe this trend in dark fiction for young adults happens for a reason, and yes, they do sense hostility from older generations. They’ve good reason for it. It exists.
Before I go much farther I want to point out that tension between generations is as old as humanity, and it isn’t worth panicking over. In fact, I seem to recall a certain older generation not that long ago shouting, “Never trust anyone over the age of thirty!” (Humans do have short memories, don’t they?) This is normal. Growing up is stressful and scary, and if YA literature is to remain relevant it should reflect that aspect of becoming an adult. Dark fiction aimed at teens is nothing new. One particular series, The Tripods Trilogy by John Christopher, was a favorite of mine as a kid. In it, an alien race conquers the planet. They rule using mind-control devices implanted in humans at puberty. The process is called “capping” because it takes the form of a fine metal mesh surgically installed close to the scalp. Once capped, the person loses certain aspects of their personality so that they become more docile workers for the aliens. It obviously addressed my fears about becoming an adult. As a young girl I was quite aware that there were certain freedoms I’d have to give up when I became a woman. I was concerned I’d lose my identity and justly so, as it turned out.
Kids aren’t stupid, nor are they totally oblivious to what goes on in the world around them. Childhood has a frightening under-layer that adults tend to forget. It’s a mixture of powerlessness, frustration, and uncertainty, compounded by a lack of information–at least that’s what I remember. As adults we tend to forget what it was like to be told you could be anything, do anything and then be shown by the outside world that this simply isn’t true–not yet, certainly not easily and maybe not ever.
There is hard data to back up this point. A New York Times article analyzing United States Census data recently outlined the current financial crisis and the groups hardest hit. It illustrates in black and white that the younger generation’s fears of the older generation are justified. The part I want to draw your attention to is this:
“Perhaps no households have weathered the downturn better than those headed by people 65 and older, whose incomes rose 5.5 percent from 2007 to 2010. By contrast, household income for every other age group fell. Among people ages 15 to 24, it plunged 15.3 percent.”
Teens and young adults are among the hardest hit by the current economic downturn. I’d venture to say that they’re among the most effected during any economic downturn. I believe that darker fiction tends to trend during dark times because human beings often use storytelling to cope with reality. Science Fiction and Fantasy in particular are a terrific means of looking at the problem from various directions and thinking of solutions. If nothing else, it provides the hope that one can live through the worst. Certainly, every young adult is different, and dark fiction isn’t for everyone. However, such trends in general aren’t bad. It’s a means of expressing a very real fear.
Related posts:
- [GUEST POST] Stina Leicht on ‘Things I Learned About Good Writing from Playing Role-Playing Games’
- REVIEW: Of Blood and Honey by Stina Leicht
- Free eBook: ‘Of Blood and Honey’ by Stina Leicht
- The SF Signal Podcast (Episode 058): An Interview with Stina Leicht, Author of ‘Of Blood and Honey’
- [GUEST POST] Simon Haynes Asks: Where All The Junior Science Fiction Has Gone?
Tagged with: guest post • YA
Filed under: Books
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
If you hadn’t bolded that sentence about the economic downturn, I would have.
It’s important and overlooked. It also explains why there are so many young people in these “occupy” demonstrations, but that’s not here or there.
Fiction, especially genre fiction, tells us truths in a different form. Have you heard Lev Grossman’s interview on Studio 360, where he explains that genre fiction is NOT escapism, but a way to present problems and issues of the real world in a different way? The prevalence of YA fiction in a dark mode is a reflection of that phenomenon, I think.
Paul, I agree with you. While I feel there’s certainly a time and a place for escapism, I feel Sci-Fi and Fantasy are at their best when they address the real problems we face. A reading diet strictly comprised of escapism is like living on marshmallows alone–it isn’t healthy. And it makes me wonder about anyone who declares that Sci-Fi writers are falling down on the job because we aren’t 100% focused on being happy about the future. Obviously, I feel we need to invest some brain power in forward thinking. However, one should consider the era in which the “happy” Sci-Fi was born. The 1950s were a very different time for America, economically and politically. It’s important to remember that everything has a context. Anyway, I’ve not heard Lev Grossman’s interview. I’m going to hunt it down now.
I agree completely. I learned very early in life not to trust bland reassurances. As soon as somebody said, “There, there, everything is going to be all right,” I knew I was being lied to. I read a lot of “suitable” stuff, simply because I read pretty much anything you gave me, but only the dark stuff rang true. I realize that there are supposed to be limits on how dark (or at least how graphic) a story or film for the young should be, but it is difficult to draw the line between drawing limits & presenting a false optimisim. Kids (we didn’t call it YA then, & the target age range between kids & teens was often fuzzy) do smell lies. They will not tell you they have noticed the lie. They will just add it to the list of reasons you can’t trust adults. All young distrust adults on one level–it’s almost like an instinctive awareness that they are not the same species–but you want to keep their list of reasons as short as possible, or you may not be able to win their trust back when they get older.
Michaele, I hear you. There are times when “It’s going to be okay.” feels like you’re being told to stick your head in the sand. In such instances, you *should* be wary. On the other hand, there are also moments when you need to hear those words in order to bolster you courage and keep moving forward. Hard to tell when which is more appropriate. It’s situational–just as trusting adults is situational. These are things we all learn while growing up.
I would have speculated that the hostility of the old toward the young had some unique aspects in this generation, unrelated to the depression.
So while I would agree with the general point of the article, I would say that this antipathy between the older generation and the younger is indeed real, and is an outgrowth of the Culture of Death, and therefore morbid imagery has a greater sway over the imagination of the young than has been seen heretofore.
John C. Wright
John, we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this one.
IN RE John and Stina’s disagreement, it might be interesting to look at YA fiction in the 1930s. I don’t know how much SFF there was (the original Tom Swift series was even earlier than that, right? So there must have been some. Sorry for my ignorance), but that period had more of the economic trouble Stina describes with less of the personal trouble John describes.
I have no idea, but surely some reader here can help out. How dark was 1930s YA SFF?
George, YA as we understand it is a recent phenomenom. Young Adult is transitional literature–that’s why it’s called “Young Adult” and not “Children’s.” It’s intended for young people who will soon be adults. Therefore, it touches on adult topics that are effecting them and/or will soon effect them. That transition stage wasn’t available when I was a kid. When you outgrew the children’s books, you moved to adult books–which is why I read Dickens, Twain, Poe, Bradbury and so on when I was twelve.