Wall Street Journal article "Darkness Too Visible"

The following is a response to an article in the Wall Street Journal that has ignited a fire in the young adult literature community. You can read it here.

There is a lot I don't need to say about this article and the ongoing criticism of YA literature, because the incredible backlash it has garnered is both eloquent and ubiquitous. But there is one point I would like to make: YA literature, like all literature, is a vital reflection of life.

I've always had a problem with the idea of grade school as a preparation for "real life", because that implies that real life does not start until a young person graduates high school. Which is an idea that I'm sure the thousands of students who are bullied, raped, depressed, angry, and dealing with issues such as divorce, drug use, and physical or mental abuse would have some contention with. Real life starts when you exit the womb. And literature, savior of souls, is there to meet you. YA literature portrays "kidnapping and pederasty and incest and brutal beatings" because life contains them. I couldn't disagree more with this quote: "If books show us the world, teen fiction can be like a hall of fun-house mirrors, constantly reflecting back hideously distorted portrayals of what life is." Hideously distorted? No. Hideously accurate.

YA lit forty years ago - or what would be now called YA lit, because as the author rightly points out, the genre didn't exist forty years ago - didn't contain the dark images that Gurdon seems to have a problem with. This is not because these issues didn't exist or that it wouldn't have been helpful to bring them to light, it is because no one had done so. Young adults and children at this time, were even then dealing with horror and emotional turmoil, but instead of having an outlet for these problems, they were told to suck it up. Domestic problems were swept under the rug in favor of presenting an "acceptable" facade. How much pain would have been alleviated for the children of this time, had today's YA literature existed? Dark images in YA literature is not a disease, it is a symptom - and a salve - of life.

If Gurdon wants to change the literature that young people are reading, I suggest she change the world, and render these books unnecessary.