Argument Essay "Not Limiting Young Adult Literature for Teens"

There is an on-going debate on the topic of young adult fiction and whether or not it is right to limit what teenagers are allowed to read. Over the past 40, young adult literature has gotten dark or more gruesome and morbid. Young adult literature has gone from Judy Blume books; teaching boys and girls about puberty, to Lauren Myracle who, in one of her books has characters “reveal themselves to be in the grip of homophobia, booze and crystal meth” (Meghan Cox Gurdon). These people are hesitant and concerned about whether or not teenagers are mature enough to understand the complex ideas and scenarios and events that occur in many young adult books of this generation. Young adult literature should not be limited, however, because they teach teenagers how to deal with their issues, since these are things they’re going through.

Young adult literature is about, and deals with teenagers going through things that teenagers today are, or may one day have to deal with. They can be great to help teens and give them advice. In her article, Husna Haq quotes Patrick Ness, author of “A Monster Calls”, what teenagers write is “darkness beyond anything I would come up with”...” I always think that if you’re not addressing it in your fiction, then you’re abandoning them to face it themselves.” Like Ness says, these books are there to help teens learn and educate themselves about these things like self-harm or drug use, that may happen to them. These things can help teenagers understand better, and it teaches the teenagers better what these scenarios are. And the books often explain how the characters deal with their problems. So instead of causing teens to try for example to self-harm or drugs, they can learn from the character’s mistakes instead of having to make their own mistakes. These books may also help open up dialogue between teenagers and their parents, like William Porter says in his article “Teen fiction plots are darker and starker”. They give teens and their parents a chance to talk about these things, which could help the teens if they’re maybe experiencing these traumatic things. Parents can help teenagers better understand, and be better equipped if the dark horrible things, or thoughts come back, to deal with them.

The dark scenarios in the young adult literature are things that a majority of teenagers are, or have gone through in the process of growing up. After all, teenagers don’t just learn about sex, suicide, drugs and self-harm from books. In our multi media world they can hear or see thing about it on the internet as well. It’s the reality of our world. But young adult books allow teens connect with the characters and not feel alone in their situations. “We read, as teens continue to do now, to be moved, to fall in love with characters, to learn, and to sometimes just explore the things that scared and fascinated us.” (Williams) These books are well written, and teenagers appreciate the writing and the opportunity to connect, and sympathize with characters. After connecting with characters, they’ll understand that they’re not the only ones thinking about things like suicide. William Porter says that adults “shortchange” teens by not believing that they are mature enough to understand the gruesome material in these books. What some adult may not know, is that these are actually things that teenagers see, hear or experience in everyday life.

However, the morbid scenarios in the books could normalize things like self-harm, suicide or drug abuse, or “in the case of self-harm, may even spread their plausibility and likelihood to young people who might otherwise never have imagined such extreme measures” (Mary Elizabeth Williams). So these books may be normalizing the morbid things that occur in them. They may also make teens who have already experienced these things, go back to their old habits. Although this is a good point, reading about these things doesn’t necessarily mean that teens will want to experience these traumatic things in their lives, because they might understand the characters in the books going through this, and learn from the character’s mistakes.

Young adult literature shouldn’t be limited because they can teach teenagers how to deal with problems in their lives. And like William Porter says; “teens can explore these themes and use them to deal with issues in their own lives.” So young adult books help give teens advice on how to deal with problems in their lives instead of harming themselves and make terrible mistakes like many of the characters in young adult books do, before they learn to deal with their problems.