IT’S BACK!
No, not the McRib. (Okay in some places, yes, the McRib.)
But I’m talking about The Question. You know the one. “Why do so many adults read YA?”
My answer?
“Because we’re adults and we can do what we want. (HIGH FIVES FELLOW ADULTS!)”
Case closed, right? Well. Not always. Because some people (not the most recent asker of The Question, but SOME PEOPLE) follow up with another question: Shouldn’t adults be ashamed for reading YA?
To which I respond:
“Is this even a serious question? No. Obviously. Christ.”
There is a weird amount of hate on YA and on the adults who read it. And I find it interesting that in a country where a quarter of adults have read zero books in the last 12 months (and fifty percent of adults have read less than five books in that same time period), that so much judgment and ink goes into scolding those readers and auditing their choices.
I think it has a lot to do with gatekeeper fear, and with people not respecting youth, not respecting the next generation, not respecting the writers of YA fiction which are overwhelmingly women.
I personally have read five novels in the last month. (And no, that’s not my own five times.) (Salvage by Alexandra Duncan, The Fall by Bethany Griffin, The Islands at the End of the World by Austin Aslan, Laini Taylor’s Smoke and Bone trilogy, Leigh Bardugo’s Grisha trilogy, and yes, I am counting two trilogies as one book each, so that’s actually nine books, but I did read the first of each series earlier this year so its really only seven. ANYWAY.)
These books had gripping stories, sparkling dialogue, and deep themes–family, feminism, love, longing, madness, power. They were well-written and I devoured them and I am hungry for more.
So the question shouldn’t be “Why do adults read YA?”
The question should be “Why does anyone have a problem with that?”