Why YA?

Here are a few provocative remarks from this week's "Think Future" panel on what distinguishes Young Adult literature from adult literature, as reported by panel host Publishers Weekly. The panelists addressed the never-ending question of what distinguishes "young adult" literature. Perhaps because of demographics, we seem to have shifted from how YA differs from books for "tweens" and younger to how YA differs from adult books. And by "provocative," I hope to mean "thought-provoking" as well as "attention-getting."

• H. Jack Martin, assistant coordinator of young adult services at New York Public Library: “Teen books are like adult books, without all the bullshit.”
• Sherman Alexie, author of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian: the YA world is made of “99% women,” and that a significant percentage of them have no idea how boys and men think.
• Alexie: If a YA title is created as a book for young people, “a more conservative point of view comes in. If they are about young people, it’s more about respecting and not protecting. As an Indian I’m used to being what I call ‘reservationized.’ There can be a sense of the category, instead of elevating us, doing the reverse.”
• Alexie: “I thought I’d been condescended to because I’m an Indian. That was nothing compared to the condescension I get because I’ve written a YA novel. . . . Because I’ve written a book about a 16-year-old, that means I’m a capitalistic whore.”
• While libraries often shelve copies of a title in both adult and young adult (and children's) sections, George Nicholson, senior agent at Sterling Lord Literistic, “pointed out a hard reality that factors into the ‘where do we put this book?’ discussion: chain bookstores will not multi-position a book in the store.”