Holes
Here is what I would have liked to read more of when I was seventeen:
1) Strong, vocal, fierce Brown girls who were proud of the skin they were in
2) Female characters who took no sh*t and didn't dumb themselves down for anyone
3) A new depiction of reality -- a whole new setup of the world, or things we take for granted as "just the way things are." I loved Marion Zimmer Bradley's books because she created a world with different values and different norms and they were the accepted setup in her books. I would have loved more of these, but with multi-ethnic characters in lead roles. I know MZB had one Black woman in her Darkover series (never read Mists of Avalon -- on my list), but more, please. Seriously.
Multicultural YA literature is a relatively new creation. Not only are we seeing more books on the shelves by South Asian authors, but now even the YA/MG and Children's sections are getting a tiny sprinkling of multicultural titles alongside the usual.
But, when I was seventeen, authors like Mitali Perkins, Anjali Bannerji, and Tanuja Desai Hidier had yet to make their debuts. I was fumbling around without a reflection of my reality anywhere. So I picked the books that most closely depicted my world -- the books of Judy Blume, Paula Danziger, and S.E. Hinton (how could I NOT read a book called The Outsiders?); and books that dug deeper, to the part of us that is the same, like Tuck Everlasting.
What do wish was around when you were seventeen? And if you are seventeen, what do wish was on the shelves now, that you don't see?