Bittercon: Sex and YA
YA and Sex. Heads up for my more conservative friends here: this post is going to include some discussion on crossing gender lines with sex, friendship, and love, if this makes you uncomfortable--or you're underage and your parents don't want you reading it (I know there are at least a couple twelve year olds linked to this blog on their friendslist)
Last night for various reasons I was up after midnight, and thus I was able to actually finish a book. I've been trying to read Bermudez Triangle by Maureen Johnson. (ETA This is indeed the same Maureen Johnson who wrote the splendid Devilish that I mentioned loving a couple months ago--one of the contenders for this year's Andre Norton Award.)
This is a mainstream YA novel centered on three high school girls before and half-way through their senior year. They are known as the "Bermudez Triangle" (Bermudez being last name of Nina, one of the three) who have been friends since grammar school. They are so tight they still use their school yard rituals. Nina, whose parents are comfortably off, is sent west to Stanford for a summer program in academic leadership; the other two girls, short, rebellious Avery (she's taken up smoking just because everyone, including her two friends, hates it) and tiny, fairy-like Mel, take a summer job as servers at a horrible dinner house called P.J. Mortimer's. (Ex-waitresses will wince in sympathy at the demeaning details, right down to the horrible manager, Bob.) Everything is fine because at least Avery and Mel have each other so they can laugh about the horrible job--and they meet a fellow-worker named Parker, whose sense of humor instantly jives with them both. He's attracted to Mel. As usual. (Avery notes wryly that without making the least effort, Mel inspires epic crushes in guys, causing them to listen to slow music and iron their clothes.) But complications ensue when Mel and Avery spend a night after work . . . and Avery idly wonders what it would be like to kiss Mel. Who has been hiding the same urge for quite a long time. Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, Nina's got the roommate from hell, which drives her out--to meet a crunchy-granola ecowarrior called Steve. At first she's intrigued but put off, but after an all-night study session he becomes human to her--and then the spark of attraction ignites.
Johnson does not make this book a "gay Issue" book. Nor does she get into physical details. What she focuses on with humor, grace, and sympathy, is the emotional fallout of being teen, discovering attraction while still trying to cope with friendship with one's own gender, friendship with the other gender, and don't forget evolving plans for what one is going to do in the future. Those are tough enough, so what happens to friendship, whether old or new, whether between genders of within, when one suddenly finds oneself staring into the blinding sun of attraction? When you stare into the sun, everything else fades to shadow, and you stumble about half blind but it's so powerfully overwhelming, how can you possibly turn away?
Add to that the complications of becoming a couple, whether same-gender or not, when you still have to get on with your life--whether at a distance (Nina) or close by (Avery and music school). What if one is, in fact, not gay, it's just . . . this one single person? Then there are the boys. Steve across the country, who messes up . . . and Parker near by, who does everything right--he hits every single note for the Modern Sensitive Male--and still ends up getting badly hurt. I thought it a terrific novel. I broke our firm vow to cease book-buying until we can get the debt load down below five figures because Justine Larbalestier had mentioned on her blog some time back that this book had ended up on banned book lists. That grieves me terribly, and brings me to my panel topic: Sex and YA.
What is the writer's responsibility--if any? My own short answer is: to be as true to one's sense of inner truth as possible. But I know this is going to be unbearably wishy-washy to some. I can't help that. I will read with sympathy a book about a teen whose religious convictions require them to stay chaste, and who struggles to stay true to that conviction, just as sympathetically as I'll read a book about a secular humanist kid who struggles with coming out, like Mel in the novel I just mentioned. What wins my partisanship for this novel--and for any other--is when the characters stay true to their convictions without implying with the heavy hammer of moral superiority that their way is the only way for everybody else.
I have more to observe on kids, reading, curiosity about how the world works--and the perceived divide between parents who try to box their children and how they can lose the trust of those they love and wish to protect most, but I think I've gassed on long enough: I have no idea if this is of interest, tiresome, or will just piss people off. Well, here goes.
Last night for various reasons I was up after midnight, and thus I was able to actually finish a book. I've been trying to read Bermudez Triangle by Maureen Johnson. (ETA This is indeed the same Maureen Johnson who wrote the splendid Devilish that I mentioned loving a couple months ago--one of the contenders for this year's Andre Norton Award.)
This is a mainstream YA novel centered on three high school girls before and half-way through their senior year. They are known as the "Bermudez Triangle" (Bermudez being last name of Nina, one of the three) who have been friends since grammar school. They are so tight they still use their school yard rituals. Nina, whose parents are comfortably off, is sent west to Stanford for a summer program in academic leadership; the other two girls, short, rebellious Avery (she's taken up smoking just because everyone, including her two friends, hates it) and tiny, fairy-like Mel, take a summer job as servers at a horrible dinner house called P.J. Mortimer's. (Ex-waitresses will wince in sympathy at the demeaning details, right down to the horrible manager, Bob.) Everything is fine because at least Avery and Mel have each other so they can laugh about the horrible job--and they meet a fellow-worker named Parker, whose sense of humor instantly jives with them both. He's attracted to Mel. As usual. (Avery notes wryly that without making the least effort, Mel inspires epic crushes in guys, causing them to listen to slow music and iron their clothes.) But complications ensue when Mel and Avery spend a night after work . . . and Avery idly wonders what it would be like to kiss Mel. Who has been hiding the same urge for quite a long time. Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, Nina's got the roommate from hell, which drives her out--to meet a crunchy-granola ecowarrior called Steve. At first she's intrigued but put off, but after an all-night study session he becomes human to her--and then the spark of attraction ignites.
Johnson does not make this book a "gay Issue" book. Nor does she get into physical details. What she focuses on with humor, grace, and sympathy, is the emotional fallout of being teen, discovering attraction while still trying to cope with friendship with one's own gender, friendship with the other gender, and don't forget evolving plans for what one is going to do in the future. Those are tough enough, so what happens to friendship, whether old or new, whether between genders of within, when one suddenly finds oneself staring into the blinding sun of attraction? When you stare into the sun, everything else fades to shadow, and you stumble about half blind but it's so powerfully overwhelming, how can you possibly turn away?
Add to that the complications of becoming a couple, whether same-gender or not, when you still have to get on with your life--whether at a distance (Nina) or close by (Avery and music school). What if one is, in fact, not gay, it's just . . . this one single person? Then there are the boys. Steve across the country, who messes up . . . and Parker near by, who does everything right--he hits every single note for the Modern Sensitive Male--and still ends up getting badly hurt. I thought it a terrific novel. I broke our firm vow to cease book-buying until we can get the debt load down below five figures because Justine Larbalestier had mentioned on her blog some time back that this book had ended up on banned book lists. That grieves me terribly, and brings me to my panel topic: Sex and YA.
What is the writer's responsibility--if any? My own short answer is: to be as true to one's sense of inner truth as possible. But I know this is going to be unbearably wishy-washy to some. I can't help that. I will read with sympathy a book about a teen whose religious convictions require them to stay chaste, and who struggles to stay true to that conviction, just as sympathetically as I'll read a book about a secular humanist kid who struggles with coming out, like Mel in the novel I just mentioned. What wins my partisanship for this novel--and for any other--is when the characters stay true to their convictions without implying with the heavy hammer of moral superiority that their way is the only way for everybody else.
I have more to observe on kids, reading, curiosity about how the world works--and the perceived divide between parents who try to box their children and how they can lose the trust of those they love and wish to protect most, but I think I've gassed on long enough: I have no idea if this is of interest, tiresome, or will just piss people off. Well, here goes.