(no subject)

[aliseadae]

It seems that anytime a number of SFF people get together in one spot they eventually will start discussing what YA is exactly. Given that I still fit into the category of YA I sometimes wonder why YAs are not asked what they consider YA to be. Is it that the SFF people asking the questions do not know many YAs who would be willing to respond or that the answers do not matter? Or something else?

...ideas?

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The definition of YA has changed so much that they may be completely boggled that actual adults who are young (i.e. you) are reading YA. When I was reading YA the first time around (I took a break for about five years in junior high and high school), high school was a pretty firm cutoff point for everybody, junior high for the sort of bright people who would be willing to discuss genre lines at a young age. They may be afraid that they'll be insulting you if they assume that you must not be reading adult books. (Which they would be, if reading adult books and reading YA were incompatible.)

[aliseadae]

It must be a more important dividing line for people who think that one has to read books marketed to only one age range which is probably usually not young adults anyways.

[vcmw]

I think another part of it is that young adult as an official category is pretty much an older-adult created thing (through marketing, sales, youth services folks such as myself).

It doesn't reflect what young adults read so much as it reflects a sense of what young adults should read (for developmental, content, presumed interest reasons etc.).

So asking a young adult person what young adult literature is or isn't risks changing the question midstream, as it were? It starts out as a question about what older adults think young adults should read, and then ends as a question about what young adults think young adults should read?

[aliseadae]

I don't think that young adults are the ones affected by the labels anyways. Personally, I like to read whatever I want to. Some of the books that interest me are YA, some adult and some J fiction but I don't consciously pick them based on age range - I pick them based on the book itself and if I've heard good things about it. Though not everyone is as unbiased on age group and the way books are marketed would matter more in the context of those who read only YA or no YA at all. I suppose it is more of a matter of what should be labeled how so that parents can make decisions. Really, though, they should make decisions based on content.

[keilexandra]

Because they don't really care about what YAs think, so long as the books sell. And they seem to be selling well enough by the adult definition, so why change?

Hello! I'm Lisa, aka Keix, here via the lovely mrissa. I'm a fellow YA, a few years younger than you and currently researching colleges. Beloit is on my shortlist, particularly for creative writing and the BSFFA; do you mind if I email you with a few (well, maybe more than a few) questions concerning Beloit?

[aliseadae]

Sure! Feel free to email me. [ljusername] [at] gmail [dot] com is my email address.