If you're a grown-up who enjoys reading Young Adult (YA) fiction, do you feel out of place when browsing the YA section in bookstores?
Do you feel an embarrassing need to justify your reading preferences whenever people ask about your favourite books?
If yes, then you have good taste in literature. For many YA novels are brilliant examples of literature's power to comment on and raise important questions about the state of the world.
I spent years working on YA fiction and will attest to the genre's value for teens and adults.
Although the genre is chiefly interested in exploring adolescent concerns, YA novels are for everyone to read and enjoy. Because YA novels are narrated by teenaged protagonists, the genre celebrates adolescent perspectives, voices and experiences.
YA novels explore teenagers' evolving relationships with others, like friends and family, with their society, and with themselves, particularly with their own bodies and identities.
They are sometimes called "problem novels" because the genre's major themes tackle the issues, anxieties and problems that adolescents confront.
For adolescence is a time when people begin to grow more keenly aware of the problems facing their family, community and the larger world.
Growing up has never been easy. Contemporary teenagers deal with many difficulties. There's climate change to worry about. Covid-19 and lockdowns have disrupted schooling.
Misinformation is now rampant, and social media has sharpened depression, loneliness and body image anxieties. Hence, YA scholar Karen Coats notes such problems "have left behind a legacy of fear that has seeped into YA literature".
The central theme at the heart of YA fiction is power. Preeminent YA scholar, Roberta Trites, argues that in YA fiction, teenagers grow conscious of the inequalities of power between people.
In every YA novel, young people come head-to-head with those who possess more power than them; these can be their parents or teachers, school bullies, corporate superpowers or tyrannical governments.
Importantly, YA fiction has a strong tendency to "problematise institutions" in important ways. Adolescent protagonists come to realise that power surrounds them and is indelibly embedded into the languages and ideologies of their society.
Adolescents also learn to question who has power over them, and they come to understand and eventually challenge how such power is problematic in the ways it is used to control their lives and freedom.
Crucially, adolescent protagonists become aware that they too possess power. They test the limits of their power by resisting social hierarchies and frustrating unfair rules and authority of the institutions that dominate them.
By depicting empowered teen characters who are not helpless or defeated, YA fiction represents young people as powerful and capable of affecting positive changes.
YA fiction offers a safe space for readers to think about the problems facing the world. It often encourages them to consider the importance of calling out those authorities and institutions which misuse their power.
Importantly, YA fiction helps stimulate discussions about what we, as individuals, can do to make a meaningful impact.
Still, it has matured enough that it does not present rosy and uncritical pictures of teenagers who always emerge triumphant against institutional power or other life problems.
For example, in Mockingjay, Katniss defeats the Capitol but loses her sister, Prim, in the war.
Although Katniss starts a new family by the trilogy's end, she acknowledges the lifelong scars of personal loss that she will always carry despite her victories against her oppressive government.
That's the cool thing about YA fiction; it's unafraid to show that the good guys don't always prevail, and youths must often make compromises.
Young protagonists and readers alike learn to accept that there are forces they have no power to overcome, like death.
This acceptance of reality is critical in helping teenagers mature into adulthood.
The writer hopes to share insights into books and films to inspire appreciation for the power of stories