Dark YA

Many adults share a concern that the current trend of intense dark YA novels—which sometimes deal with issues like self-harm and addiction and abuse and even death—could irrevocably damage the fragile minds of our youth.

What makes a book “dark” in the first place? Are dark books the ones that allegorically explore serious subject matter, like warfare (The Hunger Games) or the human capacity for destruction (Grasshopper Jungle)? Or are they the ones that reflect our actual world, including the capacity for human cruelty and kindness (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian) or the messy stuff of human mortality (The Fault In Our Stars)?

Hey, aren’t these the same subjects young people are encouraged to engage in at school, by reading the newspaper, or classical texts like The Iliad (warfare) or Macbeth (the capacity for self-destruction) or To Kill A Mockingbird (kindness and cruelty) or A Farwell to Arms, all Emily Dickinson poetry (that messy morality business)?

Adolescence is a time when teens are statistically more likely to come into harm’s way and thus more likely to witness harm among their peers. Is it any wonder that they want books to help process what they’re experiencing around them, often for the first time?

We just need to remember that books don’t create behaviors. It is possible that they reinforce existing behaviors, but those behaviors are already present, not created by a novel. A novel won’t turn a bookish drama geek or popular star athlete into a promiscuous drug abuser any more than it will turn a promiscuous drug abuser into a bookish drama geek or popular star athlete, unless the seeds of those transformations were already planted.

What books can do, however, is reflect an experience and show a way out of difficult, isolating times. It’s why Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak has become so popular, giving young women a voice to speak about sexual abuse, or Sherman Alexie’s Diary of a Part-Time Indian has been a life raft for young people who can’t see their way out of existences straight-jacketed by addiction and deprivation. 

I suspect that most teens who read and love “dark” YA have little in common with the struggling characters they relate to. Teenagers say they are drawn to dark books because the appeal is seeing an ordinary teen forced into an extraordinary circumstance. 

Reading about everyday fictional teens rising to the occasion allows actual teens to imagine themselves doing the same. This is empowering, and hopeful. These “dark” books may seem to be about death, about illness, about pain, but really they are about life.And kids get that.

Memoir Writing

There are a lot of reasons to write a memoir, or autobiography, not the least of which is the possibility that details of events will be forgotten or changed over time, the line between fact and memory becoming less distinct as the years go by.

Memories pile up year after year like boxes of unsorted photos. A few of the benefits of writing your memoirs include:

1. Storytelling is a lovely life-skill. Once you get the knack of telling stories about yourself, you’ll learn to organize and communicate all your thoughts more clearly.
   
   
2. Writing about your life lets you share ideas and lessons. Your knowledge and wisdom can help others grow along with you. Writing forces us to think and rethink about our past and present surroundings, the people around us, relationships, and occasions that seemed ordinary at the time, but make our lives extraordinary.
   
   
3. Writing about your life helps dissolve the hard knots of loss, betrayal, regret, and guilt that keep you stuck in the past despite your best efforts to forget. It causes you to record certain events or dramas in your life that may be of value to others.
   
   
4. Writing is a challenging mental activity, and research shows that challenging yourself mentally improves your mental agility and stamina. And, you will be describing – or perhaps explaining – things the way you want them to be recorded.
   
   
5. In a crowd of people it’s natural to wonder “Why should anyone read about my life?” And that’s the best reason to write it. As you sort out the details of your actual path, and look for what makes your journey worth reading, you will incidentally also reveal what makes it worth living. You are providing evidence of aspects of your life that individually will be useful and interesting to your readers, but collectively, will be useful to history.
   
   
6. You can take Jacquie McTaggart’s workshop, The Memoir Project, for free at the library! The first class was this morning, but there are five more workshops that meet Monday morning at 10:00-11:30 am through May 11. This is Jacquie’s third time leading the class at IPL. It is free thanks to the Independence Hotel/Motel Tax Grant. All sessions are self-contained, so no worries if you miss a class.