YA Fiction and Representation

After I finished my master’s degree, I raided charity shops, bookshops and Amazon for YA fiction and children’s books. I had been solidly reading Sociology and Social Policy for five years and I just wanted to dive under a blanket with a cup of tea and read something unchallenging and relaxing. I revisited books I had loved when I was younger, and found new ones to enjoy.

I wanted unchallenging reads, but YA fiction has changed. Writers like Tomi Adeyemi, Patrick Ness and Angie Thomas are setting the tone for wider diversity and more socially conscious storytelling in the face of changing social and political landscapes. There is greater representation for race, class, sexuality, gender, ability and mental health. Young readers are more than capable of consuming challenging stories, and in a time of social awakening and greater understanding of our identities, young people expect their stories to reflect their human experiences.

As for the books I had enjoyed when I was younger, I consumed them differently as an adult. Characters were more complex and understandable, stories were more multitudinous, and repeated motifs or borrowed imagery were more easily recognisable. I could understand where images or stories had been borrowed from, and I was more interested in the etymologies of characters.

I truly believe that children’s and young adults’ fiction contain some of the most interesting and powerful ideas, and it is driving diversity and representation to align with the needs of the readers. I want to tell you about a few of the newer books I’ve read recently and talk about how they are driving diversity and representation for marginalised groups, including those struggling with their mental health.

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

I preordered Children of Blood and Bone earlier this year when I saw the buzz it was getting on Twitter. I love it when people get excited about books, and I wanted to read it as soon as I saw the tweets describing it as a tribute to black female empowerment. It is crucial that we engage with civil rights histories, and recently books like Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race have brought these instances of racial oppression to mainstream readers by making the UK’s history of systemic racism digestible. I think communicating empowering messages through storytelling is another dimension of humanising inequality and fighting oppression. Fiction is a way of weaving diversity into the fabric of society.

Children of Blood and Bone follows Zélie, a member of an oppressed maji community, and Amari, the disenchanted princess of Orïsha. Set years after King Saran’s anti-maji raids, which saw the clans’ magic stripped from them, there is a social and economic gulf between the dominant k'osidán culture of nobles and the maji culture. Zélie and Amari meet when Zélie enters the city to trade and Amari finds the courage to escape her father and the palace. They must flee the city together and embark on a quest to return magic to the clans of Orïsha. Pursued by the king’s soldiers (led by Amari’s brother) and joined on the journey by Zélie’s brother, Zélie and Amari attempt to rebalance the power dynamics in Orïsha.

The book is incredibly rich and immersive, with clear currents of class, race and decolonisation at the heart of the narrative. The demand for this book, I think, shows that younger readers will throw themselves into narratives that reflect them, or help them understand groups they don’t belong to. I would have loved this book as a teenager- not just for the beautiful narrative, but for the way it would have hurled me into a different way of approaching storytelling, with a different culture at its core.

Tomi Adeyemi is a 25 year old Nigerian-American author, who has described how the first story she wrote centred on protagonist Tomi- a young black girl named after herself. After that, until Adeyemi was 18, she only wrote white characters because that is what she was surrounded by. Isn’t it sad that she had been so consumed by Caucasian-centric popular culture that she thought that the only way to tell a story was through white eyes? I am so glad Children of Blood and Bone was written, and I believe that increased representation in fiction for marginalised groups will have a real impact on the way these groups view themselves and their roles within storytelling. Not only that, but I think it will have an effect on the way people develop empathy and understanding.

More Than This by Patrick Ness

More Than This came to me at exactly the right time. Sometimes I find this happens with books. They arrive when they need to, and sometimes not in the most usual of circumstances. I wasn’t expecting it to have the impact on me that it did, because all descriptions and blurbs of it package the book as a science fiction adventure. And it is- but that doesn’t even begin to address the hugely emotional dimension to the story. When I found More Than This, I was in an incredibly deep depression. It felt like nothing would ever get better. I was in a job that I hated, I felt completely alone and I thought nothing would change. I devoured this book on the train to and from work, and once I finished it I started reading it again straight away.

Seth drowns in the sea and wakes up in a deserted suburban English town. He is certain that he has died and gone to hell. The suburban town he wakes up in resembles the place he grew up before his family moved to America, and he finds his childhood home. Everything is the same as it was, except the attic is now home to a black chrome coffin laden with bandages and tubes. Walking through the town to find supplies, Seth spots a black van, but before he can get its attention he is grabbed and dragged away by a young woman and a boy. The theory Seth has developed that he has died and woken up in hell is thrown into doubt by his new companions, who think they know where they are and what has happened to them.

The way the book deals with the subject of death is as considered as it is in Ness’ (arguably) most famous novel, A Monster Calls. Not only in the case of Seth, but also for many secondary characters who have their own complex relationships with their desires to live or die, and how death has been thrust upon them. Grief and sexuality are also approached beautifully in the book, as is mental health in an indirect way. It’s difficult to write about the ways in which mental health and sexuality are confronted, compartmentalised and understood in More Than This without giving too much away about the plot. If you’ve seen or read A Monster Calls I’m sure you have an idea of how Ness’ storytelling works- it’s very fantastical, almost Gaimanesque in its beautiful imagery and prose, and often confronts difficult subjects. Death, sexuality, addiction, mental health, grief and homophobia are present in the books of Ness’ that I’ve read. I think in particular, More Than This and Release boast some of the most beautiful representations of sexuality and mental health that I can remember reading.

Seth’s struggles with his mental health are rooted in his sexuality. As a heterosexual cis woman, I found a lot of comfort in the ways in which mental health was indirectly addressed in the book, but I don’t identify with it personally in the same way as someone in the LGBTQ+ community might. I can’t imagine how helpful it must be for a non-cis/non-heterosexual person to read a story like this and see how carefully the subjects are written about. I found a great deal of comfort and hope in this book, and I hope that it has helped people who are even more accurately reflected in More Than This. Often, fiction can humanise people and problems in a more nuanced and emotional way than reading historical accounts. I think this is especially true with something like sexuality, which is inherently an incredibly emotional and personal thing. Understanding the histories of LGBTQ+ fights for equality is such an important way to engage with the community and we are lucky to have access to countless wonderful LGBTQ+ writers, directors, performers and artists, who help us understand these stories through retellings and fictional works.

Representation for the LGBTQ+ community or those who experience mental health problems is far from perfect, and sometimes the reader has to dig deep into the narrative to even spot the representation, but we must engage with these aspects of ourselves to normalise them. The more we engage with factual histories and fictional representations, we will be better equipped to create a patchwork of understanding, personally and societally. Normalisation of LGBTQ+ and mental health stories in YA fiction is crucial because we need to guide young people towards a greater understanding of themselves- then they will be able to recognise when they need help, or when they need to offer help. They will have a deeper understanding of themselves and others. They will see that sexuality is something they can talk about.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

This is another (justly) hyped book, which was named Waterstones YA Book of the Year last year and has received one of the most stunning film adaptations of a YA novel that I’ve seen in the last couple of years. Released in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, The Hate U Give humanises police shootings of black people. These news stories are pervasive and I don’t think many of us are unfamiliar with the stories of Tamir Rice, Eric Garder or Sandra Bland. We may not immediately recognise their names, and it’s our own privilege showing if we don’t. The Hate U Give delivers this message perfectly- the ripple effect on friends, family, communities and the media are something we don’t see because (for most of us) these events are so removed from our normalities. We see stories on Twitter, we are horrified, and then the news cycle changes and we remember the stories but forget the names. The humanisation of the victim, Khalil, forces us to remember his name and understand him as a complex character with very little choice in where his life leads.

Starr is an African American high school student living in Garden Heights with her family. Instead of staying in Garden Heights for her education, Starr attends a private school with her brothers because their parents want them to have better opportunities. Starr has two dimensions to her public personality- the Williamson Prep version, who is careful not to adhere to any black stereotypes and dates a popular white student; and the Garden Heights version, who dresses and speaks in a way more in line with her family and immediate community. After attending a party with her cousin, Starr is driven home by her childhood friend, Khalil. On the drive, they are pulled over by a police car and Khalil is shot dead by an officer who believes that Khalil is reaching for a gun. The fall-out from the shooting means that Starr, as the only witness to the shooting, becomes the centre of investigations and media reports. As Khalil’s shooting becomes a national news story, Starr has to confront the disparities she has created between her Garden Heights and Williamson identities and decide who Khalil- and her community- need her to be.

There are so many fascinating dimensions to this narrative, and I think one of the reasons it has been received so well is that it forces the reader to ask themselves how they would react if they were in Starr’s position. Starr’s family is so richly woven for us that we also build a set of questions for ourselves about what we would do were we Starr’s mother, father or brother. Khalil’s social and economic circumstances are revealed by his grandmother, revealing to us that Khalil’s involvement in gang culture and drug dealing was more than it appeared to be. The representation of Khalil in news stories was one dimensional- he was a drug dealing gang member who deserved what he got. How many real life Khalil’s have there been? How many black people have been shot dead by police and then portrayed as violent or dangerous in order to protect the police? The Hate U Give finishes with an epilogue, in which Thomas tells us that if we cried for Khalil, we must cry for Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Emmett Till, Sandra Bland. Thomas weaves some of their stories into The Hate U Give through speech and narrative- I don’t believe that it was an accident that, in the film adaptation, Starr’s father when pinned to the ground by police cries “I can’t breathe.” These were the words spoken by Eric Garner as he was pinned down and killed by police.

The contrast between the two aspects of Starr is interesting, and the way she slips effortlessly between the two sides of herself, are really interesting to read- especially as this is something I’ve never had to consider. Now I have read about this, I wonder how common it is. I’m certain it is much more common than we would all think, but as it is far removed from most of our lives we don’t understand it. The Hate U Give is so multifaceted, it brings up more questions than just those surrounding police brutality. The representation Thomas has given to voices that are either silenced, discredited or heard only briefly before the news cycle moves on is invaluable because it is fundamentally human. She offers us a view into the aftermath of a shooting in a personal and nuanced way, and at times it almost feels intrusive.

Listening to a podcast earlier today, I heard Ava DuVernay describe how she loved fantasy and science fiction when she was younger. She loved films like The Neverending Story and Star Wars, but they didn’t love her back. Rarely were there black characters, and almost never were there black female characters. DuVernay speaks passionately about representation, and I don’t think there are many people defining representation in YA fiction the way Angie Thomas has done with her first novel. My 13 year old sister told me her English class were reading extracts of it and discussing themes such as empathy and justice- what a legacy Thomas would have if she were never to write another book again. As luck would have it, another is on its way later this year and I can’t wait to read what she’s written this time.