In the literary world, the categories of young adult fiction and romance are frequently looked down upon and misunderstood. These attitudes come from both critics and people who haven't even picked up one of these types of books. They are, incidentally, two of my favourite genres to read.
So where does this dismissal come from? Well, it's no coincidence the genres that are most looked down upon are often written by and for women and girls. In an essay titled 'The Hopeful Romantic' for Kill Your Darlings, Amy T. Matthews writes that when covering romance in her university class for genre fiction, she spends an entire lecture deconstructing what students thought a romance reader looked like. Their initial answer is 'middle-aged, overweight, has too many cats'.
Besides the obvious undertones of misogyny in these perceptions, the truth is all kinds of people read romance. The Australian Romance Readers Association 2017 survey shows that romance readers skew across all ages, with 41.76 per cent of respondents aged 21 to 45. Using Nielson bookscan data, Romance Writers of America estimate that men make up about 18 per cent of romance readers.
Young adult fiction is even more literally typecast, written primarily for teen audiences, despite a large adult readership. Some of the literati snobbery is rooted in how quick we are to dismiss teens' ability to read complexly. Despite the fact that teenagers engage with all types of literature in high school, there's a perception that YA is simplistic, to the point that one Slate article argued adults should be embarrassed to read YA.
But there are also gender dynamics at play here. A common complaint is the supposed feminisation of YA and how it alienates male readers, ignoring the fact that there are many great male YA writers. Not to mention that boys should be encouraged to read outside their own perspective like girls are.
And despite women's innovation in the category (think S. E. Hinton and J. K. Rowling), male authors like J. D. Salinger and John Green are often held up as 'saviours' of the genre, while books with female protagonists by women are given hot pink covers and criticised for being 'sentimental' or 'chick-lit'.
There's a long history in the Western canon of equating maleness with literary value. Even women's literary fiction can't escape the critical blowback of 'Goldfinching', whereby a previously critically acclaimed book that has become commercially popular with women is taken down a peg. In this context, YA and romance are particularly easy targets.
"Easy reading is damn hard writing." — Maya Angelou
But this issue is more than just a bias towards authors and audiences, it's how these books don't conform to what is considered to be serious and masculine writing. The Young Adult writing style tends be more about authentic voice and have less narrative fat. Both YA and romance tackle heavy issues and centre around the emotional development of their protagonists.
Michael Webster, who introduced Nielson bookscan to Australia, says that YA is 'very serious work, accessibly written'. And in the words of Maya Angelou, 'Easy reading is damn hard writing.' YA and romance aren't always interested in pandering to a male gaze, often unapologetically feminine and geared toward female empowerment.
The disdain for feminine writing is summed up best in 'On Pandering' by Claire Vaye Watkins, where she calls her book Battleborn 'a pander', continuing with the line, 'She can write like a man, they said, by which they meant, She can write.'
I get that it's instinctual to dismiss a book that we don't immediately understand or feel comfortable with, but that shouldn't take away from the fact that it's a good book. Without any qualifications, the best book I read last year was The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, a YA book written from the perspective of an African American teenage girl. Just because a novel isn't specifically written for your demographic, doesn't make it any less worthy.
Everyone is entitled to their own tastes and there are bad books in every genre, but we do need to rethink our biases. As a culture we are trained to uphold the heterosexual white male narrative as 'neutral'. When hundreds of years of literary canon has primarily been written by men and about men, it will take some rewiring to overcome our initial impressions. But when talking about books, I shouldn't have to feel ashamed of my reading because some people think that it's a bad thing to be youthful and girly.
The positive is that many people already see the value in these books. If you think it's not for you, well, you may be right, but more than a few people I've known who thought that YA or romance wasn't 'for them', actually read a few and were instantly converted. They just needed to take a chance.
Neve Mahoney is a student at RMIT university. She has also contributed to Australian Catholics and The Big Issue.