The 2023 Bookseller YA Book Prize was recently awarded to When Our Worlds Collided by Danielle Jawando. This book, I read, “follows three teenagers from different backgrounds who are brought together in the aftermath of a stabbing. What follows flips their worlds upside down and makes Chantelle, Jackson, and Marc question the deep-rooted prejudice and racism that exists within society”.
Not notably queer, you might think (the reviews suggest a gay best friend makes an appearance), but 2023 seems to have been a bit of a break from the norm of the YA Book Prize. Let’s have a look at the previous winners:
- 2022’s winner was “Adiba Jaigirdar’s queer rom-com, Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating ... It focuses on two very different Bengali girls—popular Hani and academic overachiever Ishu—who begin a fake relationship to both help Hani convince her friends that she is bisexual and increase Ishu’s popularity and chances of becoming head girl. Before long, they start to develop real feelings for each other, but not everyone in their lives is rooting for them.” (Interesting to note that Ishu’s popularity would be aided by her being in an open lesbian relationship.)
- “Alice Oseman scooped the YA Book Prize 2021 with her “joyful” coming out story about a teenager who realises that she is aromantic and asexual, Loveless ...”.
- “Juno Dawson won the YA Book Prize in 2020 with Meat Market, a “gritty and compelling” exposé of the fashion industry”. Wikipedia tells me that Dawson was assigned male at birth, worked as a primary school teacher before making it big in books (“notable works include This Book Is Gay, Mind Your Head, Margot & Me, The Gender Games”), and that “her books often feature LGBT people, and Dawson has advocated for other books to feature more prominent LGBT characters.”
You may retort: that’s just the fashionable prize-winning books - what about the day to day reality? So I had a look for other recommended lists, trying to stick to the UK market.
Here is Pan Macmillan’s list of the best new young adult fiction of 2023. It starts with a re-release of Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, presumably to tie-in with the film, but after that normal service is resumed.
- No 2: “Tilly isn’t looking for a girlfriend, but her best friend Teddy is. // Enter Katherine Cooper-Bunting: beautiful, charming, and perfect for Teddy. So why does Tilly find herself using any excuse to join the theatre production they’re starring in? // And why can’t she stop thinking about Katherine?”
- No 3: “Enter Theo Somers: a charming, wealthy customer who convinces Dylan to be his fake date to a family wedding full of crazy rich drama. Their romance is supposed to be just for show, but soon Dylan’s falling for Theo — for real …” (and, yes, Dylan is male too).
- No 4: “This tender story about a non-binary teen is a celebration of life and love, and a shining example of hope in the face of adversity … Ben tries to keep a low profile in school until Nathan Allan, a funny and charismatic student, decides to take Ben under his wing. As their friendship grows, their feelings begin to change …”.
- No 5 seems to be a fantasy novel, while No 6 “shines a glaring light on how the system, condemns Black and Latinx teen boys to failure before they’ve even had a chance at success” (comma in the original, I’m afraid) and No 7 even appears to include heterosexual romance, but then normal service is resumed with the final one, No 8: “Chloe Green wants to be a winner. Her moms have moved her from SoCal to Alabama for high school, and she has had to spend four years navigating gossips and the puritans who run Willowgrove Christian Academy. She is determined to win valedictorian, and only prom queen Shara Wheeler stands in her way. But, a month before they graduate, Shara kisses Chloe and disappears …”.
Here’s another one, a must-read list for this summer. Book 3 on the list is The Lesbiana’s Guide To Catholic School by Sonora Reyes; the write-up for book 4 says “Jonah and Dylan are sworn enemies. Jonah thinks Dylan is an arrogant golden boy, whilst Dylan sees Jonah as a loud-mouthed show-off. Yet their friends are convinced Jonah and Dylan’s mutual hate is a mask for lust – a rumour that’s fuelled when they wake up in the same bed after homecoming. The pair decide to maintain a fake dating ruse so that they can stage a public break-up, thus proving how incompatible they really are. But the more time they spend together, the more they question their real feelings”; the write-up for book 5 says “William Hussey’s gay YA romance is Sex Education meets Love, Simon with fake zombies”; and that for book 6 says “Gwen and Arthur have been betrothed since birth, despite being wildly unsuited in more ways than one. When they discover that they share something in common after all, the two become reluctant allies – pretending to fall for each other, whilst they explore their feelings for other people – in Gwen’s case it’s female knight Bridget, and for Art it’s Gwen’s bookish brother Gabriel” (the write-up continues, perhaps unnecessarily, that it is “categorically not a Camelot retelling”)..
- 2022’s winner was “Adiba Jaigirdar’s queer rom-com, Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating ... It focuses on two very different Bengali girls—popular Hani and academic overachiever Ishu—who begin a fake relationship to both help Hani convince her friends that she is bisexual and increase Ishu’s popularity and chances of becoming head girl. Before long, they start to develop real feelings for each other, but not everyone in their lives is rooting for them.” (Interesting to note that Ishu’s popularity would be aided by her being in an open lesbian relationship.)
- “Alice Oseman scooped the YA Book Prize 2021 with her “joyful” coming out story about a teenager who realises that she is aromantic and asexual, Loveless ...”.
- “Juno Dawson won the YA Book Prize in 2020 with Meat Market, a “gritty and compelling” exposé of the fashion industry”. Wikipedia tells me that Dawson was assigned male at birth, worked as a primary school teacher before making it big in books (“notable works include This Book Is Gay, Mind Your Head, Margot & Me, The Gender Games”), and that “her books often feature LGBT people, and Dawson has advocated for other books to feature more prominent LGBT characters.”
You may retort: that’s just the fashionable prize-winning books - what about the day to day reality? So I had a look for other recommended lists, trying to stick to the UK market.
Here is Pan Macmillan’s list of the best new young adult fiction of 2023. It starts with a re-release of Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, presumably to tie-in with the film, but after that normal service is resumed.
- No 2: “Tilly isn’t looking for a girlfriend, but her best friend Teddy is. // Enter Katherine Cooper-Bunting: beautiful, charming, and perfect for Teddy. So why does Tilly find herself using any excuse to join the theatre production they’re starring in? // And why can’t she stop thinking about Katherine?”
- No 3: “Enter Theo Somers: a charming, wealthy customer who convinces Dylan to be his fake date to a family wedding full of crazy rich drama. Their romance is supposed to be just for show, but soon Dylan’s falling for Theo — for real …” (and, yes, Dylan is male too).
- No 4: “This tender story about a non-binary teen is a celebration of life and love, and a shining example of hope in the face of adversity … Ben tries to keep a low profile in school until Nathan Allan, a funny and charismatic student, decides to take Ben under his wing. As their friendship grows, their feelings begin to change …”.
- No 5 seems to be a fantasy novel, while No 6 “shines a glaring light on how the system, condemns Black and Latinx teen boys to failure before they’ve even had a chance at success” (comma in the original, I’m afraid) and No 7 even appears to include heterosexual romance, but then normal service is resumed with the final one, No 8: “Chloe Green wants to be a winner. Her moms have moved her from SoCal to Alabama for high school, and she has had to spend four years navigating gossips and the puritans who run Willowgrove Christian Academy. She is determined to win valedictorian, and only prom queen Shara Wheeler stands in her way. But, a month before they graduate, Shara kisses Chloe and disappears …”.
Here’s another one, a must-read list for this summer. Book 3 on the list is The Lesbiana’s Guide To Catholic School by Sonora Reyes; the write-up for book 4 says “Jonah and Dylan are sworn enemies. Jonah thinks Dylan is an arrogant golden boy, whilst Dylan sees Jonah as a loud-mouthed show-off. Yet their friends are convinced Jonah and Dylan’s mutual hate is a mask for lust – a rumour that’s fuelled when they wake up in the same bed after homecoming. The pair decide to maintain a fake dating ruse so that they can stage a public break-up, thus proving how incompatible they really are. But the more time they spend together, the more they question their real feelings”; the write-up for book 5 says “William Hussey’s gay YA romance is Sex Education meets Love, Simon with fake zombies”; and that for book 6 says “Gwen and Arthur have been betrothed since birth, despite being wildly unsuited in more ways than one. When they discover that they share something in common after all, the two become reluctant allies – pretending to fall for each other, whilst they explore their feelings for other people – in Gwen’s case it’s female knight Bridget, and for Art it’s Gwen’s bookish brother Gabriel” (the write-up continues, perhaps unnecessarily, that it is “categorically not a Camelot retelling”)..
The Guardian does a round-up of recommended YA fiction here. This features six books, three of which are: (1) the Gwen and Arthur one I mentioned above; (2) an apparently astrology themed one called Never Trust a Gemini (“a feelgood LGBTQ+ romantic comedy with a fresh, joyful energy. Fourteen-year-old Cat is convinced that a match with her oblivious crush Alison is aligned in the stars, until she meets dangerously cool new girl Morgan…”); and (3) a “sapphic Gothic romance inspired by classic fairytales”.
Do you want to go through Buzzfeed’s list of YA romance we’re loving in 2022? I thought not. But if you change your mind then please feel to check my counting: I think 11 of the 23 books on the list have queer themes. (The situation was neatly summed up by the title of one of them, Well, That Was Unexpected, which seems to be a heterosexual romance.)
TV is little different, it seems. This is a list of the Best Teen Shows to Watch on Netflix, which includes one about “Calliope ... is a young monster-hunter-in-training who unknowingly falls in love with a vampire named Juliette" and Heartstopper, based on a book, in which “two boys from slightly different social circles who find themselves falling for each other after getting paired up in a class together... The coming-of-age and coming-out series spotlights a glowing LGBTQ+ community and has already been renewed for two more seasons”.
I feel that I have proved my point about the facts. So, back to my question - why should this be?
There’s an obvious answer to do with re-balancing earlier wrongs. For centuries, no-one wrote novels about lesbian teenagers with two mothers struggling to be valedictorians - now is the time to redress that injustice!
But that only takes us so far. Of all the historically under-represented minorities, why is it the sexual ones who are getting almost all the attention in literature aimed at teenagers? In this age of Black Lives Matter, George Floyd, taking a knee and so on, why do we not have more novels about racism?
I am reminded of what I said in 2021: “[in 1967/8] black people were better placed than gay people: speaking out against homosexuals in 1967 was fine; speaking out against black people in 1968 was not. ... Fast forward a couple of generations. Anti-homosexual prejudice has gone from being common and acceptable to rare and unacceptable. Gay marriage is legal. Gay culture is celebrated. Drag queens are encouraged to read stories to children in public libraries. And so on. The world has moved a lot for homosexual people. But for black people ...” In that piece, I put a potential answer into the mouth of an imagined disgruntled anti-racist campaigner: consider this more evidence for that answer, which I rejected at the time and still tend to reject.
Perhaps the answer lies in the preferences of the producers of such fiction or the commissioners/editors? Or is it something to do with the tastes of the primarily female readership? (But note that most YA books are bought by adults and most of them intend to read the books themselves.) Is it something to do with librarians, whether in schools or public libraries? Can we blame a generation reared on In the Night Garden ... ? I’m afraid I simply don’t know.
If I can’t answer the question in the title, perhaps I can at least ask some other questions instead:
- what happened to all the dystopian sci-fi and swords-and-sorcery books that teenagers used to like? I’ve hardly seen any.
- will this continue? When today’s teenagers grow up, will they expect to read (and watch) non-heterosexual romance? I had been wondering what had happened to the rom-com recently, and perhaps we can see its future here.
- what effect (if any) does it have on teenagers to be presented with fictional worlds in which romance is largely not heterosexual? On the one hand, violent video games do not seem to have made teenagers notably violent; on the other hand, we tend to believe that children are susceptible to some kinds of influence (hence: schools).
- what books do teenagers read whose parents don’t want them to read these kinds of books? Where do they get them?
- conversely, what is in the books that teenagers really want to read? You know - the ones that get passed round surreptitiously?
Answers on a postcard, as YAs don’t say.
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