I know, I have been terrible updating. It’s that well-known internet truism that the longer you go without updating, the harder it is to update, even when you have things to say. Even when you have a lot of ideas about a lot of books on the list of books you wanted to talk about! It’s self-fulfilling prophecy. Plus, work takes a lot of time! As do very important naps. And I had to catch up on TV- have you watched Revenge? It’s pretty great.

But WordPress sends you a yearly review of your progress, and that’s depressing, especially when you have SO MUCH YOU MEANT TO SAY.

And that starts now.

There are two ways to say what’s happening tomorrow:

(1) I’m hanging out with a few friends to geek out about children’s lit

or

(2) I’ll be recording a conversation with New York Times bestselling author Kristin Cashore, professor at the Simmons College Center for the Study of Children’s  Literature Deborah Kaplan, and professional children’s literature critic Rebecca Rabinowitz (and me!), where we deconstruct the feminism in E. Lockhart’s The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks and whether Frankie’s journey can be read as a success or a failure.

Both of which are technically true, it’s just that one sounds way more impressive.

I’m- for some loose definitions of the term- moderating, but it’s generally going to be a fun discussion (clearly influenced by all four of us having masters in CHL from Simmons), which I’ll then write up and post here. If you have any questions or points you’d like us to cover, please feel free to leave it in a comment or tweet me (@yasubscription), and I’ll do my best to bring them up during the free-for-all serious academic debate

(For context, we started conceptualizing this discussion in the comments of a post here in February of last year as a potential “point-counterpoint” post. It has possibly grown a tiny bit since then.)

ANYWAY.

Deborah has good, solid thoughts on a series that I could never quite get into, and again, she makes me want to read the books just to understand the full impact of what she’s saying.

I’ll be back soon with my thoughts on TONING THE SWEEP, NUMBER THE STARS, and an article on picture books posted by the New York Times which tried to confront gender in children’s lit and missed the mark spectacularly. For now, enjoy Deb’s thoughts on DANGEROUS ANGELS, which are definitely worth reading, and a great way to get back into the feminist YA mindset.

Title: DANGEROUS ANGELS by Francesca Lia Block

Intro: five books, not six

First of all, I want to explicitly state that I am not going to address Necklace of Kisses. In some cases, I feel that it’s ridiculous to even talk about a book on the original list of 103 without addressing its sequels. For example, I don’t think it’s possible to talk about feminism in Golden Compass without also looking at A Subtle Knife and Amber Spyglass, or to address The Hunger Games without also looking at Mockingjay. Other sequels have a more questionable relevance to the initial text; our earlier blog debate on the relevance of A House like a Lotus to A Wrinkle in Time is one example of this. Necklace of Kisses, as far as I’m concerned, doesn’t have more than the most cursory relevance to the rest of the Dangerous Angels series. It’s written 10 years after the final book of the quintet, with a textually implied readership of older adults rather than teens or even young adults, and it actively works against the vibe, genre, and emotional content of the original quintet. (I can’t make a hard and fast rule about why I feel this way. Ursula Le Guin Tehanu was published 18 years after the final book in the Earthsea trilogy, and very explicitly and openly works against the vibe, genre, emotional content, and specifically gender presentation of the original trilogy, and yet if I were talking about gender in any of the first three books I would include that fourth. Perhaps I’m unfairly excluding Necklace of Kisses simply because of how much I dislike it. C’est la vie.)

Also, ObDisclaimer: Over the last few years, Block’s work has begun to annoy me intensely, although I used to love it. I find her more recent books to be full of drama queens, over-the-top angst, and aggravating heteronormativity. So it’s possible that my reread of these five books has been tainted by feelings that are about other books entirely. I hope you will all call me on it if you see that I’ve said something here that is really just me being irritated by Quakeland.

Gender by its lonesome

If we address the texts solely along feminist lines, without thinking intersectionally, what do we find? A series in which both female and male adolescent sexuality are frightening and confusing, but are under the control of teens themselves, with nobody determining appropriate sexual behavior other than the participants. We see teenagers and young adults endangering both themselves and their partners through behavior which is not entirely safe, sane, consensual — and we see that only the partners in those relationships are empowered to repair that problem.

We see Weetzie’s mother, an alcoholic who cares for her child only indifferently, and she’s not judged and found wanting as a mother. We see Weetzie and Ping, who leave their teenagers alone in LA while they travel off with Dirk, Duck, Valentine, and My Secret Agent Lover Man to make a movie, and neither the men nor the women are treated any differently as parents by the text. Only one potential parent is judged and found wanting, Witch Baby’s birth mother Vixanne, and she is primarily judged for not wanting to raise her own child. (She could be seen as representing a mix of different sexist stereotypes of women — witch, abandoning mother, seductress, homewrecker, her weird thing with Jayne Mansfield — but there are enough other positive portrayals of different types of women that I’m happy to let it pass.)

We see sisters who, despite early fights over boys, will go out of their way for each other. We see one teenage girl who just wants to nest and have babies, and two other teenage girls who want to be rock stars and who have the talent and charisma to make it happen. We see Cherokee spend an entire book trying to make herself into a more glamorous rockstar and a more desirable girlfriend through magic, until she comes to the conclusion that:

She was a pale, thin girl without any outer layers of fur or bone or feathers to protect or carry her. She could dance and sing, there, on the stage. She could send her rhythms into the canyon.

We see girls who are trusted by their elders to stay alone or go to New York, if those are the decisions they need to make. Basically, we see girls who fly or fall by their own choices and actions. They can take power wisely or foolishly, but the choices are always theirs.

So is Dangerous Angels a good series for feminist girls? Signs point to yes.

Race, ethnicity, and culture

Let’s begin our conversation of intersectionality by talking about race, which is the most kinda subversive kinda hegemonic element of this world. On the one hand, the books present a wholly positive vision of a multi-ethnic LA, richly flavored because of a particularly glittery rendition of the melting pot. Nearly all of the secondary characters are people of color, two of the secondary characters are in a biracial relationship in which both romantic partners are people of color, and both of the white second-generation heroines are romantically partnered with people of color.

On the other hand, the job of those cultural markers and people of color, in some sense, is to provide an awesome glitzy flavor for exotic LA. See above, re: the second-generation heroines. Early in Witch Baby, for example, Cherokee’s about-to-be boyfriend is variously described as

Raphael, the Chinese-Rasta parrot boy
[...]
Not only did Raphael look like powdered chocolate, but he smelled like it, too, and his eyes reminded Witch Baby of Hershey’s kisses. His mother, Ping, dressed him in bright red, green and yellow and twisted his hair into dreadlocks.
[...]
[Raphael] stood staring at her with his slanted chocolate-Kiss eyes

[Witch Baby 21-22]

Meanwhile, when Witch Baby meets her beloved Angel Juan for the first time, they have the following exchange:

“Where are you from, Angel Juan?” Witch Baby asked.

“Mexico.”

Witch Baby had seen sugar skulls and candelabras and the shapes of doves, angels and trees. She had seen white dresses embroidered with gardens, and she had seen paintings of a dark woman with parrots and flowers and blood and one eyebrow. She liked tortillas with butter melting in the fold almost as much as candy, and she like hot days and hibiscus flowers, mariachi bands save and especially, now, Angel Juan.

Exoticisation is constant through Cherokee Bat And the Goat Guys, in which Cherokee (a blonde LA princess who sleeps in a tepee and wears white suede moccasins with turquoise and silver beads) repeatedly convinces her adult friend Coyote, against his better judgment, to give her animal magic for her friends. Coyote stands in for all tribes, with snippets between each chapter attributed to, variously, the Papago, the Aztec, the Wintu, the Pima, as if his animal-centric magic is generically, as Cherokee says, “all about Indians” (3). Coyote’s wisdom is of the grossly stereotyped sort, the wise old shaman of a vanished people:

Coyote was tall. He never smiled. He had chosen to live alone, to work and mourn and see visions, in a nest above the smog. The animals came to him when he spoke their names. He was full of grace, wisdom and mystery. He had seen his people die, wasted on their lost lands.

The most obvious example of ethnicity being used as an exotic spice to aid the white protagonist comes early in Weetzie Bat itself:

Weetzie was wearing her feathered headdress and her moccasins and a pink fringed minidress. [...]

“I’m into Indians,” she said. “They were here first and we treated them like shit.”

“Yeah,” Dirk said, touching his Mohawk.

As I said, kinda subversive, and kinda hegemonic.

Queerness and sexuality

The myriad ways in which this series broke ground for representations of queerness in young adult literature are legion. That certainly doesn’t mean the books are perfect, though. The brief trace of bi-phobia early in Weetzie Bat made me cringe on this reread.

Still, the first book in the series was published in 1989 and already addressed the AIDS crisis, not as the book’s Issue, but as a source of realistic emotional depth for one character. It’s hard to remember now how AIDS was perceived in 1989 among the likely gatekeepers of adolescent fiction. Moreover, Weetzie’s own sexuality is unusually drawn. Her high school sexual experience, including at least one encounter of dubious consent, isn’t used as a tool to judge her or find her damaged. It’s simply a stage in her youth which she needs to get past — magically, with the help of a genie — in order to find happiness. (For more detail on the fascinating way sexuality is dealt with in the first book, including the strange multitude of parents, I’m going to self-pimp: Kaplan and Rabinowitz. “‘Beautiful, or Thick, or Right, or Complicated’: Queer Heterosexuality in the Young Adult Works of Cynthia Voigt and Francesca Lia Block.” Straight Writ Queer: Non-Normative Expressions of Heterosexuality in Literature. Ed. Richard Fantina: McFarland, 2006.)

And while in the intervening years Block has written primarily from the perspective of heterosexual girls and young women, 1995′s Baby Be-bop features as a protagonist a young gay man: it’s the story of Weetzie Bat‘s Dirk. Dirk is a Mohawked, leather-jacketed punk rocker, far from any stereotypes of a gay teen. His soon-to-be partner Duck also doesn’t conform to stereotypes: a surfer god.

The treatment of AIDS in both of these books, as a disease which killed many but certainly not all gay men, which is not a punishment for a certain form of behavior, which needs to be taken seriously — all of this was groundbreaking in books for young readers. Meanwhile, the dating scene the texts envision for Dirk and Duck before they meet each other is exactly as soulless and dangerous as that which the texts envision for Weetzie. After the formal partnership, they are willing to complicate their relationship for her sake and the sake of their collective family.

Conclusion

I was surprised on returning to the series how much I still liked it. Sure, it’s not perfect. In fact, with regards to race I think it’s heavily flawed. But one of the reasons I’ve gotten aggravated with Block’s books in recent years is that I think her heroines are often victimized by their own sexuality, and that really doesn’t happen in this series. These girls take control. They don’t always like their changing bodies and changing desires, but they figure out what they need and they take control. That’s pretty awesome, I have to say.

For what it’s worth, I haven’t read ALANNA since 2006 and I haven’t read TRICKSTER’S CHOICE at all, but just reading this essay made me want to read them both. On the one hand, this kind of goes against my goal of not having to read all 100- but really, isn’t this the best kind of failure?

–a

I should point out, right from the start, that I am a Tamora Pierce fanatic. Not fan—fanatic. I have read everything, many times, and I can quote from her novels at length. The idea of pulling apart her work for the purposes of this book review is daunting. But just as Amy pointed out when reviewing L’Engle, the love of a book or of a character cannot (or, perhaps, should not) erase the issues. And so, here are some issues for your consideration…

Title: ALANNA: THE FIRST ADVENTURE and TRICKSTER’S CHOICE by Tamora Pierce

Brief summary: Both of these books take place in world of Tortall, the realm most famously created by Pierce. They also follow the same family—the title character in Alanna is the mother of the main character in Trickster’s Choice,Alianne.

In Alanna, the first book in the Song of the Lioness quartet, a young girl switches places with her twin brother so that she can become a knight (and he a sorcerer). She disguises herself as a boy and enters training, where she excels in all areas of warcraft—most especially with a sword. She befriends many of her comrades, including both the Crown Prince and the capitol city’s King of Thieves. Alanna struggles constantly with her gender identity and her sense of morality. This book chronicles her years as a page, and ends with her transition into life as a squire.

In Trickster’s Choice, the first of two Trickster books, Alanna’s daughter is presented as a quick-witted, rowdy sort of teenager… as different from her mother as one could imagine, but very similar to her formerly-thieving father. Alianne, called Aly, attempts to escape her mother’s interference by running away, and ends up captured by pirates and sold into slavery on the Copper Isles. The true nature of her imprisonment quickly becomes clear—she has been forcibly recruited by the islands’ Trickster God. He challenges her to protect the family she serves, and in exchange offers her the sort of work she both needs and desires. A dangerous bargain is made.

Triggers: Plenty, actually. Alanna is forced to hide her gender in order to serve her country as a Knight. She is actually encouraged to hide it by those she reveals herself to, at least until she has earned her shield. Her mother has died and her father is absent, making her a virtual orphan. Her role models are all men, they are almost all noblemen, and (up until the third book in the series) they are all white. As with all of the Tortall books, there’s plenty of magic at work… I suppose the Texas Librarians’ Association might call that a trigger.

Aly is somewhat more modern but she has a great many advantages due not only to her rank and wealth, but to her beauty. Aly is a beauty (even after she’s broken her nose) which is a strange choice by Pierce, since Aly’s mother and father are both known to be plain. Race is a major factor in this duet, as the war brewing in the Copper Isles is grounded in volatile racial conflict. Slavery is also a pretty hefty trigger, and as per usual with Ms. Pierce’s novels, this book pulls no punches in that arena.

Both women struggle to have normal romantic relationships, and both are driven not just by their desire to be successful but by divine intervention. There’s plenty of polytheistic religion in the Tortall books. Oh, and both Alanna and Aly kill people. A lot.

Why I Think It’s On the List: Alanna is a touchstone of young adult literature, and Alanna herself is iconic. Pierce introduced the medieval woman in a new, unusual way… she presented a young girl with twice as much grit and gumption as any boy. As the series progresses, we watch Alanna come in contact with a broad variety of people—both ethnically and socio-economically—although the majority of them are men. She also struggles with gender identity and the perils of love in a world which falsely believes her to be a man.

As I mentioned before, Trickster’s Choice is quite a bit more modern in sensibility, introducing even more non-white characters and many more women. The setting is important, too; Aly is imprisoned in a country which has a history of female leadership, and has been taken over by non-native white men. The deposed Queens of the Isles were known for both wisdom and battle-readiness… a common theme in Pierce’s novels. There are a number of positive, strong, influential women in this story—many from non-white backgrounds. It’s a much more even playing field that in the Alanna books.

Wait, But…

There are some sticking points here. Firstly, I’m not sure Alanna: The First Adventure strictly qualifies as Young Adult lit. As the series progresses we definitely get into the YA realm, but the second, third, or fourth books would have been a better choice. Alanna barely qualifies as a teenager when the first book ends and none of her life experiences up until that point would be considered “young adult.” This first book is pretty Middle Grade, and that makes sense since it comes from a time before anyone really knew what YA literature was. Perhaps Bitch Magazine didn’t want to choose a book which was mid-series, but the logical choice (from a feminist standpoint) was The Woman Who Rides Like a Man—book three in the series.

The Alanna of book one lives her life as Alan, a short, stocky boy… she’s a pretty tremendous liar. The necessity of the lie is explained, of course, by the laws and strictures of medieval society; still, Pierce mentions many times in the books that Tortall has had openly female Knights in the past. While the lie is understandable from the perspective of a ten year child, it seems odd that it is perpetuated by a number of adults over the course of the first two books of the series. There is a sense of divine intervention throughout the books, but it can’t erase the moral ambiguity of Alanna’s decision. And it seems odd that the Mother Goddess, Alanna’s patron, appears to endorse this gender-bending lie. The Great Goddess allows Alanna to fake boyhood in order to earn her shield instead of encouraging her to be herself. That just doesn’t sit right with me.

Trickster’s Choice, on the other hand, is firmly YA. Alianne is a girl rapidly approaching womanhood, and she has some very big decisions to make. Having a mother like Alanna appears to have never been easy—her Knight-mom was often absent, physically and emotionally, and Alanna has very little understanding of the life of an “average” teenage girl. Perhaps because Alanna herself didn’t have much of an adolescence, she is already pressuring 16-year-old Aly to decide what (and whom) she is going to be. The entire family disregards Aly’s wants and needs as she matures and that seems counterintuitive, since these certainly aren’t stuffy traditionalists.

There are some larger familial issues here as well… There is a strong insinuation that working women make subpar mothers. I’m sure Tamora Pierce would be flabbergasted to hear me say that, since it certainly isn’t how she personally feels, but the message does read pretty clearly—especially when we get into the story and meet Duchess Winnamine. The Duchess is Aly’s slave-mistress and the (step-)mother of the family Aly has sworn to protect. She is in stark contrast to Aly’s own mother, whom we’ve come to view as a conspicuously absent mom. Winnamine is home with her children and stepchildren 24/7. She is an excellent mother and a kind mistress; she certainly wouldn’t leave her children for years at a time to beat back enemy armies. The problem is that there’s no good example of a “working mother,” one who works outside the home, to illustrate that healthy balance between career and family. And that’s unfortunate.

There’s also the question of Queenhood, and what that means for this island nation. When we discover the Trickster God Kyprioth’s true aims, we have to start questioning the validity of putting a very young woman on the throne merely because she’s got the right combination of DNA. The rebellion’s first choice, Sarai, is beautiful but impulsive, inspiring but far from diplomatic. Her younger sister (and eventual Queen), Dovasary, is far more practical but far less charming… she’s also only thirteen when she takes the throne. No matter how quick-witted she is, she’ll always run the risk of becoming a pawn to her royal advisors. Also, Dove is known for listening into private conversations and spying at keyholes… not exemplary behavior from a future Queen, even if it does get her what she wants in the end. And, of course, Aly finds Dove’s sneaking and spying endearing—because she’s a spy herself. Perhaps not a glowing recommendation. In the end, we have to ask ourselves if the answer to the problem of racial division and socio-economic discord is to install a new Queen with little to no preparation for the role. Oh and wait… what about all that slavery?

And then there are the men—oh the glorious men! Even though Tamora Pierce focuses on female heroines, I’ve always thought she must have the most fun writing men. George Cooper (the King of Thieves turned Kingdom’s Spy Master) is just about as sexy as a big-nosed, slow-drawling, slightly-disreputable street rat can get… which is pretty sexy. Sweet, sunny Nawat Crow is romantic enough to unhinge even the most broody vampire-obsessed teenager. And that’s all great… trust me, I really appreciated it in my teen years. But it would be nice, on occasion, to see these fellows do the wrong thing. It is relatively easy to tell who Pierce’s heroines will end up with because it’s always the man who can—literally—do no wrong. I know the Song of the Lioness books backwards and forwards, and I can’t think of a single George Cooper romantic misstep. Nawat Crow is so perfectly attuned to Aly’s every want and need that he seems almost, but not quite, ridiculous. They are dangerous, but never scary; busy, but never absent. This idealization of men can be a slippery slope, especially since Pierce does such a good job of giving her female characters realistic faults and foibles. I should note that not every man in Pierce’s novels is so idealized… just the ones the heroines end up married to.

Man, I really love these books. Like a lot. And although these aren’t perfect examples of the “feminist manifesto” (as it were) I do think that they are good choices overall. If the goal of this list is to suggest girl-oriented, powerful, intelligent literature that has something to say about who and what teenage girls can become, then I’m always going to vote pro-Pierce. I can’t say I’ve grown disappointed in any particular aspect of the Tortall books as I reread them, but I do see dicey areas that I wasn’t aware of as a teen. And maybe that’s good. Rereading these books as an adult should give us some pause; they should evolve, morally and philosophically, as we do. Because that’s what great YA literature is all about.

Anyway.

Title: THE SKIN I’M IN by Sharon Flake

Brief summary: Maleeka is having a hard year. Even in her inner-city middle school, she stands out for being poor, and other students mock how dark her black skin is and how good her grades are. Maleeka befriends a popular girl in exchange for doing her homework, and she feels like she’s getting by, but a new teacher with an odd facial blemish and a lot of self-confidence challenges the way she perceives her world.

Why I Think It’s On the List: Maleeka is such a fantastic character. She’s strong, not in the “physical altercations” way that so many YA novels tend to see as a positive way to show that the character has inner strength, or even in the “decisive in her choices” way. Maleeka sometimes has a hard time standing up for herself, but the brilliance of this text is that the reader never once feels like she doesn’t have liquid steel inside her, just waiting to be discovered. I never once doubted that Maleeka would come into her own in this novel, because all the pieces are there.

Beyond that, HOW GREAT was it to see such a fantastic support system for her? In a lot of novels, the protagonist feels like she’s fighting against the world, and this is no different, but as readers, we can see that the world she’s fighting isn’t necessarily trying to get her down. Maleeka has incredible role models in her mother and in Miss Saunders, who want what’s best for her and aren’t willing to let her settle. Other kids her age, including her best friend Sweets and her classmates Desda and Caleb, offer strength as well, and even minor characters like Tai flesh out this world that’s just waiting for Maleeka to see how strong she really is.

In addition, I think it’s pretty brilliant that maybe the best role model for Maleeka is one she creates herself: Akeelma, the slave girl whose diary Maleeka writes.

And while this maybe goes without saying, this is also a positive portrayal of a young black woman, and that in and of itself is worth noting.

Wait, But… First of all, I’m not sure this fits my standards for young adult. The length, the font size, the character age, and the reading level all indicate “upper middle grade” to me. I won’t quibble, though; this would be a solid novel for hi-lo high school readers, too. For the sake of brevity, I’ll grant this one as very young YA.

The other problem I see is more pressing, and it kills me that this is the first book I’m confronting it on here, because I’ve seen it in a lot of books and it’s rare that it happens in a book with so many positive female characters. In fact, it happened less in this book than in a lot of others, but it feels so prevalent lately that I can’t not discuss it.

A female antagonist whose motivations the reader can’t understand takes away from the feminist message in an otherwise very solid feminist novel. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that a novel is only as feminist as its least-dimensional female characters.

If there AREN’T secondary female characters, that’s problematic too, of course. No matter how amazing and multi-dimensional the protagonist is, if she’s the only woman in a universe comprised of men, it’s going to make her seem like the exception that proves the rule- the token chick, who is the only one to be cool enough to hang with the guys. I think at this point, most people know that, hence the Bechdel test and a lot of other important strides forward in discussing female-containing media.

But I think something we tend to overlook is that even if a complex female character is surrounded by other women, and even if they talk, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the text is feminist by default.

The thing in THE SKIN I’M IN that keeps making me hesitate is Char. Maleeka does Char’s homework, and in exchange gets to borrow her clothing and bask in the prestige of her friendship. It’s a fantastic portrayal of the internal back-and-forth in middle school, where “right” and “wrong” sometimes have to take a backseat to what is and isn’t manageable in the social minefield of adolescence. But as a reader, I kept wondering why Char did any of the things she did. The question What’s in it for Char? took me out of the story.

Some of this is simply my perspective. I was always that kid who never cut class and panicked at the idea of disappointing adults; Char is a character whose motivations will never mesh with my worldview. But beyond that, I wanted to know why. She has a hard home life, which is doled out just enough to keep the reader engaged: her parents died two years ago; she lives with her older sister; she’s failed seventh grade twice already. In one chapter we see Char at home during her sister’s party, bringing drink refills to her sister’s friends in exchange for cash. All of that informs the narrative. But it doesn’t answer my question of why.

Char goes beyond being an antagonist and into being a villain. And I don’t fully see how what she does benefits her, aside from a short-sighted need for revenge. I don’t see any of her long-term goals, and without that, she’s just the figure of a mean girl looming over everyone.

That figure- the mean girl who just wants to make your life a living hell- is one that I’m sure every kid who’s ever entered a junior high is very familiar with. But it’s also one of the pernicious stereotypes of women: that bitch who’s cruel for the sake of being cruel, who doesn’t have much personality beyond her thirst for the shame and humiliation of those who try to steal her stage.

I refuse to believe there isn’t something more to her. And it really bothers me that, even in otherwise really feminist-positive YA literature, the caricature of an evil bitch is something that doesn’t necessarily need to become more fleshed out.

I set a bunch of ground rules for myself for this blog, but I realized I haven’t stated them explicitly, and I should have done that. So here goes:

• I’m using these posts partially to start discussion and partially as a way to work things through in my own head. None of my opinions here are unchangeable. You may have a hard time persuading me that I’m wrong on some of them, but nothing here is immutable, except for the fact that these societal biases do exist and they do have a negative impact on members of the greater community, which I feel is the fundamental foundation of this discussion.
• I’m planning to update this three times a week, give or take, with book responses from myself or others. I’m not setting a strict schedule, because that will make this sound like work and I want to enjoy all the books I’m reading. But I’ve been plowing through books (many of which are AWESOME and I’d never gotten around to, so thanks, Bitch Magazine, for prompting me!), and I just need to write up my reactions. I don’t want to do them within 24 hours of reading the books for the first time, though, and I don’t want to do them thoughtlessly, so the scheduling isn’t set in stone. (Of course, you can also subscribe via your feed reader, and I also know that LiveJournal and DreamWidth both have feeds for new posts on this site, if you are so inclined.)
• I have a set format for myself for now, but review style can- and probably will- vary greatly. The two things every book will have are a brief (or lengthy!) analysis of how it deals with feminism and a list of triggers. The goal here is to supplement the Bitch post, and those are the two main things people felt were missing.
• I will be critical about something in every book and positive about something in every book. No matter how I personally feel about it, there is no such thing as a meritless book or a perfect book. Where the book is on the continuum will vary from person to person, and therein lies the joy of discussion.
• These reviews will be critical of aspects of these books. This is never meant to imply that the book isn’t good, or the author isn’t good, or even that the author was being offensive. Once the text is published, it’s out of the author’s hands, and because I shy away from authorial intent, I don’t care what the goal was in writing these particular stories in this manner (although I am intrigued by it). Every post here begins with the good-faith assumption that the author wrote the best book s/he could, and that the criticisms stem from one particular reader’s interpretation of the text. Moreover, a book not being a feminist book is not the same as an author not being a feminist. A book not being an explicitly feminist book is not the same as being a misogynistic text. The same applies when dealing with racism, homophobia, ablism, or any other bias.
• Criticisms of characters’ choices are not the same as criticisms of these choices in real life. Characters operate both as people (albeit fictional people) and as symbols. When dealing with people, feminism is all about the individual’s choice to make the best decisions for themselves regardless of gender. Symbols, on the other hand, alter the way we perceive the world, and I think critiquing that is fair game.
• I will frequently be wrong here- or at least, you may disagree with what I say. I’m trying to approach this thoughtfully and sensitively, but I assume my privilege will be blinding me on some things, and my personal life experiences to others. If I miss anything, please say something. And if you miss something, please don’t be offended if someone calls you out on it.

Questions? Comments? Condemnation? Feel free to leave me one. And if there’s anything I’m missing in the above, please, by all means, let me know.

Brief summary: In free verse, this novel explores the life of Lakshmi, a young girl sold into prostitution by her stepfather in Nepal.

Triggers: RAPE. A young girl is sold into prostitution. Each individual depiction of rape isn’t overly graphic- the novel is focused on emotional rather than physical reactions- but it’s definitely upsetting, and it doesn’t get less so the more times the protagonist is raped.

Why I Think It’s On the List: This is an issue that a lot of teens- and a lot of adults- like to think of as part of the past, when it’s actively happening today. The story feels like it’s part of another time, and then there are certain cultural markers (characters watching The Bold and the Beautiful, or a boy in a David Beckham shirt) that remind the reader that this is today. This story is visceral, and it’s a wake-up call to readers about how many terrible things out there are happening to women every day, as well as an implicit hope that education can help pull some of them out of these circumstances.

Additionally, Lakshmi’s journey from naïveté to bravery is complex and believable, and the story of a strong, honest young woman who refuses to let herself be defined by the sexual pleasure she can give to men is always good to read.

Wait, But… I’m concerned at how the book ends. Lakshmi develops a lot throughout the novel, and her personal growth arc works for me. But in order to escape her circumstances, a larger force needs to appear, and that comes in the form of an American who comes to rescue her, along with anyone who’s willing to be found- which ends up just being her, because everyone else is afraid. Yes, there are Indians with him (as well as other white men and women), and yes, some American characters aren’t helpful (a white American is one of many of her drunk paying customers), but I’m really uncomfortable with the only form of real help who’s identified as an individual being a white American, especially while so many Indian characters are abusive. It takes something away from a powerful story that paints a vivid picture of a culture when it ends with a white savior.

It’s compounded by the way that the rescuing character is referred to as “The American.” In sparsely-written free verse, each word packs more meaning, and a title like that carries with it the inherent baggage of the United States’ international policies and treatment of other nations.

The endnotes of this novel are the most fascinating part of the entire text for me. McCormick has clearly done a lot of research, including following the full path Lakshmi is taken on and interacting with people who’ve fought the child prostitution slave trade, as well as with who have gotten out of the quagmire. The endnotes really hammer the point of the novel home, and I can’t imagine not finding the young women she mentions, who patrol borders to protect young girls from fates that they once suffered, appealing and motivating. I want to know so much more of the story of these Indian women, who were in a terrible place and are now fighting to save others from their own fate.

Lakshmi’s narrative, by contrast, is the story of an Indian woman whose personal journey takes her to a place where she can accept help from an American. This is definitely an emotional journey, but it’s a different sort, and one which makes me think about something I was somewhat aware of while reading the book: this is a story about an Indian character living in India, written by an American author, being read by a predominantly American audience. (For the record, I am not trying to say that individuals should only write about their own cultures- I think it’s fantastic that this story is written by ANYONE, and an established American author can tell the story in a way that will get through to an audience that might not otherwise be accessible- but that doesn’t take away the inherent cultural baggage.) America being part of the story helps to make the reader part of the story, but it also globalizes it in a way that I’m not sure is beneficial to the text.

I didn’t mention this in the L’Engle post, although I should have, and I’ll make a separate post emphasizing this in a bit: this is criticism of the result of my reading of the book. I am not implying (or trying to imply) that the author intended any of the problems I mention, or that s/he holds this belief. In fact, in SOLD, I can see places where the author was working to combat these assumptions. This didn’t work for me, which doesn’t mean it wasn’t successful overall or that the book is a bad book or the author is a bad person, or even that the issue in question is (or should be) an issue for every reader. It also doesn’t mean my opinion will never change. The point of this blog is to discuss the issues that these books may raise, and this is what pinged as problematic with me personally. Your mileage, as always, may vary.

In short, while I applaud the feminist aims here, my post-colonial¹ reading of this text makes me very uncomfortable. Overall, I think it’s an important book to be part of a collection, as long as certain caveats are kept in mind.

1 – Post-colonial theory responds to the need to give a voice to those who have been silenced. When countries are colonized, the colonizing power tends to institute a policy of using ITS language, ITS literature, ITS way of life. A post-colonial perspective interrogates why the story is coming from the oppressor or the outsider, rather than from the oppressed.x

EDIT: Alaska has a great counter-argument in the comments, if you’re interested.

Title: A WRINKLE IN TIME by Madeleine L’Engle

Brief summary: Meg, her young brother Charles Wallace, and their new friend Calvin travel to Camazotz and revolutionize via individualist thinking

Triggers: I can’t think of any offhand, although freedom of speech is seriously limited, and it’s definitely a product of the time in which it was written.

Why I Think It’s On the List: A Wrinkle in Time won the Newbery, and it deserved it. Meg is an iconic female children’s lit protagonist for any number of reasons, not the least of which is that she’s a girl who’s interested in science and math and gets into fights, and both of her parents are famous scientists who encourage her to be herself.

It’s worth noting some of the other female characters as well. Meg’s mother is a brilliant scientist who goes on to win a Nobel Prize, and the three Mrs.’s (Whatsit, Which, and Who), who could choose any form, present themselves as older women, and even as they retain other shapes (and acknowledge that they’re really genderless and, in fact, used to be stars), they are still referred to as Mrs.

Wait, But… First of all, this isn’t a young adult novel. This is squarely middle grade/independent reader. L’Engle has written plenty of great YA, some of which has Meg Murry as a character (although not the protagonist- we’ll get to that later), and the two categories are different. Meg’s problems are the nuanced problems of a complex, thoughtful middle grade book, but a young adult novel carries with it different types of complexities. For example, her relationship with Calvin is chaste, not just in action but also in desire. Moreover, while Meg is ultimately the one to successfully break IT’s control over both her father and Charles Wallace, she’s consistently given help and support by adults she trusts, which doesn’t fit the young adult model of protagonist/adult interaction:

[A]lthough children’s novels often have absent parents so that the child protagonist is free to have an adventure… the child often returns to some sort of parent-based home by the end of the narrative. [...] Parents of teenagers constitute a more problematic presence in the adolescent novel because parent-figures in YA novels usually serve more as sources of conflict than as sources of support. They are more likely to repress than to empower. (Trites, 55-56)

Meg is fighting against the system (as symbolized by Charles Wallace and IT), but the adults that matter in her life- her parents, the three Mrs.’s, Aunt Beast- are fighting alongside her.

Secondly, I’m not sure this is feminist by today’s standards. It’s certainly a feminist children’s lit touchstone, but a lot of what Meg does is pretty standard in today’s middle grade. Young girl who feels like she doesn’t fit in, and gets into fights defending her family? This does not surprise me. Tomboys are fairly common protagonists for middle-grade novels. I love Meg, but I wouldn’t hand this book to someone saying “Check it out, feminism!” without at least a brief explanation of the historical context of the novel- which, I should note, is copyright 1962.

Not that Meg doesn’t kick ass, because she does. How many preteen girls do you see in books, even today, who are brilliant in science and math? But that doesn’t erase the problems. After all, Meg ends up succeeding not with her stubbornness or with her math and science skills, but with love. Calvin, Charles Wallace, and Dr. Murry are able to out-think her on a lot of logical problems, but Meg manages to get past IT by relying on her grasp of feelings that IT cannot experience by ITself. That connection with how you feel about others provides a great message, but it coming from a female character is fairly common, and I wouldn’t think to label Meg doing that as explicitly feminist.

Third, there’s the problematic aspect of Meg’s future. I’ve always wanted to be like Meg Murry when I grow up- except that I don’t, because we’ve seen how she grows up, and it’s pretty bleak. Over several other books by L’Engle, we learn the fate of all of these characters. Calvin works overseas. Calvin is involved with foreign governments, protecting the underprivileged. Calvin has labs on an island near Portugal and then an island near South Carolina, where he does paradigm-shifting work regenerating starfish limbs and then human ones. Calvin goes on a boat ride to Dragon Lake to deal with oil spills and the way they’re hurting the local animals. Charles Wallace grows up to go on secret spy missions no one can even talk about. Meg… has babies. And sometimes she helps Calvin in the lab. And maybe when her seventh child starts school, she’ll be able to finish her PhD. In A House Like a Lotus (1984- and trust me, when I’m done with the 103 books on the list, WE WILL GET TO THE STRENGTHS AND SERIOUS INHERENT FLAWS *cough*homophobia*cough* OF THIS NOVEL), Max specifically notices that Meg isn’t happy: “She’s been a good mother to all of you, but it’s beginning to wear on her. She’s got a fine brain, and not enough chance to use it” (81).

I remember being upset when I learned that Narnia was an allegory for Christianity, but I think the moment of putting things together in children’s books that hit me hardest was when I realized that red-headed Polly O’Keefe, with her twin uncles Sandy and Dennys and her mathematician mother and scientist father, was the daughter of Meg Murry. Meg Murry was full of potential. She was smart and kind and brave and loyal and stubborn and not-particularly-pretty and basically the perfect stand-in for every fourth-grade girl who didn’t quite fit in… and then she grew up to be dissatisfied and unfulfilled.

If it weren’t for Lotus, I could give plenty of extra-textual logic for why Meg is portrayed as she is in those books. After all, she’s not the protagonist; she’s the mother of the protagonist in a YA novel, and that means she has to not be front and center. I can even excuse the way that in Swiftly Tilting Planet (1978), which takes place about ten years after A Wrinkle in Time, Meg only participates by kything with Charles Wallace. After all, he didn’t get to go on the adventure in A Wind in the Door (1973) and this was his turn, and also because she’s pregnant during that novel. But Lotus IS a part of L’Engle’s canon, and it explicitly identifies Meg as unhappy. I think it takes away from some of what makes Wrinkle feminist when you factor in that Meg grows up and loses the part of herself that makes her that great icon.

I love love love A Wrinkle in Time, and Meg and Calvin and Charles Wallace are fantastic characters. But as a 16-year-old who read a lot of L’Engle’s work I was suspicious, and as a 26-year-old who has a background in children’s literature criticism I’m disappointed at how much less perfect it is than I remember it being when I first read it when I was eight.

P.S. A post-colonial reading of this novel would be EPIC. Is anyone else in, or should I put this on my to-do list?

Trites, Roberta Seelinger. Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature. University of Iowa Press: Iowa City. 2000.

I’m curious about what the purpose of this list is. I don’t think it’s to expose readers to a wide variety of feminist YA literature, because I count at least eight authors who have multiple titles on the list. Authorial intent doesn’t seem to matter much. Strong female characters are obviously an important qualifier, but if you were just choosing books with protagonists that fit that label this list would have been much longer, and/or is just picking at random from a list which is thankfully long and varied. Some of the books on this list were feminist touchstones when they were published and are no longer progressive; are they on the list as markers of what they have done for the field? Not that I’m not pleased to see so many queer-themed books on the list- I think many of the books you included are frequently quite good and very moving- but what makes those texts specifically feminist? If they were heterosexual romances, would they still qualify here as explicitly feminist YA literature?

Overall, while I’m grateful a list like this exists, and while I understand that part of the list’s goal is brevity, I think that if the purpose of this list is truly to advise young feminist readers, it would be much more beneficial if each book came with a brief annotation explaining what makes that book one of the most feminist out there, and what triggers readers might expect. It would help avoid a lot of the criticism you’ve received thus far, and it would also be providing a service for smart YA readers that we’re not receiving from all the other best-of lists around the blogosphere and in SLJ, Horn Book, Kirkus, and the other critical magazines that, believe it or not, many of us who love YA also read.

I’ve been thinking about it a lot, because I’ve been pondering for a while the idea of a children’s and YA book blog dealing with intersectionality¹. Taking for granted that the default paradigm is a rich straight white male able-bodied point of view (and I think that anyone who’s looked at the canon of literature can reasonably say that that is the default), I’ve been thinking it might be beneficial to have a central place which identifies books which are notable because of their opposition to racist, sexist, homophobic, classist, ablist, anti-fat, etc. positions. I specifically wanted someplace that would identify triggers and places where the text is flawed while simultaneously pointing out where it’s strong, to make good YA lit a safe space² for potential readers. And if someone needs to do it, it might as well be me, right?

The biggest problem for me is always having too many areas to go into and lack of decisiveness where to begin. The Bitch Magazine list has given me a good starting place. There are 103 books on that list, and I’ve read far less than half of it. But the ones that are there, I have some strong feelings on.

There are a lot of great books on that list. Some are feminist. Others aren’t so much, or- in my opinion- have other problematic areas which make the positive effect of the feminism less important than the overall negative takeaway. A few of the books aren’t actually YA. Some are important because of their place in the history of feminism in young adult literature but aren’t necessarily what I would identify as feminist literature, so much as markers for important steps in the general direction toward feminism.

My overall intention for this site is to log books that I read which I feel are particularly noteworthy for positive reasons. I want to focus on the Bitch list at first, but I have plenty of books that I love with a strong “but” that keeps me from recommending it unreservedly. I don’t really have any reason to post about a book which I feel fails on most or all counts, but I think there’s value in discussing why a book doesn’t work for me overall because of specific issues in my perception of feminism.

And there’s another caveat. The Bitch magazine list doesn’t give a specific definition of feminism that it was working from, and I can tell you right now that probably everyone reading this post has a different view of what exactly the word means. I’m not aiming to settle on one particular definition here. I’m sure some of you will disagree with what I say, and that I will disagree with what some of you say. That’s not just okay, that’s encouraged. Please disagree. For the purposes of this blog, feminism is the radical notion that women are people. Anything else can be a point of discussion.

Here’s the last issue. I’m one person. I can’t read all of these books in a timely manner, and some of them I won’t read. When I say I want YA to be a safe space, I mean for myself as well, and while I want to be challenged by my reading (I’m assuming anyone who cares enough to read a blog like this wants to be challenged) I don’t want to be hurt.

That’s where you come in.

Over the next few days, I’ll be posting a few reviews of my own of some of the books on the list. I’ve put together a template for myself and everything. But I can’t do all of the books, and even if I could, I don’t think I ought to. College and grad school convinced me that literary criticism always seems stronger when there’s a group of intelligent, enthusiastic people bouncing ideas off each other and changing their minds based on discussion. So if at any point you’d like to write up a review of any of the 103 books on the Bitch magazine list (even ones I’ve already written or that someone else has), please let me know. It’ll save me some time, and I think it’ll make the list stronger.

The Bitch list was a great starting place, but that’s really all it was. It’s up to us- as authors, members of the publishing industry, librarians, critics, and fans of young adult literature- to take it farther.

1 – Intersectionality is what it sounds like: the place where different critical/social justice perspectives intersect. It asserts that nothing- gender, race, sexuality, disability, whatever- exists in a vacuum, and privilege in any of those categories can influence the way others are perceived and enacted.

2 – A safe space does not mean a place without confrontation or challenging opinions, but rather a place where no one is attacked for holding a particular opinion. Logical discussion is totally welcome, as is attacking IDEAS- just not people.