Book Discussion: Is YA a Genre or Demographic?

About a week and a half ago, I posted about age in YA & NA. While researching for that post, I found a delightful(ly hilarious) and informative post that addressed 25 (actually 28, now) Things You Should Know About Young Adult Fiction. The first point—young adult is a demographic, not a genre—got me thinking about what would eventually become this post:.

Huh? I thought. This is interesting. Interesting, because I had never really considered the distinction. But let's think about it. According OED, a genre is "a category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, characterized by similarities in form, style, or subject matter." A demographic (noun) is "a particular sector of a population." You write in a genre, and for a demographic. When I started thinking about it this way, a lot of the problems I had with definitions of young adult suddenly seemed solved, or at least less of an issue.

My biggest problem, as I discussed in the age in YA post, is the age range privileged as a primary identifying mark of "the YA genre" is arbitrary. Young adults are those between 12 and 18. Says who? There is a huge difference between a 12-year-old and an 18-year-old, and the issues that affect or concern them are generally completely different. What's more, I would argue that 12-18 isn't even young adult; a likelier candidate would be the 18-25 age bracket, and the 12-18 bracket should be split: 12-15 and 15-19. Those categories should then, respectively, be called preteen and teen. But this all becomes less of an issue when you approach using the idea that YA is that which is written for the young adult demographic. Then 12-18 as the selected defining bracket makes a little more sense, because it is an age range already defined socially by the physical, mental, emotional, and physiological changes going on in the young human body. It can be easily identified as the period after childhood, a period called "adolescence," marked by that mind-blowingly fun process called "puberty." Therefore, young adult fiction would be that which would appeal to members of this 12-18 age bracket, which mostly would encompasses teenagers, their lived experiences and their life problems, but would occasionally venture into slightly younger or older territory.

This demographic would then dictate the overall writing styles for this subset of literature, more out of a necessity to relate or appeal to the chosen age group and their lived experiences than to follow any seemingly arbitrarily decided rules such as first person perspective is the norm, 70,000-80,000 words, one or two main characters and the rest are supporting, the presence of a certain kind of relationship, etc. Recall Amanda Ritter's definition of YA quoted in the "What's in an age?" post:

Middle grade is very much about the external, in my opinion. The protagonist reacts to external situations and events, which leads to adventurous stories, and there is little time spent in the characters’ heads. Think books like Percy Jackson and Skulduggery Pleasant. On the other hand, YA is often much more introspective, and the protagonist exerts their influence on the events in the novel. Think first person perspective and lots of use of the word ‘I’ (emphasis mine).

Harry Potter perfectly exemplifies this trend, right? Books 1 and 2 are more about the wonders and amazing happenings of this new, magical world we enter into simultaneously with Harry. The plot is fairly straightforward, and the subplot tends to center around friendship—making good ones, avoiding the bad ones, and having fun all the while. Starting around book 3 though, things start to change. Harry spends a bit more time soliloquizing about his feelings and his family (or lack thereof). But we get the sense that good friends and having fun is still really important, and look there's one more thing we haven't really gotten to see in this fantastic new world: Hogsmeade! By book 4, however, we are securely in Harry's head, where we stay for the remaining books of the series. The story takes a dark turn, our villain officially makes his appearance in all his serpentine glory, and Harry starts taking an active role (as active as the adults will let him, anyway, and then some) in the war against Voldemort.

Finally, by thinking of young adult literature as that which is aimed at a certain age group, we eliminate the issue of the young adult "genre," which actually spans most all of the fiction genres found in adult literature. Writing for a demographic opens the floor up to more variety in the texts, because while there are certain general experiences, concerns, and interests common to most teenagers, all teens are definitely not alike, and some teens may have completely different experiences from the "normal teenage experience." You escape the issue of needing to adhere to specified rules, which a genre must have since it is identified through "similarities between form, style, and subject matter," and can thus write literature that spans several genres, or even bucks the notion all together.

All this being the case, I think I do prefer the "young adult demographic" to the "young adult genre." However, isn't it fair to say that in writing for the young adult demographic, you build the strictures for a genre, the foundation of a certain form or style, which becomes so distinct it can be identified even when the label "young adult" is missing? Couldn't the genres of fantasy or sci-fi or romance that appeals to young adults just be referred to as "the Young Adult Fantasy genre" or "the Young Adult Sci-Fi genre"? Sure, it's a mouthful, but it could be technically correct, right? And then of course, there's the meta question: are genres even really necessary? The author of the "25 Things" article argues against their existence, but what do you guys think?

Is it possible for literature written for "the young adult demographic" to not constitute "the young adult genre"? Should the genres in Young Adult be reconstructed to reflect the distinction between the two phrases, or should genre be done away with altogether?
 

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What's in an age?: Young Adult vs. New Adult

In honor of my 22nd birthday, I decided to look at a topic that has been of considerable interest to me pretty much all of my life, but especially since I took this Children's Literature class in college: age in YA.

When you ask the question, what is YA?, most definitions list an age range for the book's protagonist. Here's a quick sample from an article that asks several publishers what their definitions for middle grade and young adult are:

• “I think that these definitions are fairly simple: middle grade books feature pre-teen characters in situations of interest to 8-12 year olds, and YA novels feature teen protagonists in situations of interest to teen readers." - Lisa Yoskowitz, editor at Disney-Hyperion Books
• “Middle grade is very much about the external, in my opinion. The protagonist reacts to external situations and events, which leads to adventurous stories, and there is little time spent in the characters’ heads. Think books like Percy Jackson and Skulduggery Pleasant. On the other hand, YA is often much more introspective, and the protagonist exerts their influence on the events in the novel. Think first person perspective and lots of use of the word ‘I’." - Amanda Ritter, Editor at Strange Chemistry
• “Middle grade is for children ages 8 to 12. [...] Young adult is aimed at readers 12 to 18 (and up), which is a wide developmental range. YA is generally thought of most generally as ‘anything with a teenaged character living in the moment’ (as opposed to remembering back on those years sentimentally from the POV of an older adult narrator)." - Stacy Whitman, Editorial Director of Tu Books

But using an age range for the protagonist to define YA always bothered me as exceedingly arbitrary. Certainly, I understand that teen readers could more easily identify with teen protagonists, but it is not unheard of for those outside the age range of the protagonist to identify with said protagonist. (Case in point: Harry Potter.) I think that most of us have read a book that just sort of feels YA or feels MG or feels X or Y, even though it may not technically be categorized as such. This is why, of those three definitions, my favorite is the second, because, instead of focusing on the age of the protagonist as a main factor, it highlights the feel of the book's narration as the distinguishing factor between middle grade and YA. That sort of distinction helps explain how books like Ursula LeGuin's Wizard of Earthsea could be considered children's literature despite the fact that the protagonist is likely in his mid- to late 20s, maybe even early 30s, for most of the book.

The first two definitions also address the age of the audience for which the book is intended, but that sort of distinction seems to serve little purpose as well, since, according to recent studies, 55% of the people who buy young adult books are over the age of 18. As I think this evidences, being a young adult doesn't end at 18 (or even 19 for that matter). In fact, that, I would argue, is when young adulthood begins! What about the stories that tell the lives of old biddies like me, fresh out of college, trying to find a job?

Enter New Adult (NA), the name of which was coined in 2009 by St. Martin's Press during a new adult writing contest they hosted in which they were "seeking fiction similar to YA that can be published and marketed as adult—a sort of an “older YA” or “new adult." On their page "What is New Adult?", NA Alley defines a new adult novel as that which "encompasses the transition between adolescence—a life stage often depicted in Young Adult (YA) fiction—and true adulthood. Protagonists typically fall between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six, though exceptions may apply. NA characters are often portrayed experiencing: college, living away from home for the first time, military deployment, apprenticeships, a first steady job, a first serious relationship, etc." (emphasis mine). Okay, problem solved! Here's my genre, I thought when I first heard about NA.

But no, actually. This presents an even larger problem. If age is the only defining factor, how do you distinguish between the books that fall on the edge? Like Ruth Silver's Aberrant, which features an 18-year-old protagonist who lives happily in a society where the government decides everything from your job to whom you marry to when you can have kids (standard dystopian fare). Except, she wasn't born on the "Day of the Chosen," like everybody else, so now the government seeks to eradicate her. (No spoilers here. All of this information is given to us in the book summary.) I have not yet read this book (though I plan to because of the very question raises), but how does this differ from a YA book with a similar premise? (The ones that came to my mind were Lauren Oliver's Delirium series or C.J. Redwine's Defiance, but reviews of this book have touted it as resembling The Hunger Games).

It's not the marriage part, because plenty of YA books feature arranged marriages, particularly in fantasy, historical, or dystopian novels. It can't be the her starting a new job part, because yet again plenty of YA novels feature young adults working or starting what could theoretically be their career job, yet again, especially in dystopia. So what is it? That leaves only the way in which it is written as a distinguishing factor, but I would think that distinction would carry over into the book flap summary.

I suppose there's only one way to tell: read it. So that's what I'll do. But in the meantime, I'd like to ask you guys for your thoughts on the subject. Having never read a NA book, I admit that my only conception on the difference between NA and YA is that NA features more adult content, but as I was researching for this post, I learned that NA is so much more than just hot, steamy sex scenes featuring college-aged kids. Plus, with the age range up to 26, I was expecting to be able to find stories that feature post-college aged kids, but I've yet to find any, really, since most of them feature college kids (who are kind of just like big teenagers). So now, I'm confused again. Where are the books that feature the college kid who wakes up one day and realizes, "Hey, I'm senior. Next year, I'm supposed to be a full-time adult. What????" or what about the recent grad whose pounding the pavement everyday looking for work and getting a whole lot of nowhere? Where are those books that talk about moving out on your on for the first time, sometimes thousands of miles from everything you've ever known?

So I'll want to ask you guys: What do you think? What is the difference between NA and YA? Should there even be one or would it be more prudent to just distinguish the "NA" as "YA featuring mature content"?

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