Dear YA,
I didn’t read you when I was a young adult. I read literature, the books my teachers assigned to me, the ones that would force people to take me seriously: Heart of Darkness, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, Lord of the Flies. These books were bleak; their pages riddled with violence, assault, racism, misogyny. They were dark and complicated. Explicit, tragic. The authors were always straight, often male, usually white.
And so it was a joy to find you in my 20s, and carry you into my 30s: The Miseducation of Cameron Post, Under the Udala Trees, Last Night at the Telegraph Club, Cemetery Boys, Last True Poets of the Sea, Dear Twin, I’ll Give You the Sun. I still love you for your sincerity, unbridled emotions, and reckless hearts. I love you for your flaws and forgiveness, travels and arrivals, questions that are allowed to stay questions. I love you for your longing. It’s not that my favorite of your qualities can only be found within your pages, just that in you I find them in abundance. You allow characters to have an innocence that isn’t ignorance but wisdom; that they can’t know it all, haven’t felt it all, have so many empty chapters that need writing.
A Valentine for Charlie in Perks of Being a Wallflower — For you, who taught us about vulnerability, quiet strength. For you, who made us all feel infinite.
Unlike other subgenres of fiction, you undoubtedly center kindness, softness, earnestness. You focus on friendship. Your characters have often seen the people in their lives at their best and their worst and loved them anyway. Though they may hurt each other, there is usually a reckoning; you ask us what we owe each other and what healthy relationships might look like. You let the world be horrible and find hope in it anyway; anything is possible because there is always so much time to come, you have so many years to live.
A Valentine for Marin in We Are Okay — For your sadness, grace, and forgiveness. For the way you see beauty even in a lonely world. For letting me open a book and say There I am.
So often I see some version of the following conversation spinning out on Twitter: Who are you for? Each time, I find subsequent exchanges perplexing. Of course, you’re for young adults (specifically 14–18-year-olds) first. It’s in your name. It’s natural that readers may connect with protagonists who share their experiences, but why would that ever mean older people couldn’t enjoy your stories? So what if we can’t identify with every emotional response or decision? Fiction of any age or genre is incredibly boring if the characters have nowhere to grow, nothing to figure out, no one to become. Teenagers are intelligent, sensitive, complex, and open. They are brimming with tomorrows. You give us wonderful protagonists who deserve empathy and respect from readers of any age.
A Valentine for Aaron in More Happy Than Not — For your fear and your heart, for the things you wish you could forget, for the things you shouldn’t unlearn.
And what does it mean for you to be too adult, or written for adults? Outdated cultural references aside, young people are living in the same world that adults are. They deal with trauma, ugliness, and horrors almost daily. They navigate sex, drugs, and illness. You are a safe space where they can process the heaviness of the world. You show them they’re not alone, you teach them how to trace hope over and over again until they feel it in their skin.
A Valentine for Liz Lighty in You Should See Me in a Crown — For your ambition and blazing self-respect, for your joy, for your well-deserved happily-ever-after.
Years ago I attended a reading of Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by author Matthew Quick. He said, “We can’t save anyone, but we can show them we’ve gone through what they’re going through and that we made it out OK. Sometimes that can be enough.” Until you’re written primarily by 14–18 year-olds, you will always be a love letter, a conversation, between adults who survived their adolescence and the kids who are living it.
For my fictional nieces; Tamsin and Wren, Hannah and Baker, Codi and Lydia, Scottie and Irene, Sofi and Lara — a heart in every color. Thank you for guiding me. Thank you for your big hearts, music, and daring beauty.
As a queer person who came out later in life, I find you healing. There are so, so many beautiful queer books. I can read and rewrite my own younger years and imagine what my world could have looked like if I’d been able to be myself sooner, if I could have loved earlier. You’re nostalgic and revolutionary all at once; there are still so many parts of myself I haven’t figured out. In your pages, that’s admirable. It’s important. It’s human.
And, finally, a Valentine for Avery in We Deserve Monuments — for your history and future, your loyalty, laughter, sweet young love. For the seeds you are planting, for the ways you will bloom.
YA, I will love you, dear friend, for the rest of my life. People of all ages deserve the attention of having their stories told; it’s a form of love to witness someone’s fears, hopes, and desires. You do that for young adults, and I wish we let adults have more stories with bittersweet, happy endings, with innocence as wisdom. We are always coming of age. We’re changing all the time. If we’re lucky, we’ll be cracked open by new emotions until the day we die. Your stories — the ones that are earnest, soft, and kind — are the ones that impress me now.
Yours,
Jen
